Late Dove in VA
 

Seven of us went out this morning at dawn and waited for late season dove . We actually saw quite a few birds . But only killed six between us , I had two motorized Mojo decoys out in front of me and was able to get four . This I might add has been my ONLY dove hunt/shoot of 2020 . Used my normal sporting clays gun a VH 16 30” F&F . I was shooting plain old Federal ounce factory loads with #7 1/2’s . The combination worked quite well for the few shots it had .

We can't get a dove season passed here in NY. It's on my bucket list to do that : (

We have a continuous dove season in Missouri -- September through October. No one hunts dove in the northern part of the State after about mid-September. We often find lots of dove while quail hunting in December...and they are not legal at this time. I plan to petition the Conservation Commission to offer a split season, but I may be the only person who cares. I envy those of you who have a split season that allows later hunting.

Many years ago I had it in my head I wanted to kill a whitetail in every state that had season for them (and I never got very far with it) . Now there are just a couple in the south I’d like to take a deer . But RECENTLY I kinda got to thinking it would be nice to do a dove shoot in all the states in the old south . Doubt I ever get that one done but it’s nice to think about .

I'm a virgin. I never shot a dove. My dog flushed a woodchuck once and I dropped it with a .22 to the head on a dead run. A woodcock flew into my gun barrel so I got one of those without firing a shot. I shot at a grouse once and a grouse and a squirrel fell from the sky. I'd trade the woodchuck for a dove hunt.

Down here the first few weeks of dove season can be good in a few places. After that, you can forget about it anywhere. Outlawing top sowed wheat for dove fields killed dove hunting in my area as we once knew it.

I’m most likely wrong , but I think the decline in the number of working dairey farms and farmers chopping silage early put a crimp in the resident birds . Most of the farms around here that had dairy cows are now almost all beef operations now and I “believe” they feed mostly hay and shelled corn .

I have no real working knowledge of farming other than planting food plots. I look at old images of pheasants and grouse on overgrown farms and homesteads and while I've had some great memories, I am afraid we are all missing the good old days. I'm not about to spend $15,000 to fly to Argentina to shoot doves, but if I could do it on a long weekend trip from upstate NY I'd do it.

There are several sorta pricey “dove clubs” in my relative area . We actually do damage control on one of them to try and deter the deer from the sunflowers . What good it does is questionable but nevertheless . The first couple years we control hunted for this club those guys would put 50 people in the field snd they would ALL limit out that’s 750 birds two opening days in a row and god knows how many they fringed or dropped and couldn’t find . This year their success wasn’t nearly as good . I’ve got another friend that’s a long time participant at Sanford and now a retired beef farmer . He had about a 5 acre field he groomes each year for his dove shoots . Last two years have been a bit less than anticipated like the club I mentioned . His years before had been like the dove club and they’d all limited out although only about twenty folks at those shoots . Anyway regardless it seems it ain’t what it once was :whistle:

Not quite anywhere.

I'm a good bit further inland than Mills, 70-80 miles, and I'm in a highly agricultural area where lots of peanuts, corn and sunflower are grown. His experience with late season doves don't reflect mine, at all. We have excellent late season shoots around here. I was on a good one just a couple weeks ago. I hear lots of people in this area complain that "there just aren't doves like there used to be". Probably so, but there's still excellent late season shooting to be had if you have access to enough fields and scout them diligently. I spend much more time scouting than I do shooting, and it pays off. Most people don't go to the trouble. I shoot with a group of about 8 - 10 people in the late season, and three of us spend a lot of time scouting for doves. "It don't come easy". Just because the sunflower or millet field, that provided good shoots in the early season, doesn't hold any birds in the late season doesn't mean there aren't doves around. Late season doves are much more fickle than early season ones. They prefer the high fat and protein content of peanuts, or corn, when the temperatures get lower in the late season. A biologist once told us that a dove can die from malnutrition, full of sunflowers, when it turns cold enough. But, you can have 600 feeding in a 50 acre peanut field today, and 80% of them may just pick up and leave overnight. Scouting........ scouting.

We are very fortunate right now, in that our late season runs from Dec. 8 through the last day of January. One of the best shoots I've ever been on here was on the last afternoon of the late season a couple years ago. There must have been 15 shooters there, in a corn field, and everyone of us had super shooting.

Late season peanut field shoot. (Sorry about the "non-Parker").

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SRH

I'll get in a car and drive to shoot doves! Georgia sounds better than Upstate NY in January

: )

Serves them right. When you're greedy, and I mean by that, shooting a good field two days straight in a row, you can expect not to have many birds later. Doves may not have Einstein's IQ, but they're not stupid. They will definitely leave a field that's being shot too often.

SRH

Not two days in a row , that was opening day two years in a row . I’m not sure what there protocol is for days and resting the field etc . They’ve got about 250 acres . Pretty much all pretty well covered with sunflowers .

Mexico sounds better than upstate NY in January/February :rotf:

I misunderstood your meaning, Craig. No problem with opening day two years in a row.

You can often shoot the same field numerous times if you give it a rest between shoots ............ say a week or two between. We do that often in the early/mid seasons.

Best, SRH

My retired friend usually shoots his groomed dove field once possibly twice a week for the first four weeks . These folks at this club we do damage control for I dunno . But at 5G’s to be a member I’d wanna have more than four shoots for my 5G’s !

We shoot opening day, then skip Labor Day (when the first Saturday is before Labor Day), then shoot the following Saturday again if there is adequate birds. From then on we only shoot it when there's birds aplenty to kill a few limits then leave some. And, we always pack up the guns early enough in the afternoon for the remaining birds to come in and feed unmolested.

I've been thinking about your post this morning about 50 shooters killing 50 limits. I'm not exaggerating when I say I couldn't find 50 shooters who could kill a limit, under the best conditions, no matter how hard I looked, or how long. There must be a better "grade" of dove shooter where you are, than here.

SRH

This is no exaggeration while damage control I sat in an eight foot high tower blind on this piece and in one hour I had enough birds fly by me with what I’d call puddin shots where I coulda gotten the fifteen bird limit with a 410 and a box of shells . Those birds looked larger than softballs . As to the 50 shooters this is just info that was relayed to us by the guy in charge , if I had to hesitate a guess I’d expect there was some help given by some of the shooters to those not as lucky shall we say . You also need to consider a lot of those guys use the Mojo decoys and after they were done I’m sure they let others without those decoys use their spots and as said earlier I’m sure some padding may have been going on .

Mojos are great sometimes, and others they aren't worth the battery drain. The more Mojos there are in a field the less effective they are. I'll always remember the first time I ever put one out. A couple guys were sitting in the shade watching me set the thing up out from my stool a ways. I got it set up and turned it on. Before I got to my stool, where my gun was laying, they were hollering at me. I looked behind me to see several doves lighting by the Mojo. It drew them like yellow jackets to blood that afternoon. Within a couple years they often ignored it.

Some days now they don't seem to be worth the trouble of carrying them. They often still work great when they can be placed in an elevated position. On top of a center pivot irrigation system is super great. I have a 10 ft. pipe I put one on often. Much better elevated than near the ground, IMO.

SRH