Panic

[MK38]

My mate had a panic phone call from his friendly farmer on Tuesday lunchtime about the number of Pigeon on one of his fields of rape...... the crop is virtually eaten to the ground, and despite three gas guns and an assortment of flapper bags the Pigeon just kept coming back in. He'd been spreading nitrogen like mad to try and encourage some growth, but the ******* just ignored the tractor and mearly lifted , circled and landed again......... could we help.

I was there twenty minutes later, to late for serious decoying but we at least could move them on to someone else's field. as we were getting the guns out another neighbouring farmer stoped to ask if we could help him as well. So my mate went one way and i went the other. Despite the huge number of birds we couldn't get under them ( they have been shot heavily before) so contented ourselves just moving them on and preventing there return. We fired alot of shots , just driving around from field to field, but at least we earned some brownie points and hopefully my acceptance by the farmers. The shoot ,which my mate belongs to, doesn't allow casual shooters ... but it's looking like i might be allowed to shoot the Pigeon.

The second farmer has had one field so badly hit he's going to re-sow it .... could i spare some more time driving them off

 

Delighted we had done some good, they both asked if we could return the next day..... so yesterday i went to the worst hit field and my mate was going to drive around the others.

Just as i feared, the birds were reluctant to decoy( they must have seen every trick in the book ) having been shot at so many times, so i moved to a spot under there flight line.Thousands of birds were in the air, but they offered few chances so i had to make do with trying to pull down a few high flyers... a pigeon magnet or a flapper might of helped

They totally ignored plastic decoys so i brought them back in and replaced them with shot birds.... but even so few, came in to them.

I struggled to get 15 picked up with a couple more lost to the private woods behind.

My mate ended up with 21 from 4 different locations......at least we kept the birds off the worst hit fields for the day.

 

The Farmers are delighted and it's looking good for my getting permission on at least two farms ..... plus possibly a neighbouring big estate ( thats where all the Pigeon ended up)as his shooters are weekend only.

 

How are some fields so badly hit , yet others look untouched ? one farmer re-seeding and even considering a different crop, possibly beans , to try to salvage something.

 

 

Dave

[Warlock]

Pigeons are very much creatures of habit, once they lock onto a set of fields for whatever reason they will keep to those fields. i know of several large fields that pigeons stay away from and go straight over and end up in 2 fields i shoot on. quite strange really.