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Wet windy birds


decoy1979
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In response to the lack of posts on pigeon shooting I thought I'd share today's outing.

I'd spotted a few birds on a local borrage stubble yesterday on one of my permissions whilst walking the pup and decided with today off and the wife at work that I'd take a look. The forecast was for a decent wind with rain showers from 10.00.

The landowner was coming out of his house as I passed, he followed me up the lane where we stood and had a chat whilst watching birds moving around. A hedge cutter rattling away over the boundary caused a decent number of birds to lift and spooked a pair of Muntjac which came trotting past.

In typical British fashion we discussed the weather as it started to rain and my mind was already made up as to where I was going to position myself as per the picture below to benefit from the shelter of a thick hedge and trees.

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As soon as I'd set up with 24 shell decoys, moved the motor and got settled in birds started to return although not willing to fully commit to the pattern.

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The birds were sliding past my hide position skirting the pattern and offering 45+ yard shots. I managed to drop a couple and each shot put more birds in the air, i picked up the first 5 birds and added them to the pattern on cradles. By the time I got to a dozen I tried the magnet but with no real improvement, but as time went on odd birds & pairs started to commit to the pattern where as larger groups were giving me a wide birth and heading off behind me somewhere, where I assume another pigeon shooter was out judging by the sound of shots carrying on the wind.

The bag slowly built and I lost count of the number of times I instinctively started to raise the gun reacting to leaves blowing off the trees thinking these were birds coming from behind, only to be caught completely off guard when the odd bird did come through with the wind behind them!

Rain rolled in and showers became heavy or at least it felt it due to the wind, with more rain clouds looming i decided to get cleared up, 42 woodies and 4 feral was the final tally. 

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A great description on how your day unfolded , wind I can tolerate , rain is a no no when it come to decoying , I hate everything getting wet including the dead pigeons , having said that , today we had a game shoot and around 10 .30 the heavens opened up and it chucked it down , my leggings were in my grub bag and the water ran down my legs and half filled my water boots , you would think I should have known better but at least it washed my feet .:lol:

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2 hours ago, marsh man said:

A great description on how your day unfolded , wind I can tolerate , rain is a no no when it come to decoying , I hate everything getting wet including the dead pigeons , having said that , today we had a game shoot and around 10 .30 the heavens opened up and it chucked it down , my leggings were in my grub bag and the water ran down my legs and half filled my water boots , you would think I should have known better but at least it washed my feet .

It was the wind that made it feel worse than it was, that and the fact I thought I'll stick it out because the birds will start moving again after the rain eases off...

I don't like the birds getting wet either, they were laid out overnight to dry and went in the freezer this morning, the net is now hung out in the shed.

Sounds like you had an eventful day, washing your feet and it's not even bath day!! 😂

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