Ready, aim, fire
Wingshooters should find bird-hunting paradise here the next couple weeks.
The coming few weeks — especially the next couple — offer Texas’ halfmillion or so wingshooters a swarm of opportunities to get afield and enjoy some of the best, and often the fastest, game bird hunting they will see this season. And some of the best of it will be within range of Houston-area hunters.
The statewide teal-only season is a little past the halfway mark of its 16-day run, and the final week before the season closes at sunset Sept. 25 could prove more productive than the opening week.
Add to that, next weekend will see all of Texas open for dove hunting as the 59 counties in the dove-rich South Zone and Special White-winged Dove Area begin their fall dove season on Friday. And the South Zone opener should be more productive than the rain-cursed Sept. 1 dove opener in the rest of the state.
For Texas waterfowlers, the teal-only season that opened Sept. 10 has so far been a mixed bag. The opening weekend proved a bonanza for many hunters with access to flooded second-crop rice or managed, shallow wetlands on Texas’ coastal prairie. For those hunting coastal marsh or inland waters such as reservoirs and stock tanks in central, north and east Texas, success has been limited. Teal results a mixed bag
The early-migrating blue-winged teal that make up more than 90 percent of the teal taken during the September season have gravitated to the flooded rice and shallow managed wetlands. Food is the reason.
The little ducks, which have traveled a thousand miles or more from nesting grounds on northern prairies, use Texas as a stopover — a place to rest and refuel — on their fall migration to Mexico and points south. When they arrive in Texas this year, they are finding a state awash in water from a wet year that included the wettest August in almost a century.
But only a portion of that water has offered what teal are looking for — shallow water holding rich supplies of aquatic vegetation, seeds and invertebrates. And almost all of it was in flooded rice and managed wetlands on the coastal prairie. High water on reservoirs, stock tanks and farm ponds in Texas’ interior offered little to attract and hold teal. The same applied to much of the coastal marsh, where rain runoff combined with unusually persistent high tides to inundate wetlands with water that covered any aquatic vegetation and was too deep for teals’ liking.
Hunting results over the first week of the teal season told the story.
Flooded rice fields and shallow, managed prairie wetlands holding an abundance of high-quality aquatic vegetation were hot spots for excellent teal hunting through the first week of the season, said Gene Campbell of Oyster Bayou Hunting Club in Chambers County. Those areas far outpaced hunts on adjacent coastal marsh, Campbell said.
Typical of teal, there has been a flurry of action and strong flights very early as birds move to feeding areas or are pushed from preferred areas by hunting pressure, then a lull. But hunters willing to stick it out have seen a good flight around midmorning, with those birds much more willing to work decoy than those moving early in the morning, Campbell said.
Reports from the coastal prairies and marshes along the central coast echoed those from the upper coast. Hunters on the shallow prairie wetlands in Matagorda and Wharton counties managed by Thunderbird Hunting Club produced fast action on opening weekend, with hunters averaging 5.9 teal per hunter over the first two days of the season, reported Thunderbird manager Todd Steele.
While some hunters in the coastal marsh on the upper and central managed to take their six-teal daily limit, or close to it, over the opening week, most areas reported much less success under highwater conditions. Most public hunting areas on coastal marshes averaged less than two teal per hunter, and several saw lower success than that. Stormy weather hasn’t helped; heavy rain and lightning in some coastal areas on opening day hurt hunting success.
On inland waters — reservoirs, stock tanks and farm ponds — teal hunting success generally was poor, with many hunters reporting seeing few birds in the air. The exception has been the Texas Panhandle, where the wet summer put water in the region’s shallow playas, which had sprouted good crops of smartweed and other moist-soil vegetation attractive to teal. Those shallow playas have produced good shooting over the first part of the teal season. Final week has promise
This final week of teal season could see much improved opportunities for hunters. A bright moon over the last couple of days (it was full Friday night) typically triggers a pulse of teal migration. And there are plenty of bluewings holding to the north of Texas. The blue-wing migration is staggered, with adult males being the first to move south followed by hens and their broods.
The huge majority of blue-wings taken during the first week of the season have been adult males, indicating the major push of bluewings is yet to come. It also is encouraging that temperatures in parts of the Dakotas dropped into the 30s last week, encouraging the early-migrating bluewings to head south.
“I predict a very good second half of teal season,” Campbell said.
That’s a good bet; often, the last final week of teal season sees more birds in Texas than the opener.
The Sept. 23 dove season opening in the South Zone and Special Whitewinged Dove Area has the potential to be a great one, with mourning and whitewinged doves having had a second consecutive good nesting year.
Traditional South Zone dove hot spots such as the lower Rio Grande Valley (Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen), Hondo/Uvalde and the San Antonio area (Bexar County tops all Texas counties in whitewings taken by hunters) are almost certain to produce outstanding hunting. But some areas much closer to Houston — El Campo, Wharton, Victoria and other towns southwest of Houston — also hold surprisingly high numbers of resident whitewings. Dove hunting around some of these towns can be spectacular as flocks of whitewings make their daily feeding flights from “urban” roosts to nearby grain fields. Keep an eye on weather
Weather is likely to be a key to how the South Zone dove opener plays out.
It certainly was with the opening of the North and Central zones earlier this month. The incredibly wet August turned many “dove fields” into muddy messes and, worse, scattered birds by swamping their feeding areas.
While dove hunters in some parts of the state enjoyed good, even great, shooting over the first week or so of the season, dove hunters in the Central Zone near Houston generally saw poor success.
If weather cooperates and the region remains dry or at least fairly dry, this weekend’s dove opener could be outstanding.
And while the South Zone’s opening weekend draws the most dove hunters and sees the highest harvest, it’s far from the only part of the season that can provide worldclass dove hunting. Some of the best, least-crowded dove hunting of the season can be found from midOctober through early November, when swarms of migrating mourning doves move down the Central Flyway and into Texas.
These migrant doves and resident doves flock to fields of ripening croton, a low-growing, bushy, native plant that can cover fallow fields.
Croton’s commonly called “doveweed,” and for good reason. Croton produces scads of small, hard seeds that doves find irresistible. And hunters who find a field of ripening croton have found a potential dove hot spot. If the croton patch is rimmed with ripening ragweed and pigweed, two other native plants that produce seeds that doves devour with gusto, so much the better.
A croton field on a cool, crisp October afternoon can be a place where a hunter can enjoy a wingshooting session to remember.
This year, Texas wingshooters will have ample opportunity to enjoy lateseason dove hunting.
A change in federal rules added 20 days to Texas’ dove season beginning with this season, and Texas officials added many of those days to the end of the fall dove season.
Instead of closing in mid-October as it had in recent years, dove season in all of Texas dove zones this year runs into November. The fall dove seasons runs through Nov. 13 in the North and South dove zones, Nov. 6 in the Central Zone and Nov. 9 in the Special White-winged Dove Area.
Those additional days could be some of the best of the season.