Tuning into the pigeons’ wavelength

The woes of Woman’s Hour and walkers are quickly forgotten as Blue Zulu finds a steady stream of birds willing to decoy

Hell’s teeth but I’ve listened to a lot of Woman’s Hour during the past six weeks. While it was jolly interesting and often illuminating, I’d have preferred to tune into something on, say, giant squid or fortitude in an Anglo-saxon shield wall. But the dear old Jimny’s radio is permanently set to Radio 4, which means plenty of female insights on my 10am runs to try to find the beastly pigeons.

There’s been a dearth locally for much of the year, hardly surprising since we’d emptied their larder.

Many farmers have given up growing oilseed rape after neonicotinoid pesticides were banned, exposing the crop to the ceaseless chomping of the cabbage stem flea beetle.

The game crops were limited due to the COVID-19 curtailment of the shooting season, and even those that remained had little maize, the farmers preferring grant-friendly and rat-free wild bird food mixes. And to worsen the general pigeon paucity, we had that spell of hard weather, which encouraged many of the remaining birds to take a short winter break — lucky things — to the warmer oak forests of France and Spain.

So, like most pigeon shooters, I’ve had to hunt hard for them. There were decent numbers in the roost woods, but they always gather in the lee of the wind that meant, with the usual sou’-westerlies, they congregated in the part of the wood riddled with footpaths and lockdown walkers. I managed a few productive sessions when the wind shifted to nor’easterlies but nothing to attract Pigeon Watch plaudits.

More promising were two reports from farmers who grow winter rape regardless. “You need to come tomorrow,” stressed the first. “My wife and daughter have been out every day this week scaring them off. Looks like someone’s chucked a grey blanket over the fields.” A friend and I duly turned up to see a flock of about

40, which sugared off into a nearby wood and stayed there, leaving the sky empty of everything but the ubiquitousred kites.

Off limits

The second prospect looked more encouraging, so much so that I watched them throughout a Woman’s Hour mostly devoted to the physical discomfort of large bosoms. About 800 pigeons were rolling in a large flock over some 80 acres of rape, concentrating (naturally) on a patch near pony paddocks — and so off limits — or cascading out of their resting wood, which meant that one shot there would have cleared the lot.

Without any wind to break up the flock, they arrived, fed and departed en masse. Still, worth watching, so I stayed there observing them and the redwings on a muck heap while Radio 4 switched to You and Yours and some riveting home-finance issues.

Eventually, I climbed out of the car and that was the last I saw of the flock that day. But a report trickled back that two locals, on a neighbouring rape field, had managed to bag 40odd, prompting me to return three days later on a blustery day that seemed so promising I packed two whirlers and a slab of squibs.

Edging the Jimny round the field’s headland, I found the perfect spot — within 30 yards of a patch of hammered rape opposite a section of bramble-free hedge right on the flightline. True, the pigeons were absent, but given no one had drilled spring barley yet and that field hadn’t been shot this year, I was confident they’d come later in the morning. So I set up the hide and decoys while vaguely wondering if I’d brought enough cartridges. In fact, I’d brought 250 too many. Not a bird came within 400 yards and I doubt I saw more than a dozen on the farm all afternoon.

A few days later, a spell of warm, dry weather prompted my neighbour to sow spring barley in a field 35 yards from my study and the pigeons poured in. As did every walker from the neighbouring towns, using a footpath on one side of the field — which cut off one flightline — while the

proximity of houses stymied the other one. As a result, I was forced to watch impotently as a grey swarm guzzled away within yards of my house.

By now, I was beginning to think that pigeon shooting was best done vicariously on Youtube when a trip to a third farmer revealed he’s drilled his barley in an area so notorious for resident pigeon numbers that he’d given up ever growing rape there. This, surely, would be the reward for too many fruitless days.

“The pigeons took a winter break — lucky things — to the forests of France and Spain”

But no. Over two days, I hardly saw a bird and perhaps it really was time to take up other lockdown activities, such as macrame or sourdough baking. Only one option remained. My favourite farm is high on the downloads, but fringed with pigeonholding woods a half-mile distant.

Pigeons love this patch and for the past few days, the farmer had been preparing the ground prior to drilling. Work kept me away for a couple of days, but when I arrived, there, finally, were the pigeons. It was too late to set up, so I watched flightlines and established there were two, both fed from the distant woods and meeting at a point where an 80-yard section of hedge bisected two freshly sown fields. It looked promising, but then so had other recent expeditions.

The following day, I was there at 10am, careful to arrive before the main feeding time. The wind was perfect — a steady force four blowing towards the hide. Without any dead birds to use as decoys, I had to use flock-covered decoys, including a pair with rotating wings to shove on the whirler. I’ve had mixed results with these. Sometimes they really pull them in, while on other occasions they seem to act as a deterrent.

This time, I’d barely sent them spinning round before the first pigeon flew over 50 yards high from the opposite wood, saw the pattern and dropped straight in, giving the simplest of shots. And so it continued for two hours, a sporadic stream of birds all willing to decoy, their bodies quickly put on cradles.

Perfect spot

For the first two hours, my cartridgeto-kill ratio was much better than two-for-one, then I went through a poor patch — missing some real sitters and, inexplicably, shooting some real archangels from passing companies that were never going to come in — before returning to form.

As ever, it reminded me why so many of us are addicted to this sport. It can be frustrating and, in the eyes of partners, a tremendous waste of time that could be used doing something ‘useful’, such as mending gutters and other domestic abominations.

But when it goes well, the variety of shots and the satisfaction of making a bag of delicious birds using your own fieldcraft find few equals for the hunter-gatherer. And when it goes badly, those expeditions always teach you something, especially if your radio is firmly jammed on Radio 4.