Why did the Luftwaffe bomb... mud?

[Bombphoon]

Looking through my local county ARP records, time and again, reports show that Luftwaffe bombers dropped vast quantities of HE and incendiaries on empty fields, often miles from anywhere. It certainly seemed to puzzle the local ARP authorities.

In fact, in my home county, more bombs were dropped over empty rural areas than the main city and county towns. Often ARP reports record whole incendiary containers dropped in a field or a stick of HEs falling across several fields. More often than not, farm animals were the unfortunate casualties: getting badly mutilated, with sheep and cows often having to be put down by vets - forgotten victims also.

I was always told it was the crews 'just trying to dump their bombs' to get away - but is it that simple?
I have also heard the following reasons:
-'Beam-bending' by 80 Wing misled the crews
-They were lost
-Moral scruples about bombing civilians
-damaged aircraft lightening the load
-lost aircraft
-being chased by nightfighters so dump their bombloads
-avoiding having to drop their loads on cities which were defended by AA guns, so offload their bombs early.

I have a feeling some of these reasons are probably correct, but they also have a whiff of guesswork about them - or is it really that simple?

So why did the Luftwaffe bomb empty fields?

Thanks