What's going on?

[kitchrat]

As I admitted the other week, I have not done any summer shooting for years and am at a loss. Now they are mainly off the peas I found a very large number in a sort of frenzy over a field of barley, not really laid but they were all over it, up and down, and also on the rape next door.

Got set up the next day on the barley (magnet, 2 flappers, 2 floaters - all real birds, plus some flocked full -bodied decoys. They were mainly on the rape but 1 decoyed straight in and I shot it. About 200+ came off the rape, over my field and disappeared to my right, never to be seen again, at least very few came back that way. Shot the occasional passing bird.

Then I saw another frenzy, over a barley field which was just over the brow of the hill. Took a floater and walked over, when I got there they were not on the crop but about 200 in a couple of oak trees They flew to trees down the other end of the field. I put out the floater and hit under the oaks. Twenty minutes late I shot a passing bird and the flock took off, never to be seen again. After a while, I went back to my hide and sat there for an hour, shot maybe 2 lone birds. The flock was long gone, just like winter rape shooting when it doesn't work.

Why are they flocked up? Not raising young?

Very envious of BB, whilst I SAW 200 pigeons, he shot 200!! Brilliant! 

Finished with 9, enough for another casserole.

Cheers,

Edited Tuesday at 15:15 by kitchrat

[JKD]

Are they not following your script ?! 🤔 Hey ho 🙃

[mellors]

Well i would say shooting them over almost ripe rape and no laid barley isn't a good idea. 

You'll be doing more damage retrieving them than the pigeons do. 

That's a big casserole a kilo of pigeon breast meat. 

 

[Wilts#Dave]

Flight lines are key to shooting the bags….spend a bit more time watching them if possible, walk them off and see what happens. I’ve shot a couple of days up near 200 on peas of late, and both times have watched over several days and seen good flight lines rather than huge numbers on the ground. 
There’s more choice right now than there was when I shot them as well, which can make things harder! 

[stockybasher]

One thing I have noticed in my area (Fens-ish) there are next to nil young birds so far.  Is this a weather issue or......

Normally at this time, you see single birds (1 parent) back and fore, but I am seeing many pairs of birds, but few singles !!

 

Taking this a bit further, by now we usually have a few pigeon nests in our garden / neighbours.  This year zero so far.  Plenty of birds trying the "dating game" but no nests etc ......?????

[marsh man]

2 hours ago, kitchrat said:

As I admitted the other week, I have not done any summer shooting for years and am at a loss. Now they are mainly off the peas I found a very large number in a sort of frenzy over a field of barley, not really laid but they were all over it, up and down, and also on the rape next door.

Got set up the next day on the barley (magnet, 2 flappers, 2 floaters - all real birds, plus some flocked full -bodied decoys. They were mainly on the rape but 1 decoyed straight in and I shot it. About 200+ came off the rape, over my field and disappeared to my right, never to be seen again, at least very few came back that way. Shot the occasional passing bird.

Then I saw another frenzy, over a barley field which was just over the brow of the hill. Took a floater and walked over, when I got there they were not on the crop but about 200 in a couple of oak trees They flew to trees down the other end of the field. I put out the floater and hit under the oaks. Twenty minutes late I shot a passing bird and the flock took off, never to be seen again. After a while, I went back to my hide and sat there for an hour, shot maybe 2 lone birds. The flock was long gone, just like winter rape shooting when it doesn't work.

Why are they flocked up? Not raising young?

Very envious of BB, whilst I SAW 200 pigeons, he shot 200!! Brilliant! 

Finished with 9, enough for another casserole.

Cheers,

You are not alone , it could be the volume of suitable crops you have on your shooting grounds , this can make it very hard to come to terms with , more so as you have got regular human bird scare'rs  with the old boys going around the feeding fields on a regular basis .

Even the big bag boys get lean spells , maybe they don't let us know about the low bags , or they are spending most of there spare looking for the Red letter day's , they are out there somewhere , but finding them is the hard part , still if you want to shoot Pigeons then you won't shoot them if you are stuck indoors watching the football like I am , but keep at it as we still enjoy reading about your quest to get among them . 

[kitchrat]

18 hours ago, JKD said:

Are they not following your script ?! 🤔 Hey ho 🙃

'Fraid not! Good fun trying though.

17 hours ago, Wilts#Dave said:

Flight lines are key to shooting the bags….spend a bit more time watching them if possible, walk them off and see what happens. I’ve shot a couple of days up near 200 on peas of late, and both times have watched over several days and seen good flight lines rather than huge numbers on the ground. 
There’s more choice right now than there was when I shot them as well, which can make things harder! 

Their flight patterns seem more or less random. There are lots of small woods round here and trees in the hedges for them use as they please. I was just amazed that they seem to be still flocked up.

[clangerman]

after first hit here birds that come out of the town will often start flock feeding using the air rifle can’t be disturbing them so I put it down to they are lot smarter now 

[JKD]

30 minutes ago, kitchrat said:

'Fraid not! Good fun trying though.

Their flight patterns seem more or less random. There are lots of small woods round here and trees in the hedges for them use as they please. I was just amazed that they seem to be still flocked up.

Yes it is 🙂 And that's what it's all about 😉

Carry on trying, and good luck 👍

[marsh man]

Talking to the farm foreman yesterday afternoon he recon this years harvest in our small neck of the woods will start from the forth week of July , this will be at least two weeks later than last year and depending on the weather it could be three weeks later , apart from a few scattered about on telegraph wire that run across some of our Winter sown barley fields the most I saw yesterday was on a cover crop that had a lot of Pink clover mixed with the various plants, enough to pass away a warm , dry afternoon for a couple of hours but the forecast isn't that great with more rain possible this afternoon .    MM 

[kitchrat]

2 hours ago, marsh man said:

Talking to the farm foreman yesterday afternoon he recon this years harvest in our small neck of the woods will start from the forth week of July , this will be at least two weeks later than last year and depending on the weather it could be three weeks later , apart from a few scattered about on telegraph wire that run across some of our Winter sown barley fields the most I saw yesterday was on a cover crop that had a lot of Pink clover mixed with the various plants, enough to pass away a warm , dry afternoon for a couple of hours but the forecast isn't that great with more rain possible this afternoon .    MM 

Went to look at the 2nd barley field, which is quite well on, most of the heads are well over so I don't think it will be more than a week late. I used to say July 14th, 1st harvest. There is also a small area of laid crop in one corner. When I got there, I put about 40-50 birds out of it and over 100 out of the surrounding trees/power wires. They all left, en masse. Watched for 20 mins, none came back. Went to Tesco to buy beer and came back about 1hr later, there were about 100 in the trees and on the wires, none feeding. They all left and I watched for 30 minutes, a few trickled back, into the trees but not onto the crop. They cannot be raising squabs, most worrying, why not?

Praying for rain/thunder but the farmer didn't agree. He also didn't want to drive his loader round in circles in the corner. Still, if you don't ask, you don't get!

 

 

Just now, kitchrat said:

Went to look at the 2nd barley field, which is quite well on, most of the heads are well over so I don't think it will be more than a week late. I used to say July 14th, 1st harvest. There is also a small area of laid crop in one corner. When I got there, I put about 40-50 birds out of it and over 100 out of the surrounding trees/power wires. They all left, en masse. Watched for 20 mins, none came back. Went to Tesco to buy beer and came back about 1hr later, there were about 100 in the trees and on the wires, none feeding. They all left and I watched for 30 minutes, a few trickled back, into the trees but not onto the crop. They cannot be raising squabs, most worrying, why not?

Praying for rain/thunder but the farmer didn't agree. He also didn't want to drive his loader round in circles in the corner. Still, if you don't ask, you don't get!

There are still some dropping at random onto the rape and one field had a lot of crows or jackdaws doing the same thing, pulling the stalks down.

 

 

[mellors]

There you go. 👍

[kitchrat]

47 minutes ago, mellors said:

There you go. 👍

Ha ha, I'll ask him if that's OK!

[marsh man]

47 minutes ago, kitchrat said:

Went to look at the 2nd barley field, which is quite well on, most of the heads are well over so I don't think it will be more than a week late. I used to say July 14th, 1st harvest. There is also a small area of laid crop in one corner. When I got there, I put about 40-50 birds out of it and over 100 out of the surrounding trees/power wires. They all left, en masse. Watched for 20 mins, none came back. Went to Tesco to buy beer and came back about 1hr later, there were about 100 in the trees and on the wires, none feeding. They all left and I watched for 30 minutes, a few trickled back, into the trees but not onto the crop. They cannot be raising squabs, most worrying, why not?

Praying for rain/thunder but the farmer didn't agree. He also didn't want to drive his loader round in circles in the corner. Still, if you don't ask, you don't get!

 

 

 

Up until last year our earliest start our was the 12th of July , the last couple of years had been an exception , drought conditions leading up to the harvest and a continuous run of very dry weather day after day during the harvest did not only make it one of the earliest starts it also made the finish the earliest , normally the farm boys look around the August bank holiday to finish the wheat fields on the marshland , last year the biggest problem they had was finding somewhere to put the cut grain , Peas , Beans and O S R .with the pattern of weather being a lot more changeable this year it might be one of those long drawn out affairs , we had fairly heavy rain last night and showers throughout today .

Some members say things haven't changed much over the years , well looking back I tend to disagree , come November I would have been retired for 17 years , and only the other night I was looking in my ole diaries and in the 70s I was shooting either just under 2000 and the odd good year I was getting over , this was at a time when I was working hard and during fairly long hours , sometimes we would get good numbers on the Kale fields that were grown for the cattle to feed on in the Winter , then come February the Spring drillings would start , once the Peas went in we often had shooting for the whole growing period , In the the Summer I would take a weeks holiday at the end of June and could find enough to shoot nearly every day , then once harvest started we would leave fields that this day and age we would be happy to go on , but in those days you went where you were going to get good shooting as you had much more choice with most of the stubbles being left alone , I dare say what also made a big difference was the demand for Pigeons as every Pigeon shot was sold , now I have got all the time I could wish for I would now find it boring to sit about on fields that have very little Pigeon activity , and at the other end of the scale if I did ,or could shoot a lot of Pigeons I am no longer strong enough to lug them off the field and when they were off I have no longer got anyone who want them, so some things might be the same , but a lot of things have changed forever  , 

[kitchrat]

2 hours ago, marsh man said:

Up until last year our earliest start our was the 12th of July , the last couple of years had been an exception , drought conditions leading up to the harvest and a continuous run of very dry weather day after day during the harvest did not only make it one of the earliest starts it also made the finish the earliest , normally the farm boys look around the August bank holiday to finish the wheat fields on the marshland , last year the biggest problem they had was finding somewhere to put the cut grain , Peas , Beans and O S R .with the pattern of weather being a lot more changeable this year it might be one of those long drawn out affairs , we had fairly heavy rain last night and showers throughout today .

Some members say things haven't changed much over the years , well looking back I tend to disagree , come November I would have been retired for 17 years , and only the other night I was looking in my ole diaries and in the 70s I was shooting either just under 2000 and the odd good year I was getting over , this was at a time when I was working hard and during fairly long hours , sometimes we would get good numbers on the Kale fields that were grown for the cattle to feed on in the Winter , then come February the Spring drillings would start , once the Peas went in we often had shooting for the whole growing period , In the the Summer I would take a weeks holiday at the end of June and could find enough to shoot nearly every day , then once harvest started we would leave fields that this day and age we would be happy to go on , but in those days you went where you were going to get good shooting as you had much more choice with most of the stubbles being left alone , I dare say what also made a big difference was the demand for Pigeons as every Pigeon shot was sold , now I have got all the time I could wish for I would now find it boring to sit about on fields that have very little Pigeon activity , and at the other end of the scale if I did ,or could shoot a lot of Pigeons I am no longer strong enough to lug them off the field and when they were off I have no longer got anyone who want them, so some things might be the same , but a lot of things have changed forever  , 

As they say in Canada, "getting old sucks". Sadly it's happening to us all. When I was a boy, we went rabbit shooting at night, in my little mini pick-up, shot a few, went down the pub and sold them (guns safe behind the bar) so we could buy some beer, and petrol for the pick up and another box of 10 Baikal cartridges for next time. Happy days, so lucky to have had those times. All change now... Can't even sell a pigeon.

[marsh man]

6 minutes ago, kitchrat said:

As they say in Canada, "getting old sucks". Sadly it's happening to us all. When I was a boy, we went rabbit shooting at night, in my little mini pick-up, shot a few, went down the pub and sold them (guns safe behind the bar) so we could buy some beer, and petrol for the pick up and another box of 10 Baikal cartridges for next time. Happy days, so lucky to have had those times. All change now... Can't even sell a pigeon.

Yea , As ole Bob Dylan once said , For the times they are a changing 

[old'un]

On 02/07/2024 at 16:14, kitchrat said:

As I admitted the other week, I have not done any summer shooting for years and am at a loss. Now they are mainly off the peas I found a very large number in a sort of frenzy over a field of barley, not really laid but they were all over it, up and down, and also on the rape next door.

Got set up the next day on the barley (magnet, 2 flappers, 2 floaters - all real birds, plus some flocked full -bodied decoys. They were mainly on the rape but 1 decoyed straight in and I shot it. About 200+ came off the rape, over my field and disappeared to my right, never to be seen again, at least very few came back that way. Shot the occasional passing bird.

Then I saw another frenzy, over a barley field which was just over the brow of the hill. Took a floater and walked over, when I got there they were not on the crop but about 200 in a couple of oak trees They flew to trees down the other end of the field. I put out the floater and hit under the oaks. Twenty minutes late I shot a passing bird and the flock took off, never to be seen again. After a while, I went back to my hide and sat there for an hour, shot maybe 2 lone birds. The flock was long gone, just like winter rape shooting when it doesn't work.

Why are they flocked up? Not raising young?

Very envious of BB, whilst I SAW 200 pigeons, he shot 200!! Brilliant! 

Finished with 9, enough for another casserole.

Cheers,

All the pigeons I seen on Wednesday were on green wheat, not one on any of the Barley fields.

Did see a few on a field of rape that was sprayed off a week ago, farmer hoping to combine in 2-3 weeks.

[Wilts#Dave]

13 hours ago, kitchrat said:

As they say in Canada, "getting old sucks". Sadly it's happening to us all. When I was a boy, we went rabbit shooting at night, in my little mini pick-up, shot a few, went down the pub and sold them (guns safe behind the bar) so we could buy some beer, and petrol for the pick up and another box of 10 Baikal cartridges for next time. Happy days, so lucky to have had those times. All change now... Can't even sell a pigeon.

When I was a young lad Dad used to freeze hundreds of pigeons at at time and they were picked up and paid for, the chap used to phone up regularly making his trips down through the country. If we shot a big bag fresh could get more money again from a local butcher! He was lucky to find a good outlet that used to pick up frozen birds right up until Covid when they wrapped up the business they’d ran for years. 
This puts Dad off shooting what he once did, he’s also at an age where he’s not longer interested in carting off sack loads of pigeons or lugging the kit across fields. 
I managed to find a couple of outlets, but not for financial gain and I duly shoot 95% of the pigeons these days with Dad just coming along for the ride so to speak. 

[marsh man]

48 minutes ago, Wilts#Dave said:

When I was a young lad Dad used to freeze hundreds of pigeons at at time and they were picked up and paid for, the chap used to phone up regularly making his trips down through the country. If we shot a big bag fresh could get more money again from a local butcher! He was lucky to find a good outlet that used to pick up frozen birds right up until Covid when they wrapped up the business they’d ran for years. 
This puts Dad off shooting what he once did, he’s also at an age where he’s not longer interested in carting off sack loads of pigeons or lugging the kit across fields. 
I managed to find a couple of outlets, but not for financial gain and I duly shoot 95% of the pigeons these days with Dad just coming along for the ride so to speak. 

Your dad is a mirror of myself and I would imagine he is roughly the same age , I hope he is keeping well and enjoying his well earnt retirement , you are right in what you are saying that they would once collect frozen Pigeons f o c , we had dealers not to far away so we would drop the fresh and frozen off and then went decoying , or we would make a day out of it and take them up on a Sunday and then head off to the coast or sometimes a game fair , in the late 70s we were getting 35p for fresh , 30p for frozen and 20p for small Pigeons .When we got to the dealers he would very often just say , do you know how many you have got ? , we would then say , yes there are xxx frozen and xx fresh , the frozen ones would be tipped into a big wire mesh container ( not counted ) and the fresh ones he would put into plastic trays at 20 at a time , very rare any rejects and paid in cash on the spot .

Now all that is a distant memory and I find it hard now to even off load a small amount , with the cost of running them about and no one taking frozen pigeons I now go for the odd few hours and eat or give away the small bags I get , still it's nice to look back and read about the good and not so good days that you and a few others keep us in touch with the great sport of Pigeon shooting , hopefully , long may it continue for a good few years to come .    MM

[kitchrat]

Went to look again, different time of day, same story, 150+ in the trees, not feeding. Watched a while, nothing moved, chased them off , only a dribble came slowly back. Another field, wheat and they are on the wires, again not feeding. Watched a while, nothing moved. These piccies are after some had seen me and left.

Do pigeons now get free childcare, so they can just go out and "hang out" with their buddies?

 

[Wilts#Dave]

8 hours ago, marsh man said:

Your dad is a mirror of myself and I would imagine he is roughly the same age , I hope he is keeping well and enjoying his well earnt retirement , you are right in what you are saying that they would once collect frozen Pigeons f o c , we had dealers not to far away so we would drop the fresh and frozen off and then went decoying , or we would make a day out of it and take them up on a Sunday and then head off to the coast or sometimes a game fair , in the late 70s we were getting 35p for fresh , 30p for frozen and 20p for small Pigeons .When we got to the dealers he would very often just say , do you know how many you have got ? , we would then say , yes there are xxx frozen and xx fresh , the frozen ones would be tipped into a big wire mesh container ( not counted ) and the fresh ones he would put into plastic trays at 20 at a time , very rare any rejects and paid in cash on the spot .

Now all that is a distant memory and I find it hard now to even off load a small amount , with the cost of running them about and no one taking frozen pigeons I now go for the odd few hours and eat or give away the small bags I get , still it's nice to look back and read about the good and not so good days that you and a few others keep us in touch with the great sport of Pigeon shooting , hopefully , long may it continue for a good few years to come .    MM

My Dad is 78, been shooting since he was a small boy and I can still remember bugging him to go with him when I was young (I’m 41). I’ve gone with him regularly since I was 11 years old and over the years shot tens if not hundreds of thousands of pigeons together, all my best memories with him are in a hide or tucked up in a wood.
I’ve followed other hobbies over the years and still enjoy my cars / motorsport but never stopped pigeon shooting with him and as obsessed now as I ever was (take far too many afternoons off work and spend far too much time looking for them when I probably should be working), it’s an odd hobby in that regard as you can’t just choose when to go can you and without putting in the legwork. 
When he was still working (shift work towards the end) he was always out with or without me and was looking forward to retirement. 
Strangely he’s done less actual shooting since then, partly for the reasons above and partly due to age I think and losing the hunger to shoot huge amounts. He’s stopped shooting loads of times when he’s got to 1/150 in the past when I’ve not been able to go, as he just can’t face the huge task at the end of the days of packing up and carting off etc etc, you’ll know it’s actually quite a task. 
I’m lucky to have found outlets where I can still go out and shoot bigger bags when I can and get rid of them, but it’s nothing like as easy as the days when we could just fill the freezers and wait until they were picked up! 
He’s always with me though, has a few shots here and there but says he gets just as much pleasure out of watching me knock them down now. I’m hoping we’ll still be able to enjoy our hobby long enough for my son to come with me/us and carry on the tradition. 
It’s a very niche hobby really and one that’s given me more pleasure than anything else over the last 30 years. 

[old'un]

I went out today and the pigeons were all over the wheat fields, could not pin them down to any one field as they were just landing in the tram lines anywhere, no laid areas so went and stood in a small spinney they were flighting over and shot 41 in 3hours, busiest time was 1.30 onwards, I wont tell you how many cartridges I fired. but I had some nice shooting.

Edited Thursday at 17:37 by old'un

[kitchrat]

38 minutes ago, old'un said:

I went out today and the pigeons were all over the wheat fields, could not pin them down to any one field as they were just landing in the tram lines anywhere, no laid areas so went and stood in a small spinney they were flighting over and shot 41 in 3hours, busiest time was 1.30 onwards, I wont tell you how many cartridges I fired. but I had some nice shooting.

Good stuff, well done!

[kitchrat]

On 02/07/2024 at 17:48, mellors said:

Well i would say shooting them over almost ripe rape and no laid barley isn't a good idea. 

You'll be doing more damage retrieving them than the pigeons do. 

That's a big casserole a kilo of pigeon breast meat. 

 

Here it is, the casserole. Enough for me and "Er indoors" for two meals each. Eat your heart out Michelin-starred restaurants!

[mossy835]

lots of pigeons on the barley went 2 nights after work,spent most the time running round after them,not staying in one place,