Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
For love of dove
Sept. 1 opens flood of fall hunting seasons
Kids are back in school and Arkansas hunters are preparing for the fall festival that begins Sept. 1 with the opening of dove season and early Canada goose season.
Early teal season will open Sept. 15 and ends Sept. 30.
Sept. 1 will also open the seasons for gallinules, and the season for Virginia rail and sora will open Sept. 8. There is a contingent of avid rail and gallinule hunters in Arkansas that find fertile hunting grounds in the Arkansas River Valley, particularly at the Frog Bayou Wildlife Management Area in the Alma Bottoms.
Dove season is the big event, though. For hunters, it is the unofficial beginning of fall, the lead-in to the deer seasons and finally to duck season.
Dove season will have two segments this year, Sept. 1Oct. 28, and Dec. 8-Jan. 15, 2019. The daily limit is 15 mourning doves with a possession limit of 45. There are no bag or possession limits for Eurasian collared doves.
While you can enjoy superb hunting especially in the second segment, most dove hunting occurs on the opening weekend, and mostly on opening day.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not released migratory bird hunting statistics from the 2017-2018 seasons yet, but statistics from preceding years show 748,800 dove hunters killed 13.2 million doves in 2015, and 837,800 hunters killed 13.5 million in 2016. In 2015, that averaged to 18 birds per hunter and 16 birds per hunter in 2016. That is lightly more than a one-day limit.
Hunters in Arkansas killed 252,400 doves in 2015 and 258,200 in 2016, or 22 and 29 percent of the national total in those respective years. Arkansas hunters killed an average of 14 doves in 2015 and 16 doves in 2016, enough for one good round of dove poppers.
The Fish and Wildlife Service recorded 17,800 active dove hunters in Arkansas in 2015 and 16,300 active hunters in 2016, comprising 24 and 28 percent nationally for those years.
Dove season is an exciting, communal affair that brings together generations of friends and families for at least one day of high-volume wingshooting.
The ritual includes a predawn gathering at a tractor shed or barn to share news and gossip. Hunters gulp down the last few slugs of their convenience store coffee before filling the air with the scent of mosquito repellent.
Young kids are always quiet, especially those attending their first hunt. They are reverent and awestruck to finally enter this mystic fraternity.
Women are increasingly part of these events, too, especially young girls. Many of them participate in the Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission’s Youth Shooting Sports Program, and their prowess in shooting clay targets leads to an interest in hunting. The newcomers and veterans from the Youth Shooting Sports Program are welcomed at these hunts because everyone knows they are competent shooters and that they are steeped in hunter safety.
The farm owner is always the hunt master. He strolls into the congregation like a pastor and assigns shooting station. After he explains the rules, everyone climbs aboard a tractor-towed trailer or pickup to ride to the shooting fields.
The first birds arrive right about legal shooting time. Shouts erupt, followed by gunshots. Cheers or jeers follow.
If it’s a good field, doves arrive in increasingly greater
numbers. They come from all directions, making staccato whistles that come from their wingbeats forcing air out their throats. Some loaf along and others streak over the fields like fighter jets. At the sound of gunfire, they dove, juke, corkscrew and perform all manner of evasive maneuvers. Some circle a field multiple times and draw fire from every hunter. Those that make it through the gauntlet often land and begin feeding. They are safe because it is unsporting and unsafe to shoot a dove on the ground.
Birds generally stop flying about lunchtime and resume flying in the evening.