The Unintended Keeper ( Diary of a keeping blagger )

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Out on the pigeons again today but nothing about , think they have got the message after last weeks sessions

Only shot 13 birds , the fields are all flattened with this incessant rain , dont know how much will get harvested. 

 

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Finally stopped raining so had a look on some barley stubble. 

Pretty quiet and the woodies wouldn't decoy so had to shoot them passing by ,dropped a cracker at 62 paces stone dead

The carrion crows called in great using the Primos powercrow call.

Ended on 54 birds so not too bad.

 

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Cub last night 

[Stavross 13,755]

Haven’t put anything on here for ages ( mainly because I don’t think anyone comes on anymore, for one reason or another) so I thought I’d put something up

last nights outing was up to the shoot as all the fields around my drives are now down, I was joined by little Hugo and his dad, first off we tried over the piggeries where we seen no foxes but did get to watch half a dozen fallow working their way up and down the tree line ( 4 doe’s and 2 pricketts) we gave it an hour before deciding to move to the bottom of the farm field as we lost the light, we were there about 5 minutes before the first fox showed to our right, it moved towards us but the wind was wrong and slipped away through the trees, within 10 minutes I spotted another at the top of the field slowly making its way down mousing as it went and disappearing from time to time behind the bales, it didn’t seem to show any interest in the caller and half an hour passed before a rat distress call peaked its interest and it ran flat out towards the bale the caller was sat on, as it got to the bale it was stopped with a whistle and it was lights out at only 40 yards, giving it a bit longer with the caller another appeared along the edge of the oak wood this one was also interested in the rat call but a lot more wary sitting out at 90ish yards, not a problem, down that one went too, collecting them they were 2 of this years cubs, no doubt from the same litter 

[brambles 3,062]

You got your birds in your pens mate

[Stavross 13,755]

28 minutes ago, brambles said:

You got your birds in your pens mate

They are coming at 6 on Thursday morning 

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Hopefully get a few foxes this week. We have a litter to sort out hopefully tomorrow night then an invite on Friday night from a guy who apparently has a few to sort

[Stavross 13,755]

They seem to be moving about now the fields are down, I got another last night, a adult dog and seen something else a long way off that I couldn’t make out if it was a fox or a pig, I had a call from a lad that said there was 2 on his back field ( presumably cubs ) so I’ve sent another lad up there and if he doesn’t have any luck I’ll get there at the weekend 

[brambles 3,062]

On 13/08/2023 at 20:49, Stavross said:

They are coming at 6 on Thursday morning 

How's the birds going, you got them settled

Edited August 26, 2023 by brambles

[Stavross 13,755]

1 hour ago, brambles said:

How's the birds going, you got them settled

They are doing well, they were very flighty when the went in but have settled down well, they are eating a lot of food as you would expect from a 1000, but they are staying in and around the pen for now, unlike last year when I was chasing them back to the pens from day one 

[brambles 3,062]

They're looking well mate, that pen looks well maintained lol, looking forward to hearing how things go for you's this season

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Should be some good days with releasing 1000 birds

[Stavross 13,755]

2 hours ago, FOXHUNTER said:

Should be some good days with releasing 1000 birds

Hopefully if I manage the drive’s right and the shoot captain doesn’t let them go mental early in the season it should lead to some consistent numbers throughout the season, I’d be happy if we could do 50/60 bird days rather than 100+ for the first couple then trying to keep the numbers up for the rest of the season 

[FOXHUNTER 5,020]

Whens your 1st day mate and how many shoots you having?

[Stavross 13,755]

We start the first Saturday in November and then every other Saturday after that, we don’t shoot between Christmas and New Year and the way the dates fall this year I would guess we’ll do the 4th/18th November 2nd/16th of December the every Saturday in January so the guns get the full 8 days we normally do, it used to work a lot better when we did a few week days, but we’ve got to many kids in it now and with peoples work commitments a few could miss out on half the season