Michael Fish Syndrome

[Jim Neal]

The weather man disappointed me today.  He promised winds of 20-23mph at bang on roosting time but, with a sense of crushing disappointment, during those critical couple of hours the wind just dropped to nothing.  I'd been sitting at home earlier in the day watching the neighbour's 50ft fir tree getting shaken all over the place, rubbing my hands with glee.

There was a fairly decent showing of birds last week in a couple of woods, however that was not done justice by a very rusty performance from me and my companion shooting them!  Our excuses were as follows:  My friend had brought an old side-by-side out with him that he doesn't shoot much, and he was finding it physically uncomfortable to shoot.  I had equipped myself with the antique Browning A5 semi-auto which I too don't shoot all that often, and it took a good few missed opportunities before I could get it swinging nicely and the dog had a few feathers sticking out of her mouth.  Its length of pull is a touch short for my orangutan-like arms as well.  All good excuses and we are definitely sticking to them!

We managed 11 plus a squirrel between us last week.

The first wood we went to today, this time armed with our more regularly-used over & under shotguns, is usually alive with pigeons when you get there; a lot of the birds are sitting up digesting wheat they've gleaned from the adjacent grain store (some are real stinkers when you crop them out 🤮).  The usual order of events at this wood is that you have an insane 5-10 minutes blasting wildly at them all swirling round and coming back in, before they finally decide enough is enough and head off to somewhere a bit less shooty.  After that you'll get consistent dribs and drabs coming back in during the last hour before sunset - perfect roost shooting.

However it was not to be today.  My pal who got there 5 minutes before me said he'd only put half a dozen out of the trees upon arrival.  I said straight away the wood won't be worth shooting and after giving it about half an hour I was proven correct.  The highlight of this leg of our journey was a petrified squirrel fleeing along the ground from my friend's cocker.  Fair play to the squirrel for reaching its home tree just in time before the dog snaffled it - there wasn't much room to play with!  I consider squirrels to be the Paul McKenna of the animal world.  One moment you have them in plain sight and then a second later they have apparently vapourised.  It can't have jumped trees with two of us watching it, and I blasted its drey out with two shots.  I think it had flattened itself in the fork of two limbs, out of sight, and just froze there.  I'll see you next time, Cyril, don't you worry.

Two very optimistic shots at high passing pigeons later and we set our sights on elsewhere.  Still, it wasn't wasted time as it removed any doubt in my mind whether we should have been at that wood if another didn't produce.  Also, my mate is new to our syndicate so I spent the time sharing with him the knowledge I've built up over the years regarding flightlines and where to ambush the incoming pigeons.

At around 3:45 we de-camped to the wood we shot last week.  I don't like hitting the same spot hard with two of us only a week apart as it can have a knock-on effect leading to poor numbers for the rest of the month, but we really didn't have much choice at that stage because it would have taken too long to get anywhere else.  One or two of you might remember a report I posted last year accompanied by some pictures of a very beautiful, eerily-coloured sunset through the wood.  I've built a hide there, in front of a line of very tall Leylandii trees in a location which I think is the best compromise on differing lines in.

I like taking someone else because I always plonk them in the hide to make sure they get some decent shooting whilst I go off experimenting with other locations and observing the action from different angles.  It means I end up learning more than just doing the same thing every time, whilst still getting some shots off and downing a few birds.

Today, signs were good when we arrived although I have made a note that impatience rarely pays off.  In hindsight I should have parked up when we got to the release pen and then taken the 5 minute walk to the hide location.  But because we'd had to re-locate I wanted to speed things up by driving as close to the hide as possible.  As we drove around the pen and towards the hide, the trees erupted with pigeons.  These birds swirled and swooped, dropped in further away, got up again and kept moving around as we parked up and hurriedly prepared guns, cartridges and dogs.

Literally as soon as we'd got ourselves in shape and two up the spout, still 50yds from the hide by the tall conifers, the first opportunity came to my companion.  I followed suit almost immediately with a single shot for one pigeon down - it's always nice to get on the scoreboard straight away!  Only seconds later, I had a snap shot at another high but shootable pigeon that was doing some impressive kind of speed as they swirled about on the wind, now fully alert to our presence.  I knew I'd connected with it but it didn't look like slowing down much until it was well over 100yds back up the wood when it dropped to the floor with a little puff of feathers.  I marked the spot.

We pressed on towards our ultimate shooting location and as we were almost at the hide a group of 15 or so birds were still swirling around, unsure whether or not to settle in the branches.  We removed any doubt from their minds with a brief salvo, from which both of us downed a bird each.

That pigeon I took was with a kind of shot I seem to be developing as a bit of a speciality in this location.  Because the birds mostly fly alongside and then cross over the line of conifers, they disappear out of view behind you in just a couple of seconds.  It happens quite often that I'll see the bird late, get on it and..... oh damn, it's out of sight through the tops of the trees.  However I've learned rather than give up on the shot to push in front and pull anyway.  I've been surprising myself with how many times it results in the thud of a bird hitting the deck as well as bits of tree raining down around me.

So the wind was blowing well, we had three in the bag and we hadn't even settled in yet!  This had a tingly feeling of being a session to remember.  As the sky cleared of pigeons it had that feeling of a lull descending.  I deposited my mate at the hide with a bit of fresh foliage added to the top, left my cartridge bag there (curse applied) and turned heel to look for the wounded bird from several minutes previous.  I'm a bit of a stickler for marking downed game.  I always choose a couple of obvious features to line up with each other and repeat the words over a few times in my head.  I had no trouble finding my starting point because it was the pile of feathers from the first pigeon I shot!  I lined up the blue feeder with the crooked beech tree and pushed the dog on well in front.

Mission accomplished, I was back to the conifers in a few minutes and stationed about 30 yards along the tree line to my companion's right hand side.  I stood in the middle of a couple of bushy little children of the towering Leylandii 10 feet behind me.

After a rather frank exchange of opinions with my springer, I eventually got her to act like she's almost 12 years rather than 12 months old, and she begrudgingly sat in the place I instructed her to.  Of course, it had to be partly on her terms with her head sticking out the side of the bush, visible to every incoming pigeon within 200 yards.  I simply don't have the heart to leave her at home any more when I get the gun out of the cabinet.  She's worked 11 game seasons for me, tirelessly giving me every last ounce of her energy and then some more, but she's an absolute pain in the chuff when it comes to roost shooting!  She won't sit steady off the lead and runs in to the shot, but tie her down and she spends the first 10 minutes complaining and trying to uproot the tree she's tethered round, however she will settle after that.  But what didn't help today is I just got her settled and then had a kamikaze pigeon try to dive down the barrels of my gun!  I dropped it only a few yards from the dog's nose.  That set her off again grumbling and straining.  I had to break cover, pick the bird and deposit it behind us to get it out of her mind.  She sat good as gold for the rest of the time though, I'll giver her credit for that.

It was around about this time that Michael Fish Syndrome struck.  The wind just stopped, exactly like someone switching off a fan you're sat next to.  I checked the forecast on my phone again to see if they'd had to make any last minute changes due to supply issues, but no - the wind was still advertised as being 20mph.

I could now hear the occasional clap and flutter of pigeons landing up in the wood behind me, unaware of the presence of danger from the other side of the evergreens.  The shooting slowed right down and the line, predictably, became very unpredictable - no line at all really.  I managed another half a dozen shots.  My best opportunity came just after I'd had to re-adjust the dog's tethering arrangements.  I'd spotted, with plenty of time, an incoming pair which presented me with an absolute birthday present of a right & left.  I calmly kept dead still with the gun almost fully mounted as the two pigeons gracefully made their final descent towards the lower branches of a beech tree only 15 yards or so in front of me.  Unfortunately I'd forgotten I'd snicked the safety catch on the gun when I put it down to deal with the dog.  I've not done that old trick for quite some time, not have i sworn that loudly for quite some time!

After dropping a left-to-right crosser and a few more speculative swipes at odd birds a bit too far out or seen a bit late, we called it a day and set about picking up.  Just before stumps my mate took a chunk out of a pigeon and I watched it glide out to the very edge of the wood around 150yds in front of us, where it landed on a low branch.  I put him on the line but alas he didn't come back with the bird; it may have found the strength to get up and carry on a bit further out of the wood, at which point you may as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.  I swept my dog around the area over my right shoulder  - I had a hunch I'd connected with one which went that way and, sure enough, the old girl found it not too far back.  After collecting up empties, gear and shot birds we took our 9 pigeons back to the cars and headed off home.

As usual I had exceeded my time budget and arrived home at a quarter past dinner, therefore I had to leave the shot pigeons in the car whilst grovelling.  One out of the 9 birds had, I discovered several hours later, been eating rape.  The car absolutely stank!  Now my shed stinks.  No wonder people don't want to eat them when they've been on that stuff

Anyway here's hoping Wincy Willis is on duty next week in the weather office.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Jim Neal

[adzyvilla]

Glad you got some shooting in eventually. Enjoyed this, thanks.

[Old Boggy]

Thoroughly enjoyed that Jim.

Thanks for posting.

OB

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Jim, just stay home and write about shooting, that way you stay in the good books, don't miss dinner and no smelly OSR. Win/Win.  

Damned good honest write up though.  

[JDog]

An excellent post, more like ‘a book at bed time’ and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

[dead eye alan]

4 hours ago, JDog said:

An excellent post, more like ‘a book at bed time’ and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Yep I'll second that.

[Jim Neal]

Thanks gents, I don't achieve much to report about for most of the year but I do make up for it with a mini-novel occasionally 🤣

Dave if I stayed at home I wouldn't have anything to write about!  I can stomach the cold shoulder, quite used to it by now and she's almost given up being cross at me.  It's the bleddy rape that gets me 🤮