Opening day of dove season has always been special. As a hunter it was cause to celebrate — a bevy of opening days would follow in the coming months for small game, deer, ducks and all. As an outdoor writer, it meant stories would be easy to find after the long, slow summer. In the more than 30 years that I combined my passions, two opening days of dove season stand out. One of them was the best hunt I’ve ever had and the other, well, it was just downright painful. So which do you want first, the good or the bad?
Stupid question, since you’ve got no choice. I own this keyboard, and I like the good so let’s head to an opening day in the early 90s in the Delta near Drew.
It was a huge hunt, with over 300 hunters. I couldn’t believe it, but there was actually a traffic jam leading to the field. I was concerned that maybe they had overdone it with the invitation list, that is until the sun rose enough to get the whole picture.
The rows of sunflowers in a long, 100-yard wide field started just inside the gate and continued to the horizon, which in the flat lands of Bolivar County is forever. Our instructions, given in the dark, were simple enough — just drive until the guy in the old Willis Jeep told us to stop and then go to our appointed stands.
“Don’t worry about where you wind up, there’s enough doves for everybody,” the gate guy said.
My partner and I were skeptical, but we drove on until a guy wearing enough orange to stand out in Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium on a fall Saturday, directed us to pull between a gap in the tree line and park.
“You guys grab your stools and stuff and go to stands 21C and 22C in the field,” Mr. Orange told us before realizing we were rookies and needed more info. “See those dark spots in the edge of the sunflowers, those are your stands. We left the grass tall and thick with a hole in the middle so you can sit and hide.”
Flashlight beams lit up the reflector tags with the stand IDs, and we got situated in the dark about 30 minutes before legal shooting. We laughed about our early arrival but realized it was going to take that long to get all the hunters in their proper position.
Finally, we heard the signal horn blow, indicating it was legal to shoot. Talk about organization. This hunt was the very definition.
The birds must have liked it, too. They were everywhere, literally pouring in out of the tree line to feast on the prepared buffet dinner.
Forty-five minutes and 24 shells later, I was back in the truck, with my limit of 12 birds. My partner was there already with his limit. The sun was just clearing the tree line and we could see other hunters, scores of them, walking out of the field to their trucks. The sound of gunfire, which had been a constant roar for the past hour, was now like a trickle.
Two hours after the starting horn blasted, only a handful of hunters remained and most of them were parents with children still trying to get their youngsters to the magic number. The rest of us were back at the gate, enjoying deer sausage biscuits and sodas while, for 50 cents a bird, members of a local high school baseball team cleaned our doves.
It was crazy good. I don’t know how many doves died that morning in that Delta field, but it was thousands. Few were lost, since the field was so clean that finding them was easy. Their gray bodies stood out.
Can you say best hunt ever? This certainly was.
When they passed around a 5-gallon bucket for donations to the landowner, I looked in and saw $100 bills. I added another, and felt even better when the landowner, who had obviously spent a wad preparing for the day, handed the bucket to the baseball team. His son was one of the players.
On Monday, Labor Day, the team was invited back to shoot and the next weekend, another big hunt was scheduled. I didn’t make it back, but heard they had another outstanding hunt and that the baseball team not only had new uniforms but also renovated and lighted field on which to play the next spring.
I told them they should have named the new baseball park “Dove Field” and we had a good laugh.
***Come back next week to read about the worst opening day experience I had. It’s too painful to pair with that great experience.
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