Expect crowds for dove season
Hunting begins Friday
With the opening of this year’s dove season landing on a Friday, Yumans can expect a busy weekend as enthusiasts converge in fields throughout the southwest corner of the county.
Chris Bedinger, spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, said the timing will be the most notable difference for 2017.
“It depends a lot on what day it starts, how many people come into town, especially from California. That visitation will fluctuate. Usually if it’s a midweek opener, some of them will split it, and come just on opening day and others will come the weekend after. With a Friday opener, both of those groups are here at the same time and it’s gonna be a lot of people,” he said.
Yuma Visitors Bureau Marketing Manager Dustin Mylius said the area’s hotels and restaurants are expecting many more guests over Labor Day weekend, drawn in by hunting season and several other events.
“Tying that in with the softball tournament over at the PAAC (brand-new Pacific Avenue Athletic Complex), it’s the last weekend for Waylon’s Water World to be open, and of course dove season and all the activities entailed with that, it looks like it’s going to be a very successful first weekend of September here,” he said.
Friday marks the beginning of the “early” dove hunting season, which runs through Sept. 15 and permits hunting of any white-winged or mourning dove. The start time is half an hour before sunrise, approximately 5:45 a.m.
The late season is from Nov. 25 - Jan. 8.
Estimates have put the seasons’ economic impact on Yuma at between $2 million and $5 million annually. The tendency of out-of-town hunters to stay in friends’ homes or camp out makes it difficult to estimate their numbers, but Mylius said the bureau is subscribing to a new data service that should give it a better idea of how many hunters are staying in hotels.
Bedinger said locals and visitors alike should be prepared for extra crowds. “If anything, I would encourage people to be ready for lots of traffic, busy restaurants. And also, you know, remind people to clean up after themselves; when we have a lot of people hunting here, we have a lot more issues with refuse, and we want to remind people to keep Yuma clean,” he said.
Bedinger said the presence of more sportsmen and sportswomen this weekend means that they need to pay extra attention to their surroundings while hunting to make sure they aren’t endangering anyone else.
“If you’re concerned about that, find an area where there isn’t a lot of people. There are plenty of areas around Yuma where there’s hunting opportunity for dove, they don’t all have to cram into one place. But these hunters who come from out of town, they have their favorite hunting hole and usually it’s in one of the crowded areas.”
He said out of the seven areas where hunting is allowed, the South County/ Mesa area east and south of Marine Corps Air Station-Yuma and extending south toward State Route 198, is generally the most popular with hunters, because a lot of the farmers there open their ag fields for the weekend. It is bounded by Avenue 5E on the east, Avenue A on the west, County 12th Street on the north and County 22nd Street to the south.
For more details about where to hunt and other regulations regarding dove hunting season, along with dove season-related events, visit www.yumadovehunting.com.