Were have all the pigeons gone?

[dead eye alan]

Yesterday I travelled 42 miles in search of birds on my permissions, and only saw 8 pigeons! Any idea's were there all gone to? 

[JKD]

They were all (panto-esque) "behind you !!!" 🤭😂

[mgsontour]

Same in LANCS mate. Geese and wigeon and numbers are way down to boot but plenty of crow shooting ( maybe bird flu has taken a few or the warm weather ) but it's unusual to say the least

[tonyshooter]

All gone from my area near Sheffield.

 

They are in the parks and on the golf courses, after acorns and beech mast.

[mossy835]

2 hours ago, dead eye alan said:

Yesterday I travelled 42 miles in search of birds on my permissions, and only saw 8 pigeons! Any idea's were there all gone to? 

 

3 of them was down where i am, and had all 3,

[marsh man]

Yesterday we a game shoot and saw very little Pigeon activity , the o s r fields as expected are untouched and will be for a few more weeks while the hoard of Acorns are still falling off the Oak trees .

In the past we would always get a good price for Pigeons from the dealer around now for the simple fact they were getting very few fresh Pigeons in , around our way it was mainly due to all the land , or most of it was taken over with game shooting and what would you get good numbers on in the pre Winter months ??

[bunny_blaster]

Every morning I’m seeing upto 1000+ pigeons travelling high in large flocks over my yard, all heading south. This years bumper crop of acorns will keep them off the rape well after Xmas. I’ve seen birds feeding on maize stubble as well whilst out and about

[Fellside]

Been seeing similar - associated with beech mast. Huge numbers. 

[jall25]

Hundreds and hundreds about in the woods today - in the fog 

[39TDS]

I have noticed big flocks around me recently, just flying around, don't seem to be heading to or from anywhere in particular.

A helicopter went over low yesterday and I was staggered at how many pigeons came out of the woods and ducks off the ponds.

[Sweet11-87]

although the leaves are late falling off the trees this year round me, roost shooting has been exceptinal and the crops are full of a mix of acorns and things from garden feeders.  grey squirrels have exploded too it seems theyre everywhere

[pigeon controller]

DB went out roost shooting for crows following a request from the farmer and dropped off 29 pigeons that also came in. All were rammed with acorns, so they are in the woods.

[marsh man]

3 hours ago, pigeon controller said:

DB went out roost shooting for crows following a request from the farmer and dropped off 29 pigeons that also came in. All were rammed with acorns, so they are in the woods.

Your shooting might have lingered on a bit longer than around our way as the Summer shooting drawed to a close , we had a lot of un germinated rape seed on the stubble tat was attracting a lot of Pigeons and a lot of dried Pea seed that was also a good draw , this lasted to around the second week in September and then the acorns started to drop to the ground early , this was mainly due to the long hot dry spell we had , we could more or less see the difference over night and within three or four days the Pigeons were gone and have never returned , we were shooting game last Saturday and I doubt we saw 50 Pigeons all day and only two ended up in the bag , unless things change I doubt we will see any Pigeons on the o s r till after Christmas .

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, well this afternoon walk by the river I must have seen 100s fly over Abingdon lock  to Culham hill top farm woods,  that's the most this year, 

Edited November 16, 2022 by oldypigeonpopper

[Rat Boy]

Loads around my permissions, all in Beech trees or on Acorns. Non on the ground even though we have quite a few newly drilled fields.

[popa bear]

A few flocking together round by me (south of Birmingham) but mainly sitting and feeding on grass and acorns as i don't think they like getting their feed muddy.

[dead eye alan]

Thanks to every body that contributed to this thread, still no pigeons in my area other than a few ferrules and rocks. 

5 fields of rape this year should produce a few good bags when the weather gets colder.

[marsh man]

39 minutes ago, dead eye alan said:

Thanks to every body that contributed to this thread, still no pigeons in my area other than a few ferrules and rocks. 

5 fields of rape this year should produce a few good bags when the weather gets colder.

We have got a fair bit of rape and even if we got Pigeons on the fields when , or if the weather got colder we don't no longer get the pigeon shooters to go after them , why is the case ? , well part of the reason would be people like myself who have got the time are not that keen in sitting in freezing conditions to try and shoot a few Pigeons that no one wants , the cost of cartridges are expensive , the fuel to get there and back cost the earth and as we all know that the more rape fields you have got around a smallish area the harder it is to get a half decent bag , then you have got the ones who also take part in game shoots and wild fowling as this is the peak time for these sports.

Would I be right in thinking that a very small number of Pigeons are shot from the beginning of October to the beginning of March , this is six months of the year and I doubt it would cover 10 / 15 percent of the yearly bag , the stubble shooters have put there gear away till the harvest begin in eight months time and that just leave the dedicated few like P C and few others who don't have any closed season , looking out of my window right now it is chucking it down and fairly cold with it , and you would have to be dedicated ( or mental ) to go out in search of Pigeons on a day like today .

Having said that , if anyone is looking for pigeon shooting then this is a good time to look as there will be fields of rape about with nobody shooting it . 

[old'un]

59 minutes ago, marsh man said:

We have got a fair bit of rape and even if we got Pigeons on the fields when , or if the weather got colder we don't no longer get the pigeon shooters to go after them , why is the case ? , well part of the reason would be people like myself who have got the time are not that keen in sitting in freezing conditions to try and shoot a few Pigeons that no one wants , the cost of cartridges are expensive , the fuel to get there and back cost the earth and as we all know that the more rape fields you have got around a smallish area the harder it is to get a half decent bag , then you have got the ones who also take part in game shoots and wild fowling as this is the peak time for these sports.

Would I be right in thinking that a very small number of Pigeons are shot from the beginning of October to the beginning of March , this is six months of the year and I doubt it would cover 10 / 15 percent of the yearly bag , the stubble shooters have put there gear away till the harvest begin in eight months time and that just leave the dedicated few like P C and few others who don't have any closed season , looking out of my window right now it is chucking it down and fairly cold with it , and you would have to be dedicated ( or mental ) to go out in search of Pigeons on a day like today .

Having said that , if anyone is looking for pigeon shooting then this is a good time to look as there will be fields of rape about with nobody shooting it . 

I have always chased pigeons during the winter and in the early days of rape picked a lot of shooting up from lack of shooters willing to spend time chasing them.

If you are correct in saying no one is/will shoot them during the winter then farmers will just look for alternatives, and I am sure if there's a market for such things someone will get their invention head on.

Having said that, a couple of well placed gas-guns will keep pigeons off a field, unless they are starving as I have seen in the past.

[pigeon controller]

2 hours ago, old'un said:

I have always chased pigeons during the winter and in the early days of rape picked a lot of shooting up from lack of shooters willing to spend time chasing them.

If you are correct in saying no one is/will shoot them during the winter then farmers will just look for alternatives, and I am sure if there's a market for such things someone will get their invention head on.

Having said that, a couple of well placed gas-guns will keep pigeons off a field, unless they are starving as I have seen in the past.

The price of rope bangers and gas may stop certain farmers from spending money, I was thinking of putting an order in at Anne Summers for some blow up dolls and put out in the field with a air pump and random timer but knowing the “ woke” society they would have the Police and Air Ambulance out!!! Mind you that will move the pigeons. 
With the  advent of the drones, that  may be an option to have a drone programmed to fly round the specific fields on a random nature.

[marsh man]

2 hours ago, old'un said:

I have always chased pigeons during the winter and in the early days of rape picked a lot of shooting up from lack of shooters willing to spend time chasing them.

If you are correct in saying no one is/will shoot them during the winter then farmers will just look for alternatives, and I am sure if there's a market for such things someone will get their invention head on.

Having said that, a couple of well placed gas-guns will keep pigeons off a field, unless they are starving as I have seen in the past.

When I chased Pigeons a lot in the Winter months we didn't have the volume of rape grown like we have nowadays , back then the cartridges were cheap and the dealers were crying out for them , some of our best shooting was on marshland with no woods , trees or nothing where they could perch up and survey the area , we would have a bale hide in the middle of the field that was placed in between two sets of tramlines so the sprayer could still spray by just lifting the arm up , all the holes were filled up with loose straw to help to stop the cold wind getting through , even so it still got bitterly cold but when you younger you can put up with that if you are getting a nice lot of sport .

Another problem is the days are short and the weather is very un predictable in the Winter months , people who are at work have to mainly rely on Saturdays and how many times do we hear , I haven't been a lot through family or work commitments , we also heard in the Summer from a member saying he would take a day off from work to shoot a few Pigeons , with Pigeon shooting always recon to be a poor mans sport , how many working people can afford to take a day off this day and age to shoot Pigeons in the height of the Winter when inflation is now running at over 11 % and energy prices are already at a record high and due to go up yet again in April along with predicted interest rates if you are unlucky enough to have a mortgage .

We are looking at a vastly different era when we chased Pigeons about in the Winter time and those days are unlikely to come back , In the Summer they laughed when I said the farmers and land owners might have to start dipping there hand in there pockets to help towards the cost of saving there crops , like I said , time don't mean nothing to me and I would be more than happy to donate my time if they paid towards the cartridges and fuel costs if they find gas guns are not keeping the hungry pigeons off , what alternative would they have ?

[jall25]

Noticing a lot of pigeon on clover in the fields 

[old'un]

4 hours ago, pigeon controller said:

The price of rope bangers and gas may stop certain farmers from spending money, I was thinking of putting an order in at Anne Summers for some blow up dolls and put out in the field with a air pump and random timer but knowing the “ woke” society they would have the Police and Air Ambulance out!!! Mind you that will move the pigeons. 
With the  advent of the drones, that  may be an option to have a drone programmed to fly round the specific fields on a random nature.

Anne Summers, good idea.

Like I said someone will come up with a cheapish idea to keep the pigeons off, few years back I was at the gate of a rape field and bang, a bloody gas gun, putting the glasses round the field I could not see the telltale signs of a gas-gun, the only thing I could see was a windmill on a pole and a yellow box at the bottom, just then the farmer pulls up behind me and asks “is there any pigeons on the field, no I said, the gas-gun is keeping them off”,,,good he says,,,and its not a gas-gun, its a compressed air gun?, someone built it for me but its playing up and does not always work.

I never seen it on any of his fields after that so I presume it packed up but it was a good idea but only worked when there was a wind.

Talking of blow-up dolls I have seen a couple of blow-up men that stand up then fall down, they were operated by gas.

Yep, that's perhaps one thing with gas-guns, the cost of the gas, mind you some farmers have them going off every 15 minutes and they always put them where you want to setup, bloody farmers.

[Gas seal]

Hi flocks of pigeons in woods or sitting in oak trees, as farmers say we’re they belong, in the North west. Pigeons have been in flocks in summer for a few years. No pigeons on rape unless eating acorns. Each year l noticed more pigeons eating ivy berries l think they are local pigeons because there are still flocks of pigeons feeding on rape. More flocks of stock doves and jackdaws about.the shooting now is crows or rabbits on sown fields.  The inflatable scary man was a good deterrent there was one keeping pinks off a field on the solway when it lifted the geese we would shoot them as they lifted and flew around or when they returned. 

[marsh man]

What might help the farmers and the landowners who grow rape is our warming up climate , when did we get the last prolonged spell of really cold weather ? , at one time we kept our fingers crossed we would avoid a cold weather ban for wild fowling , I can remember that one year we had two , this was normally a minimum of seven days and very often fourteen , now we are in mid November and haven't even had a frost , in fact when we had a shoot last Saturday it must had been close to a record for how warm it was .

As for the bird scarer's , one that is fairly cheap to maintain is the b o p on the carbon pole , trouble is the effect don't seem to last long if you leave them in the same place , the banger's on a rope are alright but all you do is to push them from a to b and then back again , another next to useless one I saw was a four sided triangle that was covered in mirrors , this revolve round and should on paper keep the birds off when the mirrors reflect in the sun , trouble is it didn't work well on a sunny day and on a dull day it was a total waste of time , yes I have seen the pop up men waving there arms when inflated and fall down in a heap when the air run out , another was strips of plastic that run right across the field and made a loud vibrating noise when the wind caught it , one of the best gas guns I saw was put in a 45 gallon oil drum , this really did crack out , I have also noticed that Pigeons don't react much if only one bang go off , it need a second bang to make them lift off , and last but not least is bags on a stick that are scattered over a field , maybe alright on a small field but you would need a lot of bags if the field was around 100 acres .