Defective Dove Hunting

Dennis Whiteside shows the big bass he caught on on his birthday, before releasing it.

 Three doves winged in over the sunflower field where Rich and I were hidden amongst the stalks. I fired twice and they just kept going. At that time I had shot 8 shells without dropping a bird.

“Looks like I would get lucky just once,” I muttered.

“Maybe your best chance would be a dove that is just UN-lucky…” Rich thought to himself. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t have to say it!

For one thing, those 20-gauge shells were bought on sale about ten years ago. Old shells lose their power. I am sure of that, though it hasn’t been proven. And for another thing, I had a defective shotgun.

My old friend Rich Abdoler had owned it since his boyhood, one of two model-50 Winchester automatics, and he knew I wanted one of those badly, so he sold me the one he least wanted. I figure he knew something about the guns inability to shoot straight, and took advantage of me. I am thinking about legal action, partly because the shotgun has a bound up poly-choke, one of those bulging chokes on the end of the barrel that you twist to adjust, from open to fully choked. It was stuck on full choke that evening, and the last thing you want while hunting doves is a full-choke barrel, and you couldn’t adjust it with a four-foot pipe wrench.

So you can understand why, by the time the evening was over, a top-flight experienced shotgunner like me had only killed two doves with 12 or 14 shells.

And honestly, one time I killed ten doves with ten shells, a long time ago when I was younger and not under so much pressure and had a really good shotgun.

So you shouldn’t be thinking I am just a lousy shot.

    I did have a pretty good dove dinner, if there is such a thing. Rich killed 8 doves that evening and gave me his. He was using a twelve gauge, because he was out of twenty gauge shells, having shot all he had the evening before at that very spot, taking a limit before sunset. So the doves I shot at were extremely wary, unlike the easy ones he had found the day before.

    I may never shoot that poorly again, and I doubt that I ever have before, and while it is extremely embarrassing for a grizzled old outdoorsman like me to admit to such an evening, you can see how journalistic integrity would compel me to report the bad outings with the good. I have always felt that honesty is the best policy when there is a witness.
  
You see some strange things when you are outdoors. That evening Rich and I watched three different doves light on standing sunflower stalks and peck away at the seed heads. Neither of us had ever seen that before. Doves are not known to perch and feed, as other birds do. They are ground feeders, and you have to have grain on the ground in fairly open areas to attract them. We saw three of them break the rules. But then again, I have spent enough time outdoors to not be surprised at anything I see. You can never say ‘never’ or ‘always’ about wild creatures.

Wildlife that doesn’t adapt at all seems to have trouble surviving in the changing outdoorsmen have created.

    My friend Rich Abdoler has been a Corps of Engineers Ranger on Truman Lake for many, many years, and he says this year there were seven fatalities on the lake. One of them was a man who died in an ATV accident. He says that the biggest resource problem they have on the 115,000 acres of public land around the lake relates to the illegal use of ATV’s, and the erosion and disturbance it creates. Men are becoming too lazy and overweight to walk, and ATV’s are the answer for a modern-day generation that wants to enjoy the outdoors without any effort. But you are nothing close to a hunter or an outdoorsman if you spend your time in the woods on the seat a motorized vehicle. Every year, there are thousands of people who die or are seriously injured on ATV’s. And you can never really see the woods as it is on one of those. But then again, there is a difference in being a hunter and a shooter. Today’s generation is losing track of the difference.

On that 108-degree day we had back in the early part of August, I floated the river with writer Jim Spencer and his wife Jill Easton. I wrote about that trip and mentioned that a very large bass had made a pass at my buzz-bait that day right near my boat. The bass was close, and I saw his tail as he rolled across the surface. So as it happens, I was on the river last week with my good friend Dennis Whiteside, paddling him down the river on his birthday. When we neared that spot, I told him about the big bass I had missed and eased him to within casting distance of that spot, where some big snags and a log rested in deep shaded water. I’ll be darn if he didn’t cast a white buzz-spin in to the exact spot and that big bass nailed it. He fought him awhile and landed him, we took photos of it and released it. It was a real beauty, and I will never pass that spot again without fishing it well. That big bass will get even bigger! You can see a picture of it on my website, that address given at the end of my column.

On Friday and Saturday afternoon, September 23 and 24, Sondra Matlock Gray and I will be at the Hammons Walnut Festival at Stockton Missouri handing out free copies of the outdoor magazine we produce. It is quite an event; if you have never been there you should come and see it. Then our big outdoorsman’s swap meet will be on October 22, at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, and it is in conjunction with an annual event they have known as the Dutch Oven Cooking Competition. Last year we drew about 1500 people to our swap meet, but they expect 2000 people to come to that Dutch Oven meeting, so we may have a big crowd. If you have outdoor items or gear to sell, you should attend this as a “vendor”. You can reserve space close to where I will be building my wooden johnboat, just by contacting Tabitha Stockdale at the Bull Shoals Visitor Center, phone 870-445-3629. Or you can e-mail her at tabitha.stockdale@arkansas.gov. Do that early so that all the spaces won’t be reserved already.

    If you want more information, you can write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. You can see recent photos from our Canada trip, or that big bass from last week’s trip, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors. blogspot.com





  

  

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Furs, Feathers & Fins...

Dove hunter and dog... 

Every wingshooter should have a good retriever, and vice versa.

On the Big Piney River where I spent my boyhood years, there were few crop fields or feed-lots, and so I didn’t ever hunt doves. Just out of college, I went to work as Outdoor Editor for the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock, and therefore, went on my very first dove hunt that September when I was only 21 years old.

Oh yes, I had hunted everything you could find on the Big Piney, ducks, squirrels, rabbits and quail… but Grandma McNew would have disowned me if I had shot a dove. She watched pairs of mourning doves raise young ones on their farm all summer long and she referred to doves as ‘birds of peace’. She referred to dove hunters as something else, and none of the papers I write for would print what she called them.

And just a year after her passing, there I was with a fellow who worked in the printing department of the newspaper, hunting doves over a little water hole west of Little Rock. I was good with a shotgun, so there was no worry there. But with half my limit down, I swung on a bird I caught a glimpse of, just almost behind me, and I folded him in mid-flight. Before it ever hit the ground I knew I had shot a robin.

Do you know what that would have done to me if it had gotten around that the outdoor editor of the states largest newspaper had killed a robin for a dove? You know, this is the first time I ever wrote about that. The guy I was with said he had made a mistake like that once, and told me not to worry about it, but I didn’t get over that for a long time. It was difficult for me to live with. Outdoorsmen don’t make mistakes!

On September the first, I will hunt doves with my old friend Rich Abdoler over a sunflower patch planted on the public lands of Truman Lake. But it will be hot, and my young Labrador will not be happy with dove feathers in her mouth. All three of us will be a great deal happier in a couple of weeks when the teal season opens, if only there is some cooler weather by then, and flights of those biscuit-sized early migrating ducks to be found. But that’s another column.

I never will be a dove hunting enthusiast because it is too close to a slaughter at times. Over those fields, burned wheat or cut sunflowers, it is just too easy, and it is too much a social event. I am too much a purist for this. On Truman Lake and at other wildlife management areas where grain is found on the ground because it is cut just for doves, there will be too many hunters and too much shooting. Opening day rivals the opening of deer season, except in most areas it sounds as if you are in a war zone.

In many areas, hunters are baiting doves, and that is illegal. But it happens so often, because there is this gray area between actual baiting and the harvesting of a stand of crops. Doves must have food on the ground, and when they find it, they come in by the droves. If you want to read more about them, their life cycles, diseases and so forth, there is a long article about doves and dove hunting in the September issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal. There’s not enough room in this column for doves if you are going to talk about squirrel hunting and topwater fishing, which I am about to.

You can truly feel like a hunter and be alone out in the woods right now hunting squirrels, which are working the hickories in big numbers. It is a good year for squirrels, and it is a great challenge if you use a .22 rifle, or even a small-bore shotgun like a .410 or 28 gauge. I like to borrow my dad’s over-and-under squirrel gun, a Savage-Stevens with a .22 caliber barrel over a 20-gauge barrel, to use as a squirrel gun, but it is more of a challenge to take my little Ruger .22 and see what I can get with it. I kill fewer, but I hunt more.

Early in the morning you can slip through a still woodlot and hear the squirrels chewing away on hickory-nut hulls, and see the pieces dropping to the forest floor. But there’s lots of greenery for them to hide in. Young squirrels are better eating than doves, in my book. And you will never hear of an army of squirrel hunters in the woods. You’ll be alone. I like that. Copperheads may have something to do with it, but I suspect today’s hunters don’t get to shoot enough when they go squirrel hunting. And you can’t bait squirrels.

Just the other evening I caught a four-pound bass on a top water buzz-bait on the upper reaches of the lake. It wasn’t far from the river that feeds it, but the water is so low and stagnant it looks like a different world than last year. We need lots and lots of rain, and the cool weather that will follow.

I know I said that I would write more about the court case over at Doniphan, Missouri where a judge ruled that the Missouri Department of Conservation’s charges against hunters pursuing deer with dogs was unconstitutional because the laws were too vague and not specific enough. He questioned agents who were unable to properly interpret the laws. I will put that off until next week, and next week I will also talk about the MDC biologists trying to change catfish regulation on Truman Lake. I support what they are doing there, and I will tell you why in next week’s column. They are trying to bring back the numbers of big catfish, and I think they have a good plan.

Now is the time to let me know if you would like to have a table at our big Grizzled Old Outdoor Veteran’s Swap Meet. This was a huge hit last year, with more than a thousand people attending. This year it will be held at a big gymnasium at the Brighton Assembly of God Church right off of Highway 13, about 17 miles north of Springfield, just east of Morrisville, Mo. on Saturday, October 9. We have a lot of things planned for that day, and if you have outdoor equipment to sell, from boats and motors to fishing lures, anything that has to do with the outdoors, you can get a table just by contacting me. The church will put on a big dinner that day at noon, and if you are interested in great bargains on antique lures or old guns, or canoes and boats, all kinds of outdoor gear, make plans to be there. It is free to all who want to come. And I will be there signing my books, giving away our October magazines, and helping to raise money for charitable causes, which is what all this is about. But then again, it is great fun when outdoorsmen can get together and tell stories and enjoy being together. I always look forward to this because I get to meet so many readers at such a get-together. If you have one of my books, bring it that day and I will sign it, which makes it worth a nickel more at most used bookstores.

We will honor many World War II vets that day, so please make plans to join us if you are a veteran. See more information about this on my website, which will include a map to the site, and some of what will be there… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Or just call my office to get printed information and a map sent to you…or to reserve a table. Call 417 777 5227, or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net.

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