Pigeons in the land of dragons

Hari’s number appeared on my phone on Wednesday evening. It could only mean one thing. “They’re on the barley in the top field. Dozens of them!” “Diolch, Hari. I’ll be along on Friday and see what I can do.” When I started shooting, every farm in my part of Wales grew barley.

Getting permission to shoot the woodpigeon before harvest was easy. With permission secured, I’d work out which fields were attracting the birds, where the flightlines were and where best to intercept the blue hordes, with Archie Coats’s dictum, “time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted”, in mind. My bags were never huge — 20 birds was a red-letter day — but the quality of the shooting, whether flighting or decoying, was second to none. Woodpigeons are masters of the air and present a wider range of shots