Post by treedude on Jun 14, 2005 4:12:01 GMT -5
Dove hunting is something that I got into because I like to shoot, and you get to shoot a lot when dove hunting the way I did it! I wasn't real good at it, but I could hunt within sight of the house, and it didn't require a lot of stuff (just a lot of shells).
Sadly, dove hunting, and most other kinds of hunting, have taken back seat to deer hunting. I have August and September to squirrel hunt and get deer stands ready, then if I get time to hunt at all, I spend it looking for deer.
But before I got "growed up" and my time was all spoken for, I loved to take a bucket of shells, run out behind the house in the fence rows, and blaze away at the local dove population. I was shooting at singles and doubles, mostly. We just didn't have big flocks around our house. For large groups of doves, all I had to do was wait for a trip to my Grandparent's (an hour away). There I would see hundreds of birds at a time (and the "shots per bird" ratio was better when shooting into waves of birds as well)!
My best day dove hunting was at my Grandpa's, on a hot September afternoon hunt. I was using the only shotgun my family had at the time, an ancient Wards Western Field 16 ga. pump (killed my first deer with that gun). I had been shooting for about an hour and had 4 or 5 doves. One came in directly at me, and I waited until he was right on top of me before I folded him. He fell into the brush behind me so I went immediately to retrieve him. Standing up I saw my Father coming down the road with a weapon, so I gathered my stuff to meet him and devise a strategy.
We were miles out in the country, on a dead end road, so don't freak out when I tell you we ended up sitting in the side ditch under a set of power lines, where the huge flocks of doves passed regularly. The gun my Father had carried from the house an old Sear & Roebucks 16 ga. side-by-side (meaning we could share shells). It was the perfect day! Birds would come over, we would shoot, and the sound would scare up another flock that would pass overhead minutes later - just time for us to re-load.
Toward the end of the day our pile of empties was still bigger than our pile of dead birds, but we were having such a great time, it didn't matter. It was quiet for just a little while, just before the end of shooting light, and a HUGE flock got up across the field. We were loaded and ready, and sure enough, here come the birds, about 10 feet deep and 50 yards wide, maybe 40 feet up . Our hastily made plan was to each pick birds in the middle, and each swing out (away from each other) for the second shot as the birds came overhead. As the birds closed to about 30 yards, with a near-silent "1-2-3", we raised steel and fired. One bird in the center of the formation folded, turned left, then right, and came down maybe 10 feet from us. We were both stunned, and then laughing histerically... out of maybe 200 birds to choose from, we had shot the same, unfortunate dove. I jacked another shell in and downed another before they were directly over us, but my Dad couldn't compose himself - it was that funny.
Dove hunting is one of those sports that (at least for me) was never about 'hunting to eat'...it was about 'living to hunt'.
Sadly, dove hunting, and most other kinds of hunting, have taken back seat to deer hunting. I have August and September to squirrel hunt and get deer stands ready, then if I get time to hunt at all, I spend it looking for deer.
But before I got "growed up" and my time was all spoken for, I loved to take a bucket of shells, run out behind the house in the fence rows, and blaze away at the local dove population. I was shooting at singles and doubles, mostly. We just didn't have big flocks around our house. For large groups of doves, all I had to do was wait for a trip to my Grandparent's (an hour away). There I would see hundreds of birds at a time (and the "shots per bird" ratio was better when shooting into waves of birds as well)!
My best day dove hunting was at my Grandpa's, on a hot September afternoon hunt. I was using the only shotgun my family had at the time, an ancient Wards Western Field 16 ga. pump (killed my first deer with that gun). I had been shooting for about an hour and had 4 or 5 doves. One came in directly at me, and I waited until he was right on top of me before I folded him. He fell into the brush behind me so I went immediately to retrieve him. Standing up I saw my Father coming down the road with a weapon, so I gathered my stuff to meet him and devise a strategy.
We were miles out in the country, on a dead end road, so don't freak out when I tell you we ended up sitting in the side ditch under a set of power lines, where the huge flocks of doves passed regularly. The gun my Father had carried from the house an old Sear & Roebucks 16 ga. side-by-side (meaning we could share shells). It was the perfect day! Birds would come over, we would shoot, and the sound would scare up another flock that would pass overhead minutes later - just time for us to re-load.
Toward the end of the day our pile of empties was still bigger than our pile of dead birds, but we were having such a great time, it didn't matter. It was quiet for just a little while, just before the end of shooting light, and a HUGE flock got up across the field. We were loaded and ready, and sure enough, here come the birds, about 10 feet deep and 50 yards wide, maybe 40 feet up . Our hastily made plan was to each pick birds in the middle, and each swing out (away from each other) for the second shot as the birds came overhead. As the birds closed to about 30 yards, with a near-silent "1-2-3", we raised steel and fired. One bird in the center of the formation folded, turned left, then right, and came down maybe 10 feet from us. We were both stunned, and then laughing histerically... out of maybe 200 birds to choose from, we had shot the same, unfortunate dove. I jacked another shell in and downed another before they were directly over us, but my Dad couldn't compose himself - it was that funny.
Dove hunting is one of those sports that (at least for me) was never about 'hunting to eat'...it was about 'living to hunt'.
R&S 
OWNER/PRESIDENT
