Dove hunting season nears to provide a break.
Dove hunting opens Sept. 1 in the North and Central zones; Sept. 14 in the South
This coronavirus pandemic has made for a trying year that everyone had just as soon forget. Hopefully, Texas’ 300,000-plus dove hunters are about to find a little respite.
The 2020-21 dove season gets underway Sept. 1 in the North and Central zones; Sept. 14 in the South Zone. If this season turns out like most, it should be a good one statewide. Even in a bad year, Texas dove hunting is better than most.
Don’t sweat it if weekday obligations force you to sit out the opening act that begins at 30 minutes before sunrise on the first Tuesday of September. Texas has a 90-day dove season divided in two splits.
If you can’t shake loose until the upcoming Labor Day weekend, just roll with it and play like the first day in the field is opening day. A late start could add up to some better shoots, anyway. There will likely be more hunters in the field over the long weekend to help keep the birds stirring.
Dove hunting is a fat cash cow in Texas. The last economic impact survey related to Texas dove hunting dates back to 2005-2006. That survey indicated a $300 million boost to the state’s economy, a figure some experts now believe could be low.
Texans love their dove hunting about as much as doves love Texas. The allure is built around an abundance of birds that are challenging to hit and a wealth of places to hunt them at an affordable price.
There might not be a more enjoyable way for close friends to social distance than spreading out around a croton field or good watering hole and joining in a tradition ushers in another long line of fall hunting seasons.
Doves galore
Texas hunters might bump into as many as six dove species, but only four of them are legal to shoot — mourning doves, whitewinged doves, white-tipped doves and Eurasian collared doves.
Inca doves, identifiable by a scaly-looking feather pattern and tiny body, and the smallish common ground dove, are both protected.
The state’s resident breeding mourning dove population is a massive one estimated at around 20-30 million birds with a longterm average of 23.6 million, which is around 13 percent of the national population. Add in the 20-30 million northern migrants that pass through the state en route to Mexico and Central America each fall and the number can swell beyond 50 million.
Mourning doves areidentifiable by their brown plumage, black-spotted wings and long, pointed tails.
Bigger, blockier whitewings aren’t as plentiful as speedy mourning doves, but their numbers and range are growing.
Owen Fitzsimmons, head of webless migratory bird program with the Texas Park Wildlife Department, said the most recent estimates show around 80 percent of Texas’ whitewings occupy urban areas, and their numbers continue to expand.
Named for a white chevron visible on both wings, whitewings are birds with dark lines on their cheeks and crimson eyes framed in baby blue. The squaretailed doves are larger than mourning doves, yet smaller than palish Eurasians that are frequently found on the same turf.
Another distinguishing trait is the way the birds fly. Whitewings follow a more predictable flight path than mourning doves with significantly less zip. This makes them easier to peg with a scattergun.
“Mourning doves have been clocked at 55 miles per hour, and I would imagine that whitewings might be able to approach that with a really stiff tailwind,” Fitzsimmons said. “Otherwise they probably average around 30-35 mph.”
Eurasian collared doves fly slower and look more like pigeons than doves. They have a white square tail under side with a black collar on the nape of the neck.
TPWD estimates the Eurasian dove population at around 2 to 5 million. Hunters should note that Eurasians are exotics with no state or federal protection. Shoot a collared dove during dove season and it doesn’t count towards the daily limit of 15 birds.
Fitzsimmons said the department has no reliable population data on white-tipped doves, mainly because they live a recluse lifestyle isolated mostly to deep South Texas border counties. Most whitetips are shot incidentally by mourning and white-winged dove hunters.
Big numbers bagged
No other state has as many doves or dove hunters as Texas, and nobody shoots more doves. Texas mourning dove hunters make up about one-third of the national total and they typically account for about 33 percent of the national harvest on mourning doves and 90 percent of the whitewing total.
Last year, 292,000 Texas hunters spent a combined 1.2 million days in the field and shot almost 7 million doves, including 4.5 million mourning doves, 1.9 million whitewings, 300,000 Eurasian collared and 113,000 whitetips.
Cheap thrills
Dove hunting represents what is arguably the highest quality, low cost hunting experience available to Texas hunters. There are dozens of outfitters around the state that offer “day hunts” for around $75-$150 per day. Others offer all-inclusive package hunts that may include multiple hunts, lodging, food, dogs, field transportation, bird cleaning and other amenities at a much steeper price.
Either way, the best hunting is always where the doves are, and that can change from one day to the next, often in coincidence with shifts in weather patterns. Places with abundant forage like harvested grain fields, sunflowers or goat weed patches are magnets for doves, as are watering spots like tanks or ponds with plenty of bare ground along the edge.
Hunting in areas of the state with rich histories of holding lots of birds is sure to boost the odds of enjoying a good shoot. Brown, Throckmorton, Coleman, Taylor, Medina, Bexar, Uvalde, Williamson, Bell, Karnes, Live Oak, Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron, Atacosa and Matagorda are among the top dove hunting counties.
Even less costly are the private lands dove and small game leases that are part of TPWD’S public hunting program, which includes nearly 1 million additional acres of public hunting land.
TPWD has 101 private lands leases totaling more than 41,000 acres available this year, according to Kelly Edmiston, TPWD public hunts coordinator. The leases, which range in size from 13 to 2,000 acres, are situated in areas with good dove habitat.
Season long access requires a $48 Annual Public Hunting Permit available where licenses are sold. Hunters are required to register when entering or leaving these hunt areas using the My Texas Hunt Harvest mobile app on the department website, tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/hunt/ hunt-harvest-app/dove.
Edmiston said 23 of the dove leases are within a short drive Dallas/fort Worth, seven near Houston/beaumont, 28 in the San Antonio/corpus Christi region and 36 in the vicinity of Austin/waco. Detailed maps are available at tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/hunt/public/.
Season outlook
TPWD’S late spring/early summer breeding dove surveys didn’t happen this year because of safety and social distancing protocols associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Fitzsimmons looked to field staff and dove banding metrics to get a feel for what the upcoming season might be like.
“I’m not seeing or hearing anything extremely good or bad out of any one particular area,” he said. “Mourning dove production seems to be up in areas of the Panhandle and Central Texas. Most of the state had an average spring in terms of precipitation, and habitat conditions looked pretty good coming into the summer months.”
Fitzsimmons believes stage is set for a good season. The missing links at this point are cold fronts.
“Last year we had the hottest September on record and no real cold front until mid-october, and it was pretty obvious that hunting in many parts of the Central and North zones just got really stagnant after opening weekend,” he said. “If we can get some cold fronts throughout September it should really turn things on for dove hunting.”
Hunting and corona
Time will if the coronavirus pandemic has any effect on hunter participation this fall.
Mark Roberts, a veteran outfitter and sunflower farmer from Uvalde, said his phone has been ringing throughout August. Roberts said he has enough property to accommodate 150-200 hunters.
“I’ve got a lot folks coming for the Sept. 1 opener and Labor Day weekend, about half and half,” Roberts said. “I’ll be splitting them up and keeping them separated. We normally have a big welcoming barbecue before opening day, but we canceled it this year to avoid putting too many people in one spot.”
In Fannin County, Tanner Spencer with Swamp Nasty Outfitters said he has been fielding a steady stream of phone calls and is expecting full house of day hunters through the Labor Day weekend.
“Right now we’re about par for where we usually are with bookings,” Spencer said. “We usually have about 100 hunters on opening day, but right now about 75 percent are wanting to hunt Labor Day weekend and about 25 percent on opening day.”
Fitzsimmons is predicting an uptick in dove hunters statewide this season.
“Honestly, I think we’ll see more dove hunters in the field this year than we have in last few years,” he said. “People are itching to get to get outdoors do something. Dove hunting is a great family activity.”