The land of plenty

Peter Theobald was uncertain for a host of reasons when one of his farmers asked for some lockdown help

- Peter Theobald

Over the past few months, new words have entered our daily lexicon. We have all become accustomed to coronavirus, lockdown, and furlough, not one of us spared the dread of contracting the deadly COVID-19 disease.

Life in the countryside continues unabated, however, and woodpigeon, no respecters of human frailty, are still denuding farmers’ spring crops. The dilemma for us serious pigeon shooters is whether we can justify continuing to offer crop protection to farmers who clearly still need it. Recreational decoyers often do not understand how much time and effort go into finding a situation that could lead to a significant number of pigeons ending up in the bag, the only surefire way of keeping damage to a minimum. Regular reconnaissance is essential if you are going to end up on the right field at the right time, something I doubt would convince the average policeman was an ‘essential’ journey: “Yes officer, I have just driven 10 miles to check if any pigeon is eating farmer Jones’s peas.”

This has meant we have had to rely on the farmers themselves judging whether enough damage was occurring to their crops to ask us to do something about it. Farmers have many talents but, in my experience, one of them is not the ability to spot when a big bag of pigeon can be made.

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