MIDDLE SEASON DOVES

[Jerry Harlow]

I missed most of the "middle" season for doves. So after putting off getting up before daylight I went three days in a row,as Mosby was going nuts every time I put on my camo. Results were 15, 8, and a final limit of 15. The first day was with a Beretta 12 with ejectors. One has to load fast; ejectors are a necessity. Second day was with a non-ejector 16 Bernadelli Gamecock. This found me with an open gun reloading as a dozen birds in a flock flew by. Thus limited success. The late season means when they start flying, there is one hour of constant shooting usually at daybreak, then its over. The last day I took my favorite 12 A5 made in 1966, modified choke. This solves the quick loading problem. I would often have two birds falling and Mosby was so excited. Two days with a limit in thirty minutes. I know many don't like autos, but the Browning A5 Light Twelve is a different animal at 56 years old!

Looking forward to the third season, December 23 to January 19. No hunting competition at all.

[Joe Dreisch]

Love the way the Browning Auto-5 loads a round right into the chamber from the magazine when loading an empty gun! Very quickly puts you back in action... Good shooting, Jerry!

[charlie cleveland]

the a-5 is one fine gun....our doves have all left....charlie

[Jerry Harlow]

Love the way the Browning Auto-5 loads a round right into the chamber from the magazine when loading an empty gun! Very quickly puts you back in action... Good shooting, Jerry!

Joe,

I believe Val Browning was the one that came up with the auto-load feature for a shell put into the magazine. This feature I understand was one of the reasons production moved from Belgium to Japan as the many parts and complicated feature cost too much to make in Belgium, and eventually resulted in the demise of the expensive A5 compared to other autos. But one can't beat the quality of the original A5! A couple of times with a bird that just hit the ground, and one falling, I was pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. The winter doves are the greatest hunting of all here. To heck with sitting in a deer stand.

[Joe Dreisch]

That feature enabled me to kill 4 Pheasants in less than a minute as they poured out the end of a long hedgerow ahead of my partners Brittanies in Glen Rock, PA years ago. The Auto 5 has been a very special gun for me over the years.

[charlie cleveland]

my hats off too the a-5....charlie

[Garry L Gordon]

I still can't understand why Missouri doesn't have split season. Most of our birds leave shortly after the season opens, but we find clusters of birds just a bit south of us in December while quail hunting...which I would definitely take if it was legal.

[Joe Dreisch]

I have wild bird feeders in my front yard and although large numbers of doves have left our area I usually see five to a dozen doves eating discarded safflower seed out there. Maybe what I am seeing are transients? Not sure.

[Jerry Harlow]

I have wild bird feeders in my front yard and although large numbers of doves have left our area I usually see five to a dozen doves eating discarded safflower seed out there. Maybe what I am seeing are transients? Not sure.

My understanding is that the birds that remain are almost all males. Later on we do get migratory birds. I find this to be true as 9 out of 10 birds I kill are males, as identified by the purple/pink marking on the sides of their necks. Late in the winter it is 100% male. There are certain farms I hunt where the birds congregate each year. Often by the hundreds. These are farms that have allowed dove hunting each year and thousands upon thousands have been killed there since I was a kid. But they come back. Other farms will have none. I find the key is that there is a power line through the fields where they may congregate and observe the ground before flying down to a predator. The last day I killed my limit was a place where I had finished hunting elsewhere the day before and drove by the field and it looked as if the power line would break as doves were lined up side by side for a quarter mile.

[charlie cleveland]

I like to see those power lines swagging...charlie

[Jerry Harlow]

I just received news that one of my best fields for the late season where I kill my limit most every day I go in December and January will have a WAWA gas station built upon it. Always a field with corn or soybeans and also a Canada Goose hot spot. Seventh gas station on a one mile stretch of road. Been for sale for twenty years.:crying:

[Stan Hillis]

We start getting migratory doves down here in Georgia as early as October, some years. They are also somewhat identifiable from the native birds by the way they come into a field to feed in a flock, swooping and jiving about, much like teal.

I scout fields for doves a good bit this time of year, just by parking in the shade on a field edge and watching a center pivot irrigation system, or a power line. As Jerry said, doves will often fly into the field and sit on an elevated structure of some type to make sure everything is safe before dropping to the ground to feed. I call it "staging". If there are no power lines or pivots they will stage in trees surrounding the field. I have a set of old armored FUJI binoculars in 8 power that are invaluable in seeing doves way off, across the fields.

Another thing I have learned about how doves feed, this time of year in my region, is that they will stage in trees surrounding the field almost all at the same time, then fly into the field at the same time. Here, in harvested peanut fields, if the weather is bright and sunny, you can set a clock by them. No need in even going to scout the field until 3:30-3:45 pm. Once you see the first dove fly in about 4, or a little after, the floodgates are opened and hundreds may come in within 20 minutes. Changes in the weather really affect their feeding patterns. But, if you're in the right place, and camouflaged well, when that happens it can really be a "hot corner". Automatic ejectors are the "order of the day", if using doubles, which I almost always do.

Work on 'em, Jerry.