From the dumbass file

When you're stuck in the no-man's land between the whole country's opening day (yesterday) and your own (Saturday) and it seems there's nothing to write about but your own bitterness, the innate stupidity of certain Americans comes to your rescue.

Seems three old boys in Major County, OK, just couldn't wait another two days til dove season opened, so they set up a blind and some mojo decoys in a field and started hunting. The creative juices didn't stop flowing there, either. Anyone can build a blind from branches and weeds, so why not step it up a notch and build one out of weed.

From the OK Dept of Wildlife Conservation - Game Wardens' Facebook page:

Sunday morning, August 30th, did not start out like a normal day for game wardens Phillip Cottrill (Garfield County) and Lt. Frank Huebert (Major County). A passer by called in and reported seeing some mojo dove decoys spinning in a field. The wardens arrived to find 3 guys dove hunting over bait. Strangely, they were using dove blinds that were built out of marihuana* plants. The dove poachers were in possession of 45 dove, marihuana buds and a pipe.

But the fun didn't stop there. Wardens accompanied one of the boy geniuses to his residence to obtain ID where they found hawk and owl fans and talons. And yes, they also found the requisite meth and needles and more pot.

While most of the day would be labeled what my kids call an "epic fail", there was one bright spot. They all shot a limit.

Here's to your opener. This year, don't settle for the same old same old.

* After several vigilant spellers spoke up, The OK Dept of Wildlife noted in a later post that the laws in OK spell marijuana with an "h", so that's how they wrote the report.

The Glorious 11th

As the first season wears on, turnout at the hunts drops to predictably low levels and Saturday wasn't the first time I had the field to myself on the closing day. My ancestors had their Glorious 12th of September, opening day in the isles, and this year I had my Glorious 11th, the last chance at shooting dove for the next five weeks, not knowing exactly what the day would hold but knowing I'd kick myself if I didn't at least show up.

It's been a lackluster season up to this point, the resident doves having moved on shortly after opening day leaving us to scratch out a living on scant gypsy populations. Week before last we killed a grand total of two birds in the whole field, so optimism is not exactly abundant this time of year. Most of the guys I shoot with opted for the Clemson game and several others were out of town or just had better things to do. Perish the thought.

The field is spent

Experience teaches that you'd better bring along something to do when the birds aren't around so I packed the camera, figuring I could at least count on some leaves and dead sunflowers and stuff. When I walked into the field a dozen or so birds got up, which means one of two things will happen:

1. the birds scatter and never come back and you don't see another bird all day (9 out of 10 times)
2. this is an omen that there are still birds in the area and maybe, just possibly, this could turn out to be a decent afternoon (1 in 10)

So you settle in, snap a few pics and see what happens..

Leftover from opening day

Sign of the times

Sometimes they're hard to find

Sometimes they're not so hard

Sometimes they leave a trail...

A dozen birds in the bag, a few photos, one fire ant bite and everything a fall afternoon has for the taking. While it wasn't perfect - 85 degrees and far more gnats than birds - it handily beat all expectations, reminding me why I show up against the wisdom of the crowd. And why I'll do it again.

The take

A few suggestions

Our dove haven't gone away completely but they haven't spread the word to their friends, either. Yesterday, during another session of long pauses between shots, several things occurred to me that might take dove hunting to the next level. Feast your intellect:

1. Some well-heeled individual or his namesake charitable trust should fund the genetic development of a dove that, when mortally wounded, turns a shade of bright red or orange. This would eliminate quite a bit of poking in bushes, staring at patches of weeds, walking in ever-increasing circles and generally wasting my time. Time that could be better spent thinking up brilliant improvements to the sport such as this.
2. Dragonflies, tweety birds, and butterflies should stay the hell out of a field when there is a hunt going on. Peripheral vision being the imperfect sense that it is, all you creatures that resemble a dove in flight over in the corner of my eye do nothing but raise my heart rate and interrupt my otherwise tranquil mood. Fair warning: on slow days you are quite a temptation.
3. If we can put a man on the moon we ought to be able to figure out a way to keep gnats out of my general face area. Bug spray doesn't work. Ditto Thermacells, in spite of what people keep telling me. If the well-heeled individual in #1 is looking for another project, possibly one with commercial appeal, this would be it. I know gnats are part of the food chain somewhere way down the line, so I don't want to kill them, I just want them out of my face. They can hang out on the other side of my head or around my knees even. Anywhere but my face. And while we're genetically modifying things, let's tweak the gnat and remove whatever it is that attracts them to eyeballs.

That's as far as I got, three flashes of genius in a day being at least two more than I'm normally good for.

Here and gone

Dove season interrupted the summer nap on Labor Day, as usual sporting heat and soul-crushing humidity. But the birds were there and we were too, hoping for a barnburner, always hoping.

And as always, some higher power insists on turning everything fun into a learning experience. When the heat index approaches triple digits wearing short pants seems like a bright idea until a bird goes down in the trees and weeds. Teeth clench as the briars pick at bare skin, etching red lines that sting when the sweat finds them. About ten feet into the thick stuff that thought about poison ivy materializes. Remind me again why I think this is fun?

Date #2 came the birds stood us up. Never seen them disappear so early in the year, seemingly without a reason although that's never the case. Weather, lack of food, and hunting pressure are just about the only things that will move them out and other than a frog strangler of a thunderstorm none of these were in play. I'm still waiting for the "It's not you" phone call. Or text.

Some guys can't take a hint. Back at it again on Sunday..

Game time

It's been a long stretch since the weather was cold and the trees were bare of leaves. Everything since then leads up to now in more ways than one.

Workouts in the heat, watching film, drills, even a little scouting. No off-season injuries either, knock on wood. A few of the redshirts have eyes on the starting lineup. Last year's record wasn't exactly one for the record books. Maybe a new look on the uniform will change the luck. Everyone is undefeated at this point.

The season kicks off this weekend.

Someone said football starts, too.

Lead shot - fading into history?

Last week California passed a ban on lead ammunition for hunting purposes. It's not the first state to do this - other states have banned lead in certain areas and for certain types of hunting - but I believe it's the first to issue a blanket prohibition.

I haven't read the research and won't venture to debate the validity of it, but given that lead is generally accepted as toxic it would be hard to say it doesn't have some detrimental affect on the environment. It would be equally hard to say that a lead ban won't have some detrimental affects to hunters' wallets, and possibly to the sport itself.

At this point in my life if I had to pay $12-14 for a box of steel shot to shoot dove it wouldn't be the end of the world, but there was a time when it might have been the end of the sport for me.  As you get older you realize that there are a handful of things that give you great pleasure and, through years of accumulated wisdom, you figure out ways to make sure you always have enough time and money for them.  As a youngster, however, a lot of what you do is dictated by what you can afford.  Doubling the cover charge may be a great way to help the environment but it might not be the best way to bring the younger generation into the pastime. Conspiracy theory alert: This might be what certain legislative factions have in mind.

The issue isn't just about wallets or the environment or endangered species or the future of hunting any more than stream access issues out west are just about water rights or landowner rights (for a spot-on piece on this topic, see Miles Nolte's column in the Nov/Dec '13 issue of Gray's). It's a combination of all of these and just as quick as you see yourself in one camp you'll find another that maybe isn't completely wrong.

I still find myself squarely on the fence, and a fencepost in your butt isn't the most comfortable perch. From a personal standpoint I haven't made a voluntary switch to no-tox yet.  Hell, I still shop for the best deal I can get on lead. Steel shot, next in line from a cost perspective, is not the most user-friendly load.  Its ballistics tend to give a bit on the longer shots, as most duck hunters know, which leaves the more exotic loads such as tungsten, bismuth and medleys of these brewed with copper, iron, tin and nickel. While the ballistic performance is superior to steel I've yet to find one that is cost-competitive.

For what it's worth, the demand for lead overseas is increasing at a surprising pace, and there's a chance that it won't be too long before lead shot is in the ballpark with no-tox. In the meantime I guess I'll continue buying lead shot until I'm overcome by wave of extreme guilt or the state outlaws it, whichever comes first and can't be cured.

What I learned in the first season

The first stint of dove season closed today and I learned a few things:

1. You can have the best looking sunflower field in the world and it doesn't guarantee birds. All it guarantees is that you will show up every week hoping for birds.
2. The best spot in a field often faces directly into the sun.
3. A dead bird that falls into a tree will end up on the ground somewhere underneath that tree. Unless the tree is a red cedar, in which case you'd better start looking for a long stick.
4. Fire ants inhabit hay bales. Don't ask, just file it away.

Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but he can still learn some things the hard way.

Norman

One of the farms where I shoot dove is owned by a friend who's not a farmer. He always has some kind of arrangement with a real farmer to plow and plant and cut hay and such. Among these guys was an old timer named Norman who must have been at least 70 and could have kicked my ass on his lunch break.

He had white hair and a nose that was long and looked like a ridgeline running down the center of his face. He was big, the kind of big that comes from farming for a long, long time. I think he could juggle hay bales.

I never could figure out if Norman was way smarter than me or had a death grip on his last few brain cells. Something about the way he'd look at you left the impression that he knew lots of things you didn't.  Then he'd start talking and you'd be forced to reconsider. Every time I saw him he'd stop mid-way through our conversation and say, "Now what was your name again?" Not that being bad with names is an early indicator of intelligence.

This is the disc harrow Norman used on our sunflower field. Norman's dead now.

Payment

Why is it that the best stand in the field is always the least comfortable? During these first two weeks of our unusually slow dove season I've been taking mental notes about where the birds are coming in and out of the field and who's leaving with the heaviest bags. On opening day the only guy who shot a limit sat underneath a power line near a pole with a transformer on it. But that kid paid for his limit.

Not only does this stand lack any usable shade, it sits on the east end of the field, meaning that as the hours tick by you stare more and more directly into the sun. Ever try to shoot a dove that's using Japanese Zero fighter tactics?

Today only five of us showed up, hardly enough to cover the field effectively but few enough that nobody was stuck with a really bad stand. I'd decided before I left the house that after two weeks and only a handful of birds in the freezer I was ready to pony up, and when no one volunteered to sit under the wire I eased in that direction.

I lost about 5 lbs of water weight and still see lots of pink and purple and white when I close my eyes, but after three hours I managed to scratch out an old school limit. Worth it? Oh yeah.

The Opener (sort of)

Labor Day was our dove opener this year and I can finally talk about it, all 102 degree heat index and no birds of it.  That's a bit extreme, actually.  We had a few birds.

As openers go, though, the dove were sparse. They just weren't there in the numbers we typically see in early September. This was more like a third or fourth week of September shoot, birds drifting in two or three at a time with maybe one or two flurries during the hunt. Those big flurries, the ones with birds coming from every direction, so many that you can't decide which one to shoot, having three birds down at one time and yet another flies over while you're picking the first one up? Didn't happen.

Statistically you're bound to have a slow first day once in a while and we were probably due. Whether it was the oddly damp year we've had so far - we hit our annual rainfall average in late July - or the mild summer temps, at least until Monday, something kept the birds away. At least the beer stayed cold.

And this....

...this is sixty one dove wings in a cardboard box. A friend of mine at the DNR asked me to collect these for their annual study on brood hatches or molting or something and I happily agreed, certain that I'd gather a metric ton or so of wings from the opening day bonanza. At this rate it'll take a season's worth to get him a valid sample. One thing I didn't realize about dove wings: there are these tiny little feathers that you don't notice until you're riding home with the window down and they take to the air but somehow stay inside your truck until you're choking on them and swatting at them while they're sticking to your eyeballs.  So you roll down a back window hoping it will suck them out and instead it makes more of them take flight. So you pull over and roll all the windows down and get out and cuss a few times and wait.

Eventually you get back in the truck, this time with the lid on the box closed and weighed down so it won't blow open, and then you realize that all the tiny feathers didn't blow out the window, they settled down to the floor, only to go airborne one more time. So then you do what you should have done in the first place - roll up the damn windows.

Killin' time

I drove by the sunflower field this week. It's one of those things you do when dove season isn't here but you really want it to be and there's nothing you can do to make it get here. Faster. With all the rain we've had I wasn't sure what to expect, hopes high anyway.

They were there in their fading yellow splendor, taller than me with heads the size of frisbees. The weeds weren't too bad either. Never underestimate the power of a good weed crop to hide dead birds.

This may be the most difficult time of year. I've gone through the gear, the same stuff I cleaned and organized and put away with care at the end of last season and it's all there, just like I left it. No good excuse to buy anything new. No point in doing any scouting since the birds will either be in the field or they won't. Not much to do but wait.

There's always brown liquor if it gets too bad.

The times, they are a changin'

Announcements from around the country over the last few weeks show that wingshooting in America is anything but stagnant. The possibility of a sandhill crane season in eastern TN, the lack of a sage grouse season in SD, the return of dove season in MN, even  increased limits on migratory birds. Some of this bodes well for hunters, some will drain a serious amount of enthusiasm.

Purists cringe when you fiddle with the established norm, and it's not just the principle of change that bothers them. Hunting is a sport of tradition, of opening days and bird camps and road trips and Saturday mornings before sunrise, and when you start messing with a man's tradition you might as well be messing with his wife or his dog. It's tradition because we like it. We also depend on it as a stabilizing element in the year, an anchor, and sometimes a beacon in the distance beyond rough water.

Sometimes what appears to be a change for the better is insult in disguise. Case in point: several years ago our mourning dove limit was raised from 12 to 15 birds. More is better, right? I've spent more time and more shells trying to get those last 3 birds....

For better or worse, hunting is also a sport of nature and subject to its ebbs and flows, and while we can't control aspects like weather, we can and often do impact other factors. I'm thinking about land and habitat, specifically those parts that hang in the balance and can be nudged and persuaded back into something more favorable to birds. It's not predestined that certain species will fade into memories.

This is why I'm putting time and effort into restoring the bobwhite populations in our state. I don't ever want to open the paper someday and read that the DNR has cancelled quail season because there just aren't enough birds.

A similar effort is under way in Montana to help the sage grouse, as detailed in this story on NPR. And there are initiatives in most other states for species that aren't yet officially threatened.

It's true that we can't fix it all, but that's no excuse for passing on what we can. Fight for your traditions. Better still, preserve them with a little forethought.

Mourning dove season again in Michigan? Nugent's on it.

Looks like another state is inching closer to a dove season, and chiming in this time is none other than the Nuge:

I haven't vetted his statistics about dove being more numerous in Michigan than pheasant, quail, grouse and woodcock combined, or about dove hunting providing more recreation than fishing for bluegills, but he's probably not too far off the mark. Making this situation even more curious is the fact that in 2005, Michigan had a dove season. A single dove season. And then anti-dove hunting factions managed to place a referendum on the ballot that effectively scrubbed it.

Part of what brought voters out against dove hunting is that the dove is - get this - Michigan's state bird of peace. What?  Isn't that about as necessary as a state corn flake?

What Ted's so giddy about is a piece of legislation recently signed into law that places the ability to designate game species in the hands of the state Natural Resources Commission. Where did this control previously rest?  Within the immense pit of knowledge known as the state legislature. The same governing body that felt there was a justified need for a state bird of peace.

I'm pulling for you Michiganders, and if they take your season away again, come on down to South Carolina.  We let you hunt dove, our winters are warmer and we have no shortage of embarrassing politicians.

Strangers in a strange land

Opening day of dove season is different.  People show up in droves, bring friends, kids, preachers and some guy who called them out of the blue because he was visiting his mom at the lake and heard we might be shooting (mind if I join you?).  College boys appear between the trees like those baseball players from the corn in Field of Dreams. There's a cookout, beer, good to see you again and by the way, what have you been up to?  Everyone goes home grinning.

Then starts the great decline. The crowds get thinner every week regardless of whether there are birds.  The only exception is that if you have a really hot shoot and go home and call everyone who wasn't there and rub it in, the next weekend the field will be packed with your boys and the birds will have packed up and headed south.  You shoulda been here last week...

This year the decline has held true to form.  Fewer and fewer hunters each week while bird numbers have been pretty steady.  You'd think this would be good for the few of us remaining, but as anyone who's hunted dove knows the birds get substantially smarter once the first shot is fired.  They have an uncanny ability to divert flight paths through the parts of the field where the guns aren't.  Which means you generally need enough guys around a field to plug the gaps and keep the birds moving, and if you're lucky there are a few guys who fidget and walk around and cause the birds to flare and fly toward you, the stealth hunter sitting motionless in the shadows, agent of death from below.

Last weekend Bob - one of the hard-cores - and I showed up.  Way down on the other end of the field was a guy I knew but had never seen in the dove field and he brought along a friend visiting from Israel.  And that was it.  Just the four of us.  And some birds.

So Bob and I rimmed a corner within earshot of each other, sipped a few beers and drew on the occasional kamikaze.  Mostly we watched the birds drift right through the big open spaces in middle.  When we left, the Israeli was still at the far end of the field, alone, and might still be there for all I know.

Dove hunting is....

.....altogether different when you're four years old.

the bribe

fieldcraft...

...courtesy of a patient friend

wanted to know if he could sleep with it

There are far too many days when I wish I were a kid again.

New York to Finally Get a Dove Season?

Sometimes I focus way too much on the things I don't have instead of enjoying the things I do.  The Syracuse Post-Standard reported this week that a bill was introduced in the New York State Senate that would re-classify dove as "migratory game birds" from their current classification as songbirds, opening the door for the Department of Environmental Conservation to implement a full-fledged dove season.  I don't know why but I just kinda thought that the only places lacking a dove season were places lacking doves.  It's as much of a given down here as fried food and embarrassing local headlines that make national news.

I don't know whether there's a powerful songbird lobby in the Empire State or whether change is just glacially slow in such a "progressive" place.  Either way it seems strange that grouse, pheasant and even bobwhite quail are fair game during the season and dove get a free pass on their way south.  Hell, California has a mourning dove season, for crying out loud.

Part of the problem may be that almost half of the population lives on a strip of land 13 miles long and 2 miles wide, a place where shotguns are are either offensive or defensive weaponry and millet fields are, umm, completely nonexistent.  The other part of the problem, whatever it is, evades me.  Dove hunting is one of fall's finest diversions and there's no practical reason to deprive any sportsman of its rewards.  In both solitary and social forms, it is bargain recreation for any who enjoy a gun, a dog, fresh air or any combination of these.  And it's an excellent way to get a kid off the couch and hooked on something good.

New York doesn't just deserve a dove season, they need one.