Winding Up the Winter

Richard Brigham ended his winter rape season on a high after helping a farmer friend who was being given the runaround by a partricular lot of woodies.

- Richard Brigham

It’s almost the end of the winter rape season. The crop is advancing now and beginning to flower in places, but there’s still an odd late – or damaged – bit to draw the pigeons in. And when it does, unless these few persistent ones are told in no uncertain terms to give it a rest, damage will continue until the plants become stunted and ultimately produce little.

A call from my farmer friend needed a quick response. He’d only seen a few small bunches on his various bits of rape, but a tenant was having real trouble from a particularly stubborn lot that were giving him the runaround. Firing a shot to put them off one end of the crop, they simply went to the other – and vice versa – and by now bird scarers had become a complete waste of time.

Getting a feel for the place

I’d heard it all before; winter weary pigeons, alert to decoys, and with everything growing apace as the weather warmed up, plenty of alternate food readily available. Nevertheless, I needed to have a look because there’s nothing like getting a feel for a place before making any decisions.

Stowing the gear on board, I went to see for myself. Meeting up with the farmer, we discovered a few by touring his home ground where most of the rape was quite tall, and although an odd bunch were already out feeding, mostly it was on awkward or unshootable bits right beside the road.

On to the tenant’s rape, where a small square piece had a long narrow strip adjoining, the two fields formed a rough “T” shape. Here things did look rather more promising, with only a flower or two showing, and a couple of pigeon-pecked areas where the rape was still quite short. Apart from firing a few barrels to scare them, these fields had apparently not been decoyed.