Spring lean!

Geoff Garrod continues to by mystified by the lack of pigeons on his patch this year but is optimistic of better days ahead

- Geoff Garrod

As I'm writing, the rape has grown high enough to be fairly safe from pigeon damage, except for some bare patches that will never come to much. The spring drilling has long since been completed and the wheat and barley are safe at this stage of their growth. So, I'm sitting back and having a review of the shooting so far this year.

And I can tell you, it's been tough. The most common question I get asked when I'm at shows with the National Gamekeepers' Organisation is: where have the pigeons gone? I don't seem to be the only one finding the decoying hard this year. There have been odd occasions when things have gone well - I had a couple of good nights in the woods roost shooting, and I've recently had a good day decoying over rape when the birds actually decoyed, which makes me optimistic for the summer. Incidentally, you can watch that day on The Shooting Show.

Slim

Apart from these highlights, it's been slim pickings. There just doesn't seem to be the volume of birds in my area of Essex and the ones that have been causing damage have been extremely uncooperative when it comes to getting shot. I have a few very unscientific theories as to why it's been such a slow year for pigeons so far, and perhaps it's a combination of all three of them?

The first theory is that bird flu may have reduced the number of pigeons. I know the toll on gamebirds has been high from this disease, so I'm assuming that the pigeon flocks will have suffered a similar fate. I have no direct evidence and I've seen no reports about the pigeon population and how it has been affected. The flu is in the wildfowl and gamebird populations, so it's highly unlikely to not be in the pigeon population too. If anybody knows of any research, I'd be very interested to know what they found.