What would someone be shooting at the moment?

[UtterlyUnimaginativeUsername]

We're very rural and someone has been shooting intermittently for about 24 hours now, even right through the night. What on earth could they be doing, does anyone know?

Bird scarer? If they are even used anymore? I grew up listening to the sound of crow "bangers" (as we called them) in the summer season.

Clay pigeons, I’d guess?

Oh, but probably not at night though!

Sounds like a bird scarer, though usually we hVe those near us in the spring and early summer.

I have seen someone recently waiting to cull the deer on our local farm, that was very early in the morning and not a huge amount of shooting.

We aren't quite at pheasant time.

Could be pigeons or squirrels?

Bird scarers aren't supposed to be used at night. Rabbits, hares or deer would be my guess.

Might possibly be deer stalking as it’s open season for the stags of several species now. Probably a bird scarer though.

Haven’t they just changed the law to say you can shoot deer all year round day & night? Could be someone making the most of that? Or rabbits (but why out so long?!). The deer change is going to p me off as the woods behind our house is bordered by a road with regular horse traffic one side and a footpath through the middle - it’s a really small space for a bloke to be firing his high powered rifle in…

I wondered about a bird scarer, but sometimes it sounds close and sometimes further away; sometimes it goes once, sometimes two or three times in quick succession. It was happening maybe every hour or two this morning but now much more frequently, and a bird scarer wouldn't have been going off at midnight, would it? I don't know anything about them, though, maybe it would.

There aren't deer around here.

Rats

Definitely sounds like a bird scarer. I lived next to a farm that used them, usually 2 bursts of 2 or 3. The farmer had them in multiple fields.

The bird scarers on the farms near me in cornwall definitely go off all night... There are posts on Fb every summer about it.

Sounds like a bird scarer with a dodgy timer on it. They are normally programmed to be turned off at night. Harvest has been very early this year so the farmer may have bird scarers on fields that have just been planted to stop the pigeons eating the seed. It is illegal to shoot deer at night.

Thanks, folks, that has reassured the kids considerably : )

I also heard 2-3 shots twice yesterday and wondered what they would be shooting in the day.
‘Usually it’s clay pigeons but the sound comes from a different direction.