I pulled up in a lay-by at the side of the road and studied the field in the distance, through my binoculars. The area I was surveying was a group of three, freshly drilled bean fields and I was looking for pigeons. The fields had been drilled only two days before and it can take a little while for the birds to find the food, but patient observation revealed regular pigeon movement going in and out, although the birds disappeared before I could see exactly which field they were favoring. The beans were supposed to have been put in at the beginning of April, but this crop needed to be drilled into warm soil and only now, in the middle of that month, were conditions right enough for the farmer to go into action.
We’d had some rain the night before, making the land too wet to drive over and this lay-by was the closest spot I could get to the bean fields, so unfortunately, that meant I had a long haul on foot with all my gear to get to the area I was shooting. Undeterred, I set off loaded down with all the paraphernalia necessary for a day’s decoying; decoys, hide netting, hide poles, seat and rifle.
When I got into a position where I had an uninterrupted view of all the fields, I paused for another recce to make sense of the pigeon movements and for a clue to where to set up. This is of major importance. It is vital to take time to recce the area, in order to give yourself the best possible chance of success and to reduce the necessity of moving once in position, although it’s always worth moving if you really think you have got it wrong the first time.
PECK AND CHOOSE
Years ago, the machinery available to the farmer was not as efficient as today’s models, so it would have been difficult to choose an area on a drilled bean field because dropped beans would have been all over the place, offering many opportunities for the birds to pick and choose where to feed. They would be on the field for days back then. Now it’s all so efficient that you normally only find dropped beans where the tractor has made turns, or stopped, so that narrows down the options for you, and it only takes a couple of days for the pigeons to clear everything up and move off, so you have to take your opportunities when you can or miss out.
Eventually, I settled on the far corner of the left-hand field because the volume of pigeons signaled a spot where the tractor paused and dropped a good amount of beans. My recce had shown me that on this occasion there were no discernible flight lines in and out of the area. Birds were arriving from all directions, in twos and threes, and although they were not in great numbers, I thought that I might be able to bag a dozen or so, with luck, so picking my gear up once again, I lost no time in making my way there.
BASIC RULES
This particular farmer is very conservation-friendly, so he always leaves a nice, wide headland around the edges of his fields, which helps with hide building, so I was confident that the hide would take no time at all. Of course, your hide is always very important, but never more so than when you are dealing with the eagle-eyed and very suspicious wood pigeon, so there are a few basic rules to try to follow.
It’s important to mask your silhouette to incoming pigeons. Make sure you have a good background to your hide, either a nice, thick hedge, or if that is not possible, then always make the back of the hide higher than the front and take along plenty of netting so you can create a background if one doesn’t exist naturally; extendable hide poles are perfect for this.
Sit still! No matter how good your hide is, or which cammo you wear, any movement will be picked up by approaching birds and they will not come in. I tend to shoot through the hide and only fire over the top when a bird lands further out from the kill zone. You can make relevant shooting points to cover your decoys once you have put your pattern out and know where to expect the birds to pitch in.
THE PATTERN OF SUCCESS
Setting your decoys out in the right pattern will mean the difference between success and failure, and a lot of practice and experience is needed to get it consistently correct. It’s vital to present approaching pigeons with a natural and convincing ‘decoy picture’ that will fool the birds into a false sense of security in order to bring them in. To accomplish this, time needs to be spent watching and studying feeding flocks of pigeons. See how birds approach and land head to wind. Watch how the flock is never still, but there are always birds flapping their wings and leap-frogging over the backs of their companions, working their way to the front of the feeding flock. Watch as the act of doing this continually flashes the white barring on the wings. This is the feeding signal for wood pigeons and signals to all passing birds that here is food. Watch more and more birds get attracted to the area and join the feeding flock. These are all things we use in our decoy patterns to make our picture look natural and as convincing to incoming pigeons as possible.
Approaching pigeons will dictate the pattern to use and each location will be different to the last, so trial and error will be the order of the day while you are gaining experience. I use a modified, crescent-shaped pattern which will be changed as the situation demands, but the basic idea is to channel the birds into your ‘killing zone’; that is the area where you wish the birds to land, in order to take your shots and kill them. My decoys are just simple, shell-shaped affairs, which I like because I can easily carry many at a time. I also have an electronic flapper, which depends on having a dead bird in the first place, but once in operation it simulates that all-important flashing of the white wing bars and can work wonders in certain situations.
STAY HIDDEN
While decoying, it’s important to try to stay out of sight in your hide for as long as possible, so avoid going out and picking up birds every time you shoot one. So long as the bird drops onto its breast and looks natural to incoming birds, I always leave them, but if a bird flips over onto its back, or falls in an unnatural position, it’s important to remove the bird as soon as possible or other pigeons will no longer come in confidently to the decoys.
If you don’t have many decoys, you can add the dead birds to your pattern by propping their heads up in a realistic pose with a forked stick, but I tend to bring them into the hide to stop them getting flyblown in the summer months. Also, it’s no good large flocks of birds coming in when I can only shoot one at a time, so by keeping the amount of decoys to around 20, or so, I can normally get groups of about half a dozen to come in at a time, which is perfect.
On this occasion, I failed to hit the dozen marks, with only 11 birds down in four hours. It was my own fault, though, because I did have a very embarrassing 14 shots for those 11 birds, but we all have our off days! I did return the following day with my 20 gauge and shot 47 in the same place, but that’s another story. The spring and summer months are fantastic for pigeon decoying so get out there and grab some sport. Until next time, have a good one, and as always, shoot safely!