Upland/Small Game
Dove Hunting
Well. Today was officially my worst day dove hunting ever. The morning started out promising. Nice cloud cover and temps in the mid 60's with just a little breeze. Only one other guy in the field and he was three hundred yards away. Got to set up in one of my "can't miss" spots in the sunflowers. Put out my three Mojo's and my stationary decoys. Loaded the 20ga and waited for the sun to come up and the birds to fly in. I waited and waited and nothing. Not a shot from the other end of the field or a dove flying in to eat. Nothing. I hung in there for three hours and saw only two doves way out. Then the rain, that they said wasn't coming, came. I checked the weather forecast and it said no rain in the area. The radar told a wildly different story. A pretty major storm rushed in with driving rains and big winds. I was a mile from the truck so I pulled my hood up determined to wait it out. I finally gave up when the radar showed the storm moving in a circle right over my location. Soaked to the skin with a bag full of wet gear and no birds to show for it, I trudged the trails back to my truck and drove home soggy for an hour. I'm probably going to give it another go before the doves move out. Had a great day last week in the exact same spot. The doves defeated me today.
Amazed here too, at my house. I live in a very rural area with many houses nearby, so there is little to no dove hunting here. Any shots I heard were more than a 1/2 mile away. All of august and august 31 we had doves everywhere and by Sept 2 they were quite scarce, I thought theyd all been shot but there was very lttle shooting and hunting in our area. But now we are seeing more, just later in the day. They are flying higher and perching higher so they are spooked.
I suppose it could detect lead shot residue, but what would that prove? That sometime in the past you shot lead through the gun? Must be something new, my local Warden never heard about it........ We had a good dove hunt Thursday morning with large group of first time hunters. Birds flew well and it was cooler than expected, so the mosquitoes were bad but not terrible. We had a pile of 50 or so by 9. Next morning was different story, 70 percent fewer birds using the field!. Don't know if the hunting pressure was the cause or the cooler night temps pushed some out of the area? Hope to take out few more hunters in next few days, see if things pick up... .........
Yeah is was this long q-tip looking thing almost like something you would clean a gun with. I'm shooting over under so they couldn't have been looking for a plug. Opened the gun, pushed it into both ends of both barrels. Never seen that before. It came out of a sealed plastic package too.
Got out Thursday morning at sunrise. Slow first couple of hours and then they started coming in around 11:00. Perfect weather and plenty of cloud cover. Birds came in groups. Then nothing for 15 minutes then another group. At one point I counted more than 30 birds that flew into my decoys in about a minute. It was feast and then famine. Knocked one down on the very first trigger pull of the season! Then missed about 10 in a row. Rusty. Shot better later on once I settled down. Managed only 8 in the bag but there were two other groups of guys hunting and they only had one bird between them so I felt pretty good about my solo effort.
DNR stopped me on the mile hike back to my truck. They were both nice and friendly but be warned. They checked my license and HIP, searched my game bag, decoys, ammo box and inspected my gun. They even swabbed the barrels for lead to make sure I was shooting steel. If you plan on hitting the public land, make certain you are 100% legal. It's the right thing to do anyway.
So it looks like the DNR planted a lot more sunflowers this year than last. Anyone else seeing this? Birds are starting to move around and I expect we will see a lot more activity as they prepare for migration in the coming weeks. Hopefully this will be a good season for public dove hunting.
