Hotfoot for the pinkfeet

Tom Sykes heads to a field with friends to help a farmer and enjoys a notable morning's shooting over decoys

Ishoot my fair share of geese throughout the season but these are usually on the muddy gutters of the foreshore. Every now and then I am lucky enough to have the chance to head inland to engage some geese under the moon. Towards the end of last season a friend, Paul Wise, mentioned on a group chat that his farmer was having an issue with a plague of pinkfeet that were hitting his grass fields. A few messages later and we had a plan and a group of us were on standby. The group was Paul, his son Tom, Shane Robinson and me. It was soon the morning of the mission.

I had a good two-hour journey to the rendezvous, which meant a 2.30am rise to allow enough time to travel and get set up before the geese started to stir. I met the others at the assigned lay-by in plenty of time we were soon in convoy to Paul’s permission. Due to the saturated ground we had to leave the vehicles on a track and finish the last leg on foot. We put our gear on, grabbed all the necessary decoys and followed Paul and Tom across a few fields until we arrived at the area Paul had scouted the previous couple of days.

The set-up

into the middle of them. This set-up allowed the birds to be in range from all positions. The decoys were a mixture of Paul’s shells and Shane’s Chris Green foam silhouettes. Expectation was high as the final adjustments were made and we tucked into our hides. The field was covered in more goose muck than I had ever seen. This confirmed what Paul and the farmer had seen over the previous days. We settled in, loaded up, poured our first cups of coffee and waited for the sun to make an appearance.