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12-30-2020, 08:11 PM | #3 | ||||||
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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.
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"Doubtless the good Lord could have made a better game bird than bobwhite, and better country to hunt him in...but equally doubtless, he never did." -- Guy de la Valdene (from A Handful of Feathers ) "'I promise you,' he said, 'on my word of honor, I won't die on the opening of the bird season.'" -- Robert Ruark (from The Old Man and the Boy) |
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12-30-2020, 08:12 PM | #4 | ||||||
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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 .
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Parker’s , 6.5mm’s , Mannlicher Schoenauer’s and my family in the Philippines ! |
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12-30-2020, 08:22 PM | #5 | |||||||
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12-30-2020, 09:17 PM | #6 | ||||||
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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.
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12-30-2020, 09:31 PM | #7 | ||||||
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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 .
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Parker’s , 6.5mm’s , Mannlicher Schoenauer’s and my family in the Philippines ! |
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12-30-2020, 10:11 PM | #8 | ||||||
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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.
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Nothing ruins your Friday like finding out it's only Tuesday |
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12-31-2020, 12:11 AM | #9 | |||||||
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Parker’s , 6.5mm’s , Mannlicher Schoenauer’s and my family in the Philippines ! |
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12-31-2020, 08:47 AM | #10 | |||||||
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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"). SRH Last edited by Stan Hillis; 12-31-2020 at 09:01 AM.. Reason: added a pic |
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