Another Cracking Day On The Stubbles!

goss101

Myself and the father had another cracking day on the barley stubbles today, its actually two red letter days for us back to back!! first time we've done that.

had our usual set up, rotorary, two floaters and two flappers and about 20 full bodied decoys, and then about 12 full bodied crows off to the side with two magpies. we were set up and in the hide for about 9.30 to realise we'd left the fookin guns back in the house!!! ha ha, quick call to the mother and was back in the hide at around 10.10 so not too bad.
as opposed to the last day we were out when it was quite for the morning and picked up around 12.30, today it was constant all day, pigeons decoyed very well despite the sun, we did have a lot of birds heading for the trees behind us but they did get them dropping in and got a few on the way out after a shot.
finished at 2.45 when we had fired 9 boxes of cartridges, today we had RC 2, in a 7 and RC sipe in a 6. total bag was our personal best of 154!!! that was 122 pigeons, 31 crows and one magpie that we both hit and it literally exploded!! we did manage to get the wings of it though :-)

We also got a call from a lad today who said he is getting hammered by pigeons in his standing barley, and also his mate is getting hammered by a huge flock of crows in his spuds, so more action to come!!!

Cass

Jaysus lad, you may bring a bucket of water to cool the barrel.

Congrats on another good day.

goss101 wrote: »

We also got a call from a lad today who said he is getting hammered by pigeon............!

Got the same call about an hour ago. He is getting slaughtered and the lads that he usually asks are only coming on a Sunday so he wants me to hit the area all through the week. Hope it's as good as he claims. 80 bird days are promised.

Brianmeath

Have to get out. Any pictures?

goss101

needed a bucket of water for the two of us as well as the barrels!!! nearly collapsed when packing up it was that hot.

Nah lad tend not to bother with pictures, we did 3 or four clean ups during the day so had most the birds i in sacks so wasn't taking them back out for a pic!!

Hope to hit the crows on sat myself, father going for a rekkie tomorrow. had to order another two slabs of cartridges this evening, ya don't be long getting through them!

reniwren

Sorry to take this off track, I may be wrong, Was there not a warning issued last year to clubs about shooting pigeon on stubble?

oats 2

reniwren wrote: »

Sorry to take this off track, I may be wrong, Was there not a warning issued last year to clubs about shooting pigeon on stubble?

No!!!!! ! Leave it out. There is always someone to spoil the party

Birdnuts

reniwren wrote: »

Sorry to take this off track, I may be wrong, Was there not a warning issued last year to clubs about shooting pigeon on stubble?

The legal position is that it is ok to shoot pigeons on stubbles so long as there is standing crops nearby. NARGC won a court case on this principle a few years back. Since the harvest is only starting in most areas, most farmers will still have standing crops of different types still to be cut

Tikka391

Birdnuts wrote: »

The legal position is that it is ok to shoot pigeons on stubbles so long as there is standing crops nearby. NARGC won a court case on this principle a few years back. Since the harvest is only starting in most areas, most farmers will still have standing crops of different types still to be cut

Section 19 of wildlife act 1976. Should be looked at by this poster. This thing about standing corn,crops, cracks me head there is no such thing, pigeons from nov 1- jan 31 he is a game bird the rest of time he is a " pest" and can be shot all year round under derogation 24/7....365 crops or no crops. It's all in the act.

goss101

Forgot to say, i have never seen this before but the father had shot the field a few days previous and where he had put a few corvids into the ditch i came across 4 that had been pulled out into the field and their heads were taken off and was just beside the body?? has anyone ever seen this before? mink,pine martin, something like that?

Birdnuts

goss101 wrote: »

Forgot to say, i have never seen this before but the father had shot the field a few days previous and where he had put a few corvids into the ditch i came across 4 that had been pulled out into the field and their heads were taken off and was just beside the body?? has anyone ever seen this before? mink,pine martin, something like that?

Could be anything from a fox to a stoat - nothing in nature is ever wasted and this includes dead birds or any other carcass. The smell alone would travel far and wide in this weather. Nothing unusual about it at all

Birdnuts

Tikka391 wrote: »

Section 19 of wildlife act 1976. Should be looked at by this poster. This thing about standing corn,crops, cracks me head there is no such thing, pigeons from nov 1- jan 31 he is a game bird the rest of time he is a " pest" and can be shot all year round under derogation 24/7....365 crops or no crops. It's all in the act.

Good to know. Obviously loose ends have been tidied up since that case I mentioned

J.R.

goss101 wrote: »

Forgot to say, i have never seen this before but the father had shot the field a few days previous and where he had put a few corvids into the ditch i came across 4 that had been pulled out into the field and their heads were taken off and was just beside the body?? has anyone ever seen this before? mink,pine martin, something like that?

I've witnessed this before - in our case it was a buzzard.

mixerbarcoe

Had a great day with one of the lads today.we were shooting a 70 acre field of barley stubble that was cut the day before...place was black with pigeons all day..we shot around 115..started at half 1 finished at 6... ran out of cartridges at half 3 lucky enough the local gun shop was only 2 mins down the road..

dodderangler

J.R. wrote: »

I've witnessed this before - in our case it was a buzzard.

That's strange behaviour for a buzzard to do that.
I'd be thinking more along the lines of a cat or fox for doing that.
Was the bodies eaten at all

goss101

no the bodies were fine, they looked like the head was taken off with a knife it was that clean! and the birds had been dragged out about 40 yards from the ditch. now there were a few other carcasses around that had been fully eaten as well.

dodderangler

goss101 wrote: »

no the bodies were fine, they looked like the head was taken off with a knife it was that clean! and the birds had been dragged out about 40 yards from the ditch. now there were a few other carcasses around that had been fully eaten as well.

Could be a mink then. What about the heads? Wa there marks on top of the head?

goss101

no the heads looked fine but i didn't examine them that close, with the heat thats been out the last few days some of them were white with maggots!!

goss101

update:

Another good bag today lads on a new field, due to the weather we left it late to go and when we arrived there were two jeeps with lads set up where we planned to. it was two fields together so we set up in the other field which was a little off the flight line.
We put out all our gear anyway and low and behold the other lads came out the gap between the fields and headed off,they must have been out really early as it was only 10.30 or so.
Things started slow and the birds weren't playing ball with the decoy pattern, the crows were coming into range and we picked up a good few but we were struggling on the pigeons, they were coming towards the head of the pattern and flaring at around 50 yards. there were plenty of birds around so we adjusted the pattern and no change, so i went out and adjusted it again and it worked well enough to get the birds to the outside of our pattern but shootable.
Anyway we finished up with 91, 56 pigeons and 35 mixed corvid (one grey crow).
i said i'd take a pic in case ye thought i was bluffing the last few posts!! this was the last clean up so only about half the birds in it, and very few crows as we got them early in the day. and a pic of the field we were in.

the father was out with another lad yesterday on a field of spuds and they had 111 crows and one pigeon. think we need to give our shoulders a rest so wont be out for another while!!!

tonytoc11

What kind of decoying setup are ye using? I had 47 crows over standing barley today but I reckon I would have had a lot more with a rotary magnet. Thinking of splashing out on one.

mixerbarcoe

tonytoc11 wrote: »

What kind of decoying setup are ye using? I had 47 crows over standing barley today but I reckon I would have had a lot more with a rotary magnet. Thinking of splashing out on one.

Same happened us the first day over standing barley only had 31 pigeons and 2 crows so I made a pigeon magnet..the following week the field was cut and we tried the magnet we had 14 pigeons in the first hour.. but a lot of them seemed to be turning away from us so we took it down..10 mins after it was taken down we had 20 more pigeons shot and finished with a bag of well over 100..

goss101

tonytoc11 wrote: »

What kind of decoying setup are ye using? I had 47 crows over standing barley today but I reckon I would have had a lot more with a rotary magnet. Thinking of splashing out on one.

we had, a rotary, two flappers, two bouncers and about 25/30 full bodied pigeon decoys. for the crows we had about 12/15 full bodied decoys and two bouncers and a magpie.

for standing crop i would say a rotary is essential, the movement is brilliant for bringing them in from a distance, i have had days where they will flare from it when they get in close to it so the odd time you will have to move it to get the pigeons where you want them but i think it is a serious bit of kit.

blackwater doc

Picked up 107 today over oil seed rape

goss101

Was out again there on sunday with the father, on a new permission of two fields of barley. there was a road splitting the two fields and one was a bit too close to houses for comfort but it was full of birds, so we set up in the bigger of the two.
Had a few in it but only a fraction of what was in the other field, anyway we set up and were well back into the ditch with a nice hide as we knew there would be heavy rain. This place was never shot before and well we could tell as the birds decoyed perfectly for the day, only got quite for a few minutes when the rain came, we ended up with 152 birds, approx 110 mixed corvids (1 grey crow) 2 mags and the rest pigeons. Another sore jaw but great days shooting! we've never had such a good year, knocking on the door of 1000 birds already.

dodderangler

What yas doing with them all if you don't mind me asking? Hell of a lot of plucking

goss101

well the crows end up in the ditch, and we give away as many pigeons as we can, freezer is full at home, we don't pluck them just breast them. eat as many as we can and the dogs get the odd few as well.