To shoot any wood pigeon you first have to find them. Your success on the day you shoot is largely governed by the groundwork you put in beforehand. There are no shortcuts. You might well be sitting there thinking ‘I’ll just go where the ‘keeper says the birds are'. Now go back a sentence – there are no shortcuts. ‘Keepers and farmers have different priorities to pigeon shooters. The farmer wants the birds off his crop – fine, that’s what you are there for – and the ‘keeper may well be under pressure from tenant farmers to get the birds off the crop too. Because of this when someone tells you the field was ‘blue with birds yesterday’ always reserve the right to make your own judgements. His version of blue may not be the same as your version of blue. You have to find out what the birds are doing, where, and when. A ‘blue’ field it might be, but if they are using it to rest and not feed then there is not a lot of point in lobbing out the decoys. What you are looking for with reconnaissance is a steady stream of traffic into a field over a period of time. Ideally there should be a line of flight from several fields away with them trickling over in ones and twos. If they are just flopping out of a 'sitty' tree it may not work. This is why it is important to make several trips to the field to find out exactly what they are doing. Vary the time of day you visit because it may be that it is an afternoon field and not a morning one or vice versa.

If you can get to high ground to start with and watch all around to find where the birds want to go – it may lead you to a part of the field in a hollow not visible from the road. It may be that the flight line is strong but the feeding field is one you can’t shoot. Be flexible – plan to get under the flight line instead and leave the decoys in the car. Archie Coates (pigeon shooting’s equivalent of Moses – he handed out the commandments to the rest of us) used to say ‘think like a pigeon’ – if you get into decoying you may find it so addictive that you have to make a conscious effort not to…