Wild Pigeon Adventure with Woody: From Field to Fork

So on Monday evening, Woody and I went out after some pigeons. I wanted to get out with him and the gun as we start ramping up towards the season, to expose him to the excitement of a shoot day in a gradual way. I have underestimated before how much of a leap it was for him, going from training by myself in a park, to shoot days, so I’m going to try and add a few more stepping stones in the journey to the field.

Mooching 

I asked a farmer friend if we could go out for a mooch about on his land and do some crop protection, he said yes. I’ve been beating on this land before, but I have never focused on the pigeon movements specifically. When we first arrived I sat with Woody at a prominent point and scanned for any movement in the sky. This was good practice for Woody, to sit and stay patient whilst we looked for any pigeon movement. A few flickers of movement were about but nothing consistent yet. I had my 20-bore and a few steel cartridges in my pocket, so it was a light set-up for an evening walkabout. I decided to walk up a thick hedgerow which leads off the farm, I had a shot at a very flighty magpie, but no connection. Woody was walking to heel, hunting a bit, then back to heel, as we would be on a days beating.

More sitting and scanning, during which time a few pigeon flew in my direction, but quickly turned away after seeing me crouched down in the wheat stubble with a navy blue T-shirt, a shiny black gun and a shiny black dog. Not the best camouflage! This showed that if we wanted to bag a pigeon, we needed to get better concealment. For this I picked to stand in some maize cover crop, which provided a great impromptu hide, however, the birds were not flying over this point. After 5 minutes, we both got bored, so pushed the cover crop through to the top of the field. Woody did great, staying close and I was able to stop him on the whistle when a hare bolted. From the top of the field, we had another good place to view the lay of the land.

Two fields away was a field that had been left to scrub over, it joined two existing pieces of woodland. In my head, I thought it could be a good opportunity to pick off a pigeon as it was flying between the two blocks of woodland. As we were walking up to the scrub a Roe doe and her fawn got up in front of us, Woody was steady and kept at heel whilst they wandered off into the woodland.

We got into the scrub and a few pigeon got up from a hedgerow Oak, this seemed like a good place to stand and see what came back to the tree, plus there were lots of blackberries for snacking! The scrub consisted of regenerating Willow, Oak and Bramble, which gave me enough cover to hide away from an incoming pigeon, but at the same time, it only gave me a small window of opportunity to take a shot. I would have to be on my toes …. None of those pigeons came back!

Defeated 

I was feeling a little defeated so walked through a different piece of scrub on the way back to the car, as we walked, a pigeon from a tree startled and crossed in front of us, I mounted the gun and down it came. The shot disturbed a couple of other pigeons roosting in the young willow, so I got another shot off, but to no avail. On beaters day last season, we were stood in the same scrub shooting pheasants, Woody had realised whilst I was shooting, I wasn’t paying full attention to him and he could run into the retrieve. So I was conscious of this and part of the reason to be out, was to test his steadiness.He sat to the flush and watched me shoot, which I was so pleased about. Due to the tall grass and dense Willow, he wasn’t able to mark the fall. I broke the gun and sent him back with the wind coming behind me. Each time I sent him he stalled in an area of Willow and Bramble, I think from his perspective it had dropped into this, but I thought it had dropped just behind it.

Using the wind

With the wind coming from behind us it meant that any scent of the pigeon was blowing away, making things even more challenging. After a few failed attempts, I decided to rotate around the fall area so Woody would be cast into the wind and the scent. This worked first time! There was a bit of hesitation, but I put that down to it being the first warm game he had picked in a good few months. He delivered it perfectly and I was chuffed with his skills. The pigeon had dropped into some long grass, I would have been there for ages trying to find it by myself. With a pigeon in hand and the light starting to fall, we headed back to the car. On the way back, I dropped the pigeon as a blind retrieve on a stubble field, Woody picked and delivered it with no trouble at all.

Back at home, I butchered the pigeon straight away, I took out the breast meat and heart. Meatballs were supposed to be on the menu tonight, so I thought wood pigeon was a good beef substitute and minced the meat up with a bit of sausage too. I added in some oregano, thyme and breadcrumbs, patted it into meatballs and pan-fried them in butter. Onions, ricotta, tomato purée, Parmesan and pasta water made the sauce. Jumbled up with the pasta and served on the plate with more Parmesan and fresh basil and the quickest field-to-fork dinner I had made was served. Woody got a slice of pigeon for being a good dog!