Saving the Englishmen

In a bid to protect his linseed crop and a cherished pair of grey partridges, Simon Garnham sets out his decoys and gets to work

- Simon Garnham

Once, when I suggested a family member was being too pessimistic, she retorted that at least she’d either be right or pleasantly surprised. I suspect the words weren’t of her own coinage. But the phrase came to mind last week when I was decoying over a field of linseed. It was one of those outings that don’t seem very promising at the outset but turn into cracking sport. You know the sort I’m sure: an evening flight where the weather’s warm but duck are on the move all the same; the walked-up, end-of-season rough day for “just a couple”, where it turns out that there are lots of birds still to be hunted out.

We’re growing linseed as the farm’s break crop this summer, which is a change from our normal sugar beet. Although linseed doesn’t make as much per acre as sugar beet (roughly £165/acre for linseed compared to £300/acre for sugar beet) it leaves the soil in a much better state. It’s a simple March-to-September crop. A late summer linseed harvest is a more appealing prospect than the battle to get the sugar beet out of the ground right in the middle of the shooting season. Beet can leave fields looking like a World War I battle site. Obviously, beet is a better holding crop for gamebirds but my memory of past years was the trade-off that linseed offered good decoying.