Dove season opens in September. Use these techniques to stuff your limit into your game bag in no time.
Streaking down out of the sky like the legendary Flying Tiger fighter pilots of World War II, the doves rolled, darted, pitched and turned to avoid the lead in the sky, seeking the sunflower seeds scattered over the ground. By harvesting portions of his sunflowers over time, Bo Prestidge of Wildlife, Inc., in Schlater, had provided seeds on the ground over an extended period, helping to ensure that the hunters would find birds on the field for the hunt. Also, the standing sunflowers provided a blind where the hunters could hide from the birds.
Dressed in Mossy Oak camo, we hid in the sunflowers and high weeds on the edges of the field, hoping to take our limits of doves.
A Mississippi dove hunt is as traditional as cornbread, sweet tea, a bowl of grits and a spreading magnolia tree. But what can you do to ensure you’ll have doves in the field when the big day arrives?
Often hunters find the mourning dove, often called the gray ghost of the southern skies, as elusive as its namesake, John S. Mosby, a Confederate cavalry battalion commander during the Civil War. Mosby would appear one day, fight a battle and then vanish, leaving no trace of where he’d come from or where he had headed next. Like you, I’ve attended many dove hunts where a field loaded with doves two days before turns up mysteriously empty on the day of a dove hunt.
A landowner or a hunting club can do everything legal and proper to feed, grow, produce and hold doves. However, a temperature change or the birds’ getting a notion to pack up and leave can ruin a potentially great shoot.
“Doves may choose to leave a field for a variety of reasons, including climate change (a cold front or a wet front) and new and better food sources becoming available,” said Scott Baker, wildlife biologist for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. “If a nearby landowner harvests a field of grain, that can pull doves away from surrounding areas. Of course, the doves may decide to leave a field on opening day just to make the hunters, the landowner and the hunting club look bad. They’ve got a mean streak in them.”
Feeding doves Oftentimes by feeding doves just prior to the nesting period, you can encourage the doves to nest near the field you plan to hunt on opening day of the season.
“Normally a dove will nest several times throughout the spring and summer, laying two eggs at a time,” Baker says. “So a dove may have three nesting attempts, and probably raise four to six offspring.”
By feeding doves, you can help to raise the birds that you plan to take at the beginning of dove season. Good places to feed doves include the edges of roads on the property where you hunt. These roads often will have gravel and small stones on or near them that the birds can pick to help them grind and digest the seeds.
“You can feed doves all year,” Baker said. “But all the feed must be gone 10 days before you hunt the site. However, the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks never recommends feeding wildlife.”
During the last week before the 10-day cut-off, spread plastic on the ground, and pour the feed on the plastic. That way, you easily can remove all the seed 10 days before your hunt. Spreading wheat for doves has become very popular among dove hunters.
“You can spread wheat as long as you’ve prepared a seed bed, and you put out no more seed than the approved planting rate,” Baker said. “I always recommend 90 pounds of wheat seed per acre — the amount of wheat most farmers will plant for winter grazing or to create a wildlife food plot. The wheat must be planted for winter grazing, soil erosion or a wildlife food plot, and you also can hunt doves over that wheat.
“Top-sowing wheat is legal as long as it’s done for one of the mentioned proven agricultural practices. Once the wheat’s put out, you can’t go back and put out more wheat. The wheat must be planted at a time of the year that’s conducive to growing a crop, and most wheat is planted in late August or early September.”
Download the September 2010 issue of Mississippi Sportsman to learn more about how to get prepared for the upcoming dove-hunting season.
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