SUMMER PIGEON DECOYING

HARVEST-TIME PIGEON SHOOTING

Thankfully DEFRA have now issued several new General Licences which enable us to control pigeons and corvids. Whilst not entirely perfect the new licences do go some way to making life less bureaucratic and clarify the earlier confusion thrust upon us by Natural England.

In most instances we can legally control those birds designated in the licences on all but SSSIs and we will be applying for special licences for those areas in due course.

We have always maintained that even under the old/new GL31 licence issued in haste by Natural England back in May we could comply with much of the conditions of that licence however it did baffle us that NE should consider pigeon decoys as a good way of scaring the birds.

We kid you not, under the heading ‘Scaring and Deterrents’ they say, and I quote word for word…’Woodpigeon models (particularly those with outstretched wings, showing the white wing bars) to give the impression of dead birds, and kites/hawk-kites can be effective in deterring woodpigeons’. They also say, many of the methods (to control birds) are common sense…something obviously lacking in the NE camp!

We’ve always maintained that NE are an organisation not fit for purpose and with statements like that it just compounds our belief that those jobs-worth’s tasked with running our countryside haven’t a clue what it entails.

Anyway the upshot of all this is that our pigeon decoying days in July, August and September will be going ahead as planned. Come and join us.

For details about days/spaces we still have left to book please e-mail us info@angliasporting.co.uk

For further details please see our News pages or email info@angliasporting.co.uk