Airgun Hunting - Roost shooting rooks with a Daystate MK4 iS

Rooks are like airborne hooligans they travel around in mobs, ready to give others a hard time, they've got that 'Are you looking at my bird?' sort of attitude. Corvids present a variety of problems, when lambs start popping out of ewes, Crows will happily start eating them before they're fully born. Corvids damage crops, and all of them, Magpies and Jackdaws included prey on songbirds, their eggs and their young, farmers need to keep the numbers down. So Andy, I've been looking forward to this for a long time, tell me a little bit about this crow roost here. Right, well I was in here one evening when all of a sudden this racket and mass of crows started to appear above my head and started to just falling into the branches; just an amazing sight. So we came back with the air rifles the next night and had a ball. So just how many crows come into this root of an evening? I would say there is probably about 20,000 20,000! Just crows or? There's Carrion crows, Rooks, Ravens and Jackdaws. Tonight we're in Fife, Scotland, hoping to ambush some unruly Rooks as they flood in to roost, and when they arrive you certainly know about it. Andy helps out farmers during the lambing season and has seen first-hand the damage Corvids can do. So how do you know it's a Crow that has caused a death of a lamb and it's not still-born? When you come across the lamb, if there's no blood at all around about the eyes then that's been still-born or it's passed away, perished through cold or whatever. If there's red blood around the eyes, OK, that means it's still alive and the blood was actually non congealed so it was running. So it was definitely alive when it was killed. So the argument that some people say that they're already dead and it's bad management from farmers etc., its rubbish. So we've just heard from Andy up to 20,000 bird roost here overnight, and we can hear them in the background, there is a cacophony going on. Probably about 100 yards off to our right hand side. So we're going to find a spot now and see what comes in. Sitting, waiting under these trees is thrilling; witnessing this number of birds skimming the treetops is incredibly exciting. For a chance of shooting one it's important to keep low and still. As they settle they're backlit against the fading light, perfect for getting them lined up in the cross-hairs. I can use the NiteSite NS200 unit for spotting them, but the only bird you're allowed to use night vision or lamps for shooting in the UK is the feral pigeon. I knock some birds off their perch and they land with a satisfying thud. The Daystate MK 4iS I'm using tonight is capable of making some nice long shots. The trickiest bit of the evening is finding these birds in the dark. Crikey, well this is a good size bird. You can see why they're so much of a problem picking pecking out the eyes of young lambs. But shot this nice and clean through the trees, about 25, 30 yards, elevated shot so took the shot straight into the chest. Plenty of mass there in the bird. Quite a small neck, big head. But they're moving around quite a lot in the trees so you've got to make sure your shots I'm using a Daystate Mk4 22 FAC calibre, it's shooting about thirty foot pounds so it will go through the body of these animals, this is a perfect tool for shooting birds out of trees, particularly at low light, you want to make sure you kill your bird. This is a very impressive animal; this is what was making all that noise. We set ourselves up tonight right underneath this canopy of trees here, so when they were coming in they were flying straight and landing almost directly above us. So most of my shots would have gone straight in the bottom of the chest and through the other side. This is the first time I've done anything like this. All in all I've nabbed 11 birds before it got dark. They are a lot wilier than ferals in a barn. If I get another chance like this, I'll do it differently, fine tuning my position and the game plan. Now ideally we need to have 2 or 3 men shooting this wood, it's a long thin wood, which means if one of us takes a shot it kind of pushes the birds onto the next one and so and so and so forth. But as it happens this is a pretty good bag, that's 11 birds it's certainly not going to knock a huge hole in the 20,000 or so Andy says come into this roost every night, but it's a pretty good start. So Team Wild needs to book a ticket for a return leg and the best chance of making a dent in the thousands of birds coming home to roost. For more information about the NiteSite NS200 visit nitesite.co.uk For more information about the Daystate Mk 4 iS visit daystate.co.uk Team wild will be back next Wednesday, visit www.teamwild.tv