Three Dead Pigeons, Two Spaniels Spanielling and.....

[Jim Neal]

... a rook in a Leylandii treeeeeeeeeeee.

Anyone who says they didn't sing that to the prerequisite tune is a liar!!

Well that's it, my roost shooting season is over for another year.  On Saturday I ventured out alone, armed with the knowledge from my recce the previous day that our woods are virtually devoid of woodpigeons.  My Friday afternoon dog walk was around a wood I mentioned recently that can be good for roost shooting, but the farm has had two gas cannons on the field top side of it, one of them I swear was actually pointing into the wood.  All I can say is that it has been a very effective pigeon repellent.  I'd noticed since about a week prior that the gas guns had been switched off so I went in forlorn hope that the local pigeons might have cottoned on to this new-found sanctuary.  Alas, it was not to be.  My walk round at about 20 minutes before sunset disturbed just three single sitting pigeons in different places.  There were no birds in the air around the wood, or over the top passing by.  Nothing, zilch.  Curiously I observed an abundance of what looked like fresh feathers and poop on the ground under quite a lot of trees.  You'd swear from that evidence that the wood might surely be crowded at a time approaching sunset but, with nothing coming in, I scratched my head and headed back home for dinner.

Feeling rather disappointed, the following day I went back to the same wood I've shot on my last few outings, with the line of tall Leylandii trees.  I hate hammering the same spot week in, week out, but I literally had no other choices.

The wind, what little there was of it, was still round in the north where it had been since before the previous weekend.  A little moan on the side about the wind this February: there's been virtually none!  I can't remember the last time we had a February without at least a few days of it getting up to a speed that makes pigeon shooting interesting.  I feel most aggrieved by it.

I've definitely learned a few things from shooting under these conifers in a north wind.  Even in single figure wind speeds, the birds zip over a bit too fast to make it practical to use the north-facing hide I've built.  They're not turning before the Leylandii and landing facing away from the hide either, quite obviously because the less windy spot is the other side of the tall evergreen trees.  The south-facing side of the conifers doesn't have any really good natural cover to use, so it's rather frustrating that no matter how hard you try to be smooth and minimal with movement, you end up spooking the birds when you lift your gun.  I've added the task of building a hide for such an eventuality to my rather lengthy To-Do list. 

Also, the birds don't seem to be focusing on such a narrow entry point with a north wind.  They're coming in on the usual line from the north side, but instead of landing facing into the wind before the conifers they skim over the top and then the turn to land in all sorts of random places, making it impossible to pick a definitive spot.

Excuses well and truly established, my brief report is as follows:  I had two long-range sitters which both had to be hunted down with a dog.  One pigeon from a small group flared off right above my head; I didn't mount the gun very well but it was a sub-20 yard bird, therefore something of my pattern connected first barrel and I just had enough time to drop it properly with the second before it disappeared from view through the evergreens over my shoulder.  The bird marked itself down with a very audible THUD so I guessed I could leave that where it was and not have to unsettle the dogs from their tethering point.

Not much else happened.  I had noticed a rather busier than usual amount of corvid traffic over me, but had decided to leave them alone rather than letting off a lot of low-percentage shots which could scare off any incoming pigeons.  However, as it was nearly stumps I broke protocol when a large black shape skimmed over much lower than the usual altitude its brethren were flying at.  It was one of the kind of shots in this location that gives an immense amount of satisfaction when you manage to pull it off; having got on to the bird a little late, it had just passed out of sight over the tops of the leylandii trees.  Having had just that nanosecond to follow its trajectory and speed, I pushed in front and pulled on it, not really hoping for much.  Nothing much happened actually.  No thud or clattering, so I presumed I'd missed.  However, when I unleashed the crazy squad to go and look for the pigeon I'd dropped in the same place, the old springer brought me back a rook!

My young cocker hasn't handled a corvid yet and, seems as this rook needed dispatching I'm glad she didn't get there first.  After dispatching the bird I lay it down for the apprentice to investigate.  She duly picked it up and trotted around with it for a moment before deciding that rooks smell funny, so she put it down again.

Meanwhile, the seasoned campaigner had remembered where the thud came from earlier and quickly brought me the one pigeon still to collect up.  Optimistically, I swept the dogs around a 100-yard radius of my shooting position just in case of any surprises but, unsurprisingly, there were none.

I broke the news to the two spaniels that this was it for another year.  They didn't seem to take it too badly.  On the way back I dropped the corvid off to feed a mate's ferrets, then went home and took the meat from the three pigeons which was split over two nights' dinners for the dogs.  Honestly, pigeon dinners are THE BEST if you ask my two!

Roll on next year, and hopefully with some wind this time!!