Ready for the Pursuit
Dove hunting season opens here Saturday, Sept. 1
Astatewide decrease in the number of birds flying the skies for dove hunting season is not expected to affect the Yuma area when it opens Sept. 1, officials said this week.
Chris Bedinger, Arizona Department of Fish and Game public information officer for the Yuma region, said, “All you have to do is to drive down Pacific (Avenue) toward the PAAC (softball) complex and look at that corner and there are literally 5,000 dove there right now, probably.”
Of course, that would likely not be a legal hunting area, since it’s well within a quarter-mile of several occupied buildings, and their owners would have to give their permission before any such activity.
For more information about dove hunting season dates, regulations and events visit www.yumadovehunting.com. None of the rules have changed from last year, Bedinger said.
AZGFD’s statewide forecast estimated there are about 20 million mourning doves in the skies as the season approaches, about 10 million fewer than this time last year, though the difference shouldn’t be noticeable.
This was attributed to an extremely dry first half of the year, and doves creating about half as many nests as a result.
Bedinger said that in the Yuma area, the availability of grain-planted agricultural fields for the birds will lessen the impact. Also, “we haven’t had much rain, but that’s normal for us. The mourning dove population isn’t as affected as much as the rest of the state. Because it’s just a typical summer for us.”
Add that to the fact that most white-winged doves have not migrated from the area yet and it should be a fruitful season for hunters here. But any change in the weather could change that.
“If a storm rolls in at the end of next week it could change everything,” he said.
Johnathan O’Dell, small game biologist for AZGFD, said it’s difficult to say exactly how many of the birds are in a specific part of the state, but it’s safe to say there are a lot of birds and hunters here.
“On average, Yuma County accounts for 40 percent of the doves harvested in the state annually, but this is likely more a function of the number of hunters there than the dove population. Of course the hunters come to Yuma because there is an abundance of birds,” he said.
In a typical year, about 1 million mourning doves and 150,000 white-winged doves are harvested in Arizona, he said.
The traditional events are scheduled to celebrate the season’s start, he said, including the Clint Curry Youth Dove Hunt in Dome Valley and the Mike Mitchell Memorial Dove Hunter’s Barbeque at the Cocopah Bend RV Resort, both Sept. 1.
The one exception is the dove cook-off which has been held the previous two years.
“With the opening day on Saturday, it’s kind of hard to have a dove cook-off when you don’t have any birds,” Bedinger said. “So we’re trying to pair that up with another event next year, but other than that the events are pretty much the same.”
The Yuma Dove Hunting website provides a new map showing the “general” locations of grain fields planted for this season, though not all of them permit onsite hunting.
“We don’t want to give the locations out because they’re not really there for hunting, they’re there for the birds. So we give people the general locations of those areas because they’re going to be pretty good areas to hunt. Even around the fields, for miles,” Bedinger said.
The Saturday start of the season should attract a large crowd, many from California and other states, and locals should expect a lot of traffic in the city next weekend, according to Bedinger.
“People should expect businesses, and traffic, and my understanding is the hotels are pretty full up, it’s going to be a busy weekend and there are going to be a lot of hunters here.
“If they’re looking to come and have a good hunt they should come here and scout around, and get there early, because there’s going to be a lot of other people around doing the same thing,” he said.