This story was originally published in the December 1971 issue of Outdoor Life.
“The trouble with me,” moaned Mike Jacobs, “is that I shoot where they ain’t. I zig when they zag.”
Mike had uncorked just about a whole box of shells and had less than a half-dozen doves in his game satchel. The barrel of his 12 gauge pump gun was almost too hot to handle. But Mike wasn’t alone in his doveshooting woes. More than half of the 10 shooters in and around the 20- acre field were burning a lot of powder and getting poor results.
It was opening day of the 1969 season on mourning doves in Tennessee. On opening afternoon (legal shooting time begins at noon) the better feeding fields are overrun with supereager shooters.
W.J. Mullican and I had done some preseason scouting and had located a 30-acre field of freshly harvested millet that was swarming with doves. We estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 of them were feeding in the field three days before the season’s opening. The owner gave us permission to shoot but added a rather discouraging thought.
“I’ve already given permission to quite a few of the boys,” he said, “and the field may be crowded.”
It was. Some 50 to 60 shooters were there at 11:45 a.m. of the opener. The big boom was about to get under way. Our group wanted no part of it.
We had prepared ourselves for just such a problem. Our preseason scouting had not ended at the millet field. We’d discovered another dove-feeding field less than a mile from the millet field. Both are in Warren County in central Tennessee.
The owner had harvested the corn early in order to prepare the field for small-grain drilling. The combine had left considerable waste corn on the ground. Mourning doves prefer millet over corn, but we figured that the millet-field blitz would send a lot of the doves to the second-choice cornfield. The owner gave us permission to shoot.
I selected a stand beside a woodlot near the edge of the field. The others in our party scattered out around the field. We had barely got settled when things started happening fast over in the millet field. In the still afternoon the roar of shotguns sounded like the Battle of the Bulge. The continuous fusillade lasted for fully 20 minutes.
A short lull followed. We waited anxiously. Not a dove was in sight anywhere in the cornfield, and we didn’t know whether any of the millet-field doves would head our way.
In a few minutes I spied a flock of doves in the distance. They were heading for the cornfield. Two came over me, and I opened the season with a neat double. But I did no chest-thumping. I had shot lots of doves before, and I knew that I would do some neat missing if the birds kept coming our way.
I saw W. J. down a pair, Mike miss a couple, and David Carlock drop one bird out of three shots. From my stand I couldn’t see what the other members of our group were doing, but as more doves came in their guns kept booming.
Our party included W. J. Mullican, a McMinnville, Tennessee, sportinggoods dealer in his 50’s; Bill Forshee, a Nashville commercial photographer in his mid-30’s; and David Carlock and Joe Wooden, both high-school teachers in their 30’s. There was also Mike Jacobs, a highway-department surveyor in his late 20s; Mike’s brother Joe, a high-school student; and Woodrow and Bob Lanier and Joe Martin, who are all McMinnville businessmen. I am an outdoor-sports writer in my early 60’s, and I live a dozen miles out of McMinnville.
Though the millet-field action was fast, I doubted that the dove population was being damaged much. There’s usually a lot more fuss than feathers at the big shoots.
Plenty of doves kept coming our way. I’ll admit that most of them were still flying after passing my stand, but I was having myself a ball sending charges of No. 8’s in their general direction.
After my opening double I missed four in a row-didn’t ruffle a feather. Bill Forshee had moved to where I could see him, and I watched him down a couple after missing three in a row.
“I’ve got to get hold of myself,” I thought, “or the boys are going to give me the business.”
“Eagle Eye” Mullican was tumbling them one after another. He is one of the woefully few really good dove shots I have ever seen in action. Crack dove shots are as scarce as honest politicians.
I let the next dozen or so doves fly by without raising my Model 1400 Winchester 12 gauge autoloader. I knew that holding off for a few minutes was the only way I could get hold of myself. I was overanxious. I had the early-season jitters that are common among dove shooters. That factor and the keen competition in the big shoots account for a whale of a lot of the shells that are fired fruitlessly at doves.
The short rest helped my keyed-up nerves. I gave a fast flyer a lead of more than a foot and fired. The little speedster spun and then pitched down. I swung on another one and crumpled him too. Then I missed one, a real whistler. I didn’t blame myself for that miss — after all, a shotgun can be swung only so fast.
The distant millet-field action still sounded like corn popping in a skillet. I learned later from conservation officers who checked the millet-field shoot that some 3,500 shots were fired by 57 gunners who bagged a few less than 500 doves. At least 75 percent of the dove season birds were taken during opening afternoon.
Actually, only a small percentage of the big-shoot participants bag their limits of doves, even during the early days of the season. The competition is so keen that it jangles shooters’ nerves. And all that shooting from a lot of gunners concentrated in a small area makes the doves fly faster, higher, and trickier. The experts figure that about seven shells are fired for every dove bagged. That, in my estimation, is a conservative estimate. I’ve counted as many as 25 shots fired at a single dove as it dodged across a feeding field.
I try to avoid the big shoots. If there is any alternative, I’ll take it.
Our cornfield shooting was not of the “rat-a-tat-tat” variety such as was taking place in the millet field less than a mile away. It was also not so highly competitive and nerve-jangling.
In most areas throughout the Southeast, at least 90 percent of the opening afternoon dove shooters head for the larger and more lush feeding fields. They figure that just about all the doves in the general area are concentrated in these fields. And they’re right.
What those hunters overlook, however, is that the doves also know less attractive feeding fields in the area and will often head for them once the bigfield blitzes get under way.
Statistics show that shooters bag only about 10 percent of the annual dove crop and that fewer than 30 percent of any year’s doves are still alive when the next nesting season starts. If the biologists who compiled these statistics are right, the 18-per-day bag limit shouldn’t affect the overall dove population noticeably.
As the afternoon went on, my shooting improved somewhat, but I still was not doing my best. And judging by the remarks coming from Mike’s direction I figured that he was having his troubles too. I eased down the edge of the woods to his stand, and that’s when he made the comment I quoted at the beginning of this story.
That breather did both Mike and me some good. Back on my stand after the pause, I bagged three in a row. And two of them were real blue sizzlers, flying high and fast. Between my own shots I saw Mike connect on four without a miss. But then I missed a couple of relatively easy targets.
I feel safe in saying that 90 percent of all dove shooters are in too big a hurry to slap the trigger. We see a lot of doves, often 30 or more, coming toward us, and we get the “big eye.” We let our nerves get too high before the doves get within range. We may shoot over, under, behind, or in front. We don’t concentrate. We have it in our minds to shoot, and shoot we do. And the more shooters there are in the field, the more poor shooting most of us do.
Statistics show that around 20-million mourning doves are bagged by American sportsmen every year. If seven shells are fired for every dove bagged, we dove hunters pop 140-million caps or 280,000 cases of shells (500 shells to the case) at doves per season. That is an unbelievable amount of sport for just one game bird to provide, and another plus is that all that shooting doesn’t hurt the overall dove population.
The mourning dove has gotten along extremely well with modern agriculture. The agricultural practices that have created tough sledding for most of our upland gamebirds have been right up the dove’s alley. Give the birds of peace plenty to eat without their having to dig or scratch for it too hard-plus some cedar thickets or similar nooks to roost in-and they’ve got it made. Thousands of livestock and farm ponds provide the water they need.
So doves have never had it so good as they do today. No wonder the mourning dove is now the No. 1 gamebird in many sections of the country. No other bird sends shotgunning sportsmen into such an early-season tizzy.
As our afternoon’s shooting progressed, most of us began to run low on shells. Some were borrowing from others. But we were having fun. Nobody in our group is a shell counter, but the boys knew that I was planning to do a story, with some statistics involved, so they kept a record of their shots.
Our pair of 11 shooters fired a total of 456 times. Five of us had limits of 18 doves each. Our shooting score was considerably better than that of the millet field shooters. And our dove-shooting ability, on the average, is no better than theirs. We simply got away from most of the competition.
As expected, W. J. Mullican was our top shooter. He got a limit of 18 doves with just 28 shells. He was shooting a Model 1100 Remington 12 gauge autoloader with a 26-inch improved-cylinder barrel, and he used field loads with No. 8 shot.
I have often seen W. J. do better than 18 out of 28. I have seen only one shooter who could beat him on doves. A Methodist minister by the name of James Beaty used to shoot with us a lot. The preacher, as we called him, shot a .410 pump and killed an average of 75 percent of the doves he shot at. It evidently pays to live right after all. But as I said, dove shooters of that caliber are scarce.
In the general area of our hunt, 6,000 or more doves were concentrated in and around a half-dozen feeding fields when the season opened. The overall opening afternoon kill was less than 1,000. After opening day the dove shooters thinned out fast. I visited the millet field the second afternoon and found fewer than 20 shooters in action. No one was in the cornfield we’d shot the afternoon before.
As the first lap of the season wore on, the number of shooters decreased even more. Corn and other harvests were well under way, increasing the amount of dove feed available. The doves became scattered, feeding in smaller groups. The few remaining dove shooters had to be satisfied with smaller bags.
Throughout most of the Southland the main dove foods during the shooting seasons are millet seed, field corn, and buckwheat. In some areas milo, maize, and lespedeza seed can be added to the list. Doves will also feed on weed seed and foxtail-grass seed where other foods are scarce. Hunters should keep the food angle strongly in mind when scouting for shooting areas.
Most farmers will allow dove shooting on their lands a lot quicker than they will other small-game hunting. Why? Because dove shooters normally operate in a concentrated group, rarely use dogs of any kind, and don’t ramble all over the place the way hunters of bobwhites, rabbits, and other small game do. Also, dove hunters almost always shoot at upward angles.
Dove shooters have one other thing going for them: dove breasts make snazzy eating. I like them fried. I dress out only the breasts. There isn’t enough meat on the rest of a dove to fill a hollow tooth.
I simply peel the skin and feathers off the breast, insert a couple of fingers under the meat at the point of the breastbone, and pull the breast away intact. I can dress out a limit of 18 dove breasts in 20 minutes. Drop them into a batter and fry them like chicken, with brown gravy and hot biscuits and plenty of coffee — well, it’s hard to top that kind of eating.
I have long argued that the weather plays a big hand in mourning-dove behavior, and the last part of the 1970 season made me more convinced than ever. Along about the middle of last December a rather peculiar weather pattern developed in the South. A sudden cold front swept across parts of Mississippi and Louisiana and most of Alabama and Georgia. Even South Carolina and northern Florida were affected. The front brought freezing rain across that area and snow across Kentucky, southern Indiana, and Ohio.
Through some quirk of nature, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina did not feel the fury of that weather front, and for that reason ( I am convinced), the central and western portions of Tennessee suddenly became loaded with doves. Thousands upon thousands of them swarmed into the late-harvested fields of corn and buckwheat.
It is my opinion that we got an influx of doves from both north and south. When the weather gets too rough for doves, they normally migrate to whereever the weather is milder and stay put for as long as conditions remain suitable. I’m sure that thousands of the doves that had already migrated southward returned to Tennessee when the cold front hit down south.
And the Yankee doves still lingering in Kentucky to the north also moved in for the same reason. Anyway, a few of us Tennessee shooters enjoyed an unexpected late-season bonus.
Mike Jacobs and I discovered a partly harvested buckwheat field close to our homes that was swarming with doves just after the December season opened. We estimated that well over 1,000 doves were feeding in the 10-acre field. And in a freshly harvested cornfield about a mile from the buckwheat field, an additional 500 or more doves were feeding. Still another buckwheat field less than five miles distant had some 1,500 doves.
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Then I started getting phone calls from various other sections of central Tennessee.
“More doves than we’ve seen in years,” most of the callers reported. Newspaper reports brought similar news from western Tennessee.
Mike and I decided to shoot the first buckwheat field we had located. The owner gave us the green light. We figured that one shoot would be about all we would get. Past experiences had shown us that late-season doves, after they’ve been shot at for one afternoon, disappear overnight. But we were in for another happy surprise.
W. J. Mullican was the only other dove shooter we could interest in joining us. We called a dozen or more others, but they had excuses ranging from ailing aunts to ingrown toenails. A few already had dates to hunt bobwhites or cottontails. We figured that we’d need more than three shooters to work the field properly, but again we were fooled.
A couple of days after Christmas the three of us arrived at the field about 1 p.m. We weren’t prepared for what happened.
Those doves all but tried to fly down our gun barrels, so determined were they to stuff their craws with buckwheat. They didn’t act anything like the late-season doves we had known in past years. They came over us in swarms, some so low that we could almost have clobbered them with sticks. Any dove shooter who couldn’t have taken a limit of those suicidal birds shouldn’t be allowed to shoulder a shotgun.
Each of us had a limit of 18 well before 2:30. W. J. got his limit with only 21 shots. Mike and I didn’t do quite that well, but we did kill more than half the doves we shot at.
And the three of us did the same thing in the same field the next afternoon. Even more doves were there the second afternoon. We couldn’t give the buckwheat field a third try, or we’d have exceeded the possession limit. Our families were not through eating Christmas turkey and other goodies, so we had to stash the dove breasts in our home freezers.
I kept checking on the area’s feeding fields, however, and the doves were still there when the season ended on January 1. Even a light snow during the period did not chase them out, which was very unusual.
I saw more doves during the December 1970 season than I had ever before seen in the area. And precious few shooters took advantage of the bonanza. I wouldn’t dare predict that the same thing will happen this December. But whether it does or not, you can get plenty of fast shooting by making the big “boom” shoots work to your advantage.
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