MIDDLE SEASON DOVES

[J. A. EARLY]

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.

[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.