Lack of fresh water causes a bit of a doo

I’ve given up even bothering to look at the river. Not even thunderstorms managed to raise the water level. Any fresh water just ran off the land and straight out to sea. So sporting opportunities were looking a bit thin until the middle son – aka The Killer – rang to say his entire family had decamped to Cornwall and as he was stuck in London he was coming up for the weekend. And were there any doos (pigeons) about?

As it happened, the day before the neighbour had cut a substantial crop of winter barley. It was the earliest to be combined around here and in less than 24 hours the pigeons had homed in on the fallen grain.

So he arrived on the Friday evening and went straight to bed at some indecently early hour declaring he was going out at 4am in search of a roe buck up at our sporting pal Alf ’s place.

Stalking through the edges of Alf ’s sitka and gorse margins is a slow business, not for the impatient. There are several obvious places where roe graze so it is simply a question of creeping along very slowly scanning the openings, glades and edges of fields.

And for once the wind was coming straight down and along the long thin plantations so we were able to work up wind from one end to the other without too much fear of spooking animals. Needless to say hinds with young there were a plenty, but out of season which meant giving them a wide, painstaking, berth.

Our best chance was at the far end of the wood where it met a barley field and Alf, on an earlier reconnaissance, had found signs of a buck marking his territory. We crouched, sat and knelt in what seemed like good spots and after a while with nothing to lose tried the caller which is supposed to imitate a female ready to mate. Almost immediately a huge buck came tearing through the crop out of nowhere straight towards us.

It stopped momentarily, but just long enough. And then it was down, at 40 yards shot straight through the neck. Which was either a very good shot, or a complete fluke.

Gralloched, dragged back to the pick-up and hoisted up in Alf ’s game larder it was time for breakfast and pigeons. With the whirling arms of the pigeon magnet out on the stubble – it simulates landing pigeons – and decoys arranged in a large V-shape, the birds began to come in, albeit in dribs and drabs as it was by now incredibly hot and bright and not a breath of wind. So only a couple of dozen by lunch. And then it started to rain. But even The Killer reckoned he had killed enough. So we settled down to the Tour de France and Michael Caine in Zulu.n