Strange days

Geoff Garrod on spring drilling, but not as he has ever known it

- Geoff Garrod

The end of the shooting season is when I start to turn my attention to decoying. Things were looking good until I got my nets out and went and sat in a hide.

It’s been a very odd spring so far and the cold weather hasn’t helped with the decoying and we are into May, coming to the end of classic spring shooting. It’s been frustrating and difficult.

On the positive side, I have seen a swallow and the cherry blossom is out despite the cold. I always look forward to shooting over spring drilling; it’s my favourite time of year for decoying. This year has been a struggle though. I just don’t seem to be able to get the birds to decoy and there have been very few opportunities to have a go on freshly drilled fields because of the speed at which they have been drilled. The weather has only presented the farm with brief windows of opportunity to get the drill out of the way and when they get going, they’re reluctant to stop.

Difference

All the fields are drilled at roughly the same time and there are plenty of fields for the flock to choose from. A more usual spring would see the fields drilled one by one over a few weeks and that gives me multiple goes at catching the birds on a fresh patch. Newly drilled fields are only interesting to pigeons for a couple of days, until they’ve stripped it of any corn that has been left on the surface.