FATAL ATTRACTION
On the farms in my locality, fields of maize grown for cattle feed are usually harvested in the late autumn and new crops are then quickly drilled in their place. However, wet weather made last year’s harvest extremely difficult. Some farmers had to leave it much later than usual and many fields were then too wet to use the heavy machinery to sow the following crop.
Today I am shooting over one of these late harvests that is yet to be redrilled. Lots of corvids and a few pigeons have homed in on the remaining maize kernels, which offer them an easy food source at a time of year when natural pickings are hard to come by. Although the birds aren’t doing particularly costly damage to the remnants of last year’s crop, the farmer is planning to redrill this field very soon. With so many of the feathered pests gathered in the vicinity, the new crop will be annihilated before it has a chance to establish unless action is taken.
I am planning to spend a morning shooting over decoys. The field is far too close to houses to consider using a shotgun, so an airgun is the obvious choice. That means I will need to persuade birds to
