An Unexpected Pleasure

A day’s pigeon shooting with some friends on a bean stubble turns into a surprise 150-birder over some barley stubble in a neighbouring field.

- Andy Crow

As these words are being pecked and hunted into a Word document in darkest Lincolnshire, the man and legend that is Andy Crowman Crow is warming his barrels in South America on a fabulous dove shooting adventure that you will be able to read all about in these pages next month.

Before he headed over, he invited his pals and sponsors from Jack Pyke, who had organised the Argentina trip, over for a bit of a warm-up on the woodies. After a morning of meetings, they all rendezvoused at a farm in Kent where one of Andy’s farming and shooting pals manages an arable outfit.

There had been a lot of birds hitting the remains of a bean stubble and reports from the landowner of several hundred in the area made this the prime location for them to set up for the day.

Andy set up the lads in a hide on a solid flightline and they were soon stretching their barrels on some sporting crossers and having plenty of fun.

Andy observed proceedings from the hide and soon noticed that the shooting was pushing the birds off the beans and on to a barley stubble a few hundred yards distant. Although he wasn’t originally planning on shooting, Andy realised he needed to disrupt the birds heading over to the other field or risk the flightline to the beans drying up altogether.

Barley takes a lot longer to germinate than other cereals so it is extremely popular with pigeons and also geese when the stubbles are left well into the autumn.

The land looked very yellow as it had been sprayed off with weedkiller ahead of cultivation, but there were lots of full ears still strewn all over the field and no shortage of food for the birds. The grains were beginning to sprout.