Sport over the acorns

The leaves coming off the trees provides an opportunity for Tom Payne to deploy an old trick cooked up by the late Archie Coats

- Tom Payne

As I write, the country is being pushed into a second national lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19. The repercussions for rural communities and the shooting industry will be enormous, though thankfully we are allowed to continue with vital pest control.

Having said that, the wild harvest is certainly keeping the pigeon away from farmers’ crops at present. There has been a significant reduction in winter oilseed rape being grown due to the cost of production. What rape is being grown is in fine condition and many crops have really grown well, almost to the point that unless the weather becomes very cold, pigeon will cause little damage this year.

Consequently, the shooting has been very patchy. Overwintered stubbles have shot OK, but it changes from day to day. I had an interesting conversation with an old boy a few months ago about the reduction in rape being grown. He told me about times past and, intriguingly, his theory on migratory pigeon. He recalled that he would see thousands of birds leaving our shores heading over to the vast oak forests of France then on to the cork oaks in Spain. He said that this migration stopped with the introduction of vast amounts of rape being grown, meaning that we would hold the winter pigeon.

If this is true, given the amount of rape being grown is reducing massively, will our pigeon population start to plummet in winter? It will be fascinating to find out.