Take the field

Geoff Garrod enlists the help of three friends to try to reduce the numbers feeding with gusto on the estate farm's crops

- Geoff Garrod

The good news for me is that there are more pigeons on the estate where I’m head keeper than there have been at any time in the past decade. The bad news, however, is that they’re proving particularly difficult to decoy and are causing significant damage to the crops. The rape in places is so badly damaged that who knows what the farm will do with it.

The problem we have is that the pigeons are in still ‘rape mode’. They are still moving around in large flocks, and there are too many places for them to easily feed. The farm has been using gas guns, rockets and kites to try to keep them away to limited effect, so I was asked to have a go at them in late March.

After plenty of reconnaissance, I decided that the best way to try to make a dent in the numbers was to arrange a day’s decoying with three friends. I knew the areas that they had been hitting hard. With this in mind, I placed my friends in three likely spots and I set myself up on the fourth.

The hope was that we could keep the birds on the move, and if we were lucky the flock would hopefully break up and provide us all with some shooting. We chose a day when the forecast was strong winds and a couple of rain showers to give us the best chance.

Set-up