A day after woodies

Since the end of the season, Ian and myself have been out for a few days trying to get into the woodies on the rape with little success (by our standards) with a 35 and a 47 head count.

The birds are moving in really big flocks, hitting a field hard but then when scared off, not returning - but choosing to hit another field instead.

Last weekend the sugar beet on Cook's farm was cut and this centralised the woodies a bit, with several hundred hitting it at one point.  Ian couldn't come out to play so i thought Henry would appreciate a bit of sport on the blue's.

With the birds feeding hard on the field all week, it was one of those nights where i just couldn't sleep with anticipation of getting Henry into a big bag of them!   the wind unfortunately wasn't playing ball and could only muster up a 5mph NW, which while in the right direction for the field wasn't enough to get them coming hard into the coys.

Henry waiting patiently

Being as there were houses near by, we decided on a 7.30am 'shooting start' and got to the field at 6.45 to set up.  immediately the birds were in the area looking to land and our harts were racing ! i set up as quick as i could on the brow of the hill, then got the decoys out with Henry helping.

Our hide for the day -with our new piece of 'Ghost Netting'

He then got to rally drive the truck out of the way, while i tidied up..  and we got ready for it to start...... we waited eagerly for the first bird in, but it never seemed to come...  all the birds were going over and straight to the rape 2 fields over ! then something put them off and Henry got his first chance, which he missed (probably due to not holding a gun for 6 weeks).

Our decoy patter with Rotary in the distance

This happened every 20 minutes for a while, with him missing and me cleaning up - then he found his mark and started hitting them 'in the face' with only the odd bird getting away Scott free.  Its fair to say that the morning was slow, but it picked up in the afternoon, giving Henry the chance to take some testing birds - one he paced out to 60paces, another screaming bird over, and a his first double - although it got discounted as when we went to pick up one flew off ;- (

End result was 34 pigeons, a happy boy and a proud dad..

I don't know if he's smiling about the pigeons or the joy ride he just took around the field