Days of the dove

Dove hunting seems to get more fun with each passing year.  More then anything though it marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall, which is my favorite season! I really enjoy that I can do it close by our house, and I am able to take any of my kids with me, no matter what their age.  It's usually only a few hours so their attention span stays pretty intact, and they love fetching the birds after you shoot them.  You don't need to take your dog with you either since it's usually pretty close quarters shooting.  Luckily the best times of the day for hunting doves are the early morning, and late evening hours as they are migrating back and forth between their water and food sources.  I say luckily because it is usually still pretty warm in September, at least here in Idaho.  Although most doves I see are on the side of the highway, on power lines, and even just sitting in the middle of the road.....mornings and evenings are usually prime times for them to be moving, and the most advantageous time to harvest them.

It's usually annoyingly hot at the beginning of September so keeping hydrated is a must part of your dove hunting gear.

I use #8 shells for doves, and this year they worked great.  Doves are extremely tender and fragile and it doesn't take much to bring them down.  I'm not too particular about brand, whatever is on sale usually works fine for me.  It's more about accuracy in my opinion.  I've shot lots of manufacturers and I haven't noticed enough difference to worry about it.

I've never used decoys before but this year I thought I would give it a try since they weren't that expensive.  I got a pack of Edge Clip-on Doves, and a pack of Edge Fourpack-o-Feeders Doves.

Our first outing with these was very impressive, doves landed right with the feeder decoys on the ground, and sat right on the barbwire fence with the clip-on decoys.  Even though the decoys were roughly double the size they had no problem sitting with them.  We had a good time that evening watching the doves come in.  Is was truly unbelievable seeing how well these decoys worked.

The cows even got pretty interested in what was going on until I told them one of their buddies was in my freezer.....true story, I bought some beef from a co-worker whose land we were hunting on.

A few weekends after this hunt I ended up getting a Mojo Voodoo Dove to complete my decoy arsenal.  This amazing decoy sealed the deal, doves were coming in like crazy.....in fact it was almost too good.  The Voodoo attracted them by simulating a dove landing, then when they got in there they landed with the clip-on or feeder decoys.....but they were landing too close, to us, and to the decoys.  Some of them landed not 10-feet from us and sat in the tree just looking at us.  Just make sure and set these up plenty far away from you if you use this setup or you might not get as much shooting in as you would like.  Make sure you have your spread adequately placed for optimum shooting.  They come in quick, I hadn't even gotten back to my seat the first time I put the Voodoo dove out before they started coming in.

So that pretty much wraps up dove season for this year as we are busy in the final days before big game season getting our rifles dialed in.  I'm already looking forward to the opener next year though when the days of the dove once again bring us full swing into fall.