Tom Payne is kept guessing as the early spring conditions affect the pigeons’ behaviour, but he still manages a good session in the hide
Spring is around the corner — I’m sitting here writing this looking at snowdrops, and daffodils are beginning to make an appearance in the garden. What I’ve actually been concentrating on in the garden, though, is not pretty flowers — I’ve been watching how much the clover has started to move.
The early to middle part of February became very spring-like. As I drove around on my reconnaissance trips enjoying the sunshine, I was surprised to see quite a number of farmers out drilling barley. It was only 5 February, which is very early to drill.
The problem is that early drill very rarely shoots properly in the winter months. This is normally because pigeons are still in winter crop mode, hammering oilseed rape. However, there are areas now that have little or no rape at all, and so an early drill in certain places does sometimes hold a few birds. On the whole, though, those early drillings are ignored by the pigeons.
In an ideal world, you need warm afternoons with a light breeze for shooting drillings….
