By Doug Leier
I grew up in an era before the early August goose hunt, and 25 years later it still feels a bit odd to think of hunters swatting mosquitoes and lathering on sunscreen.
Our first hunt of the season was mourning doves in early September. Where birds were plentiful, the sense of accomplishment was a dozen birds from a box of shells. More misses than hits were the norm.
Mike Szymanski, Game and Fish migratory bird supervisor, is one of those who appreciates the opportunity.
“Dove opener has never been an ‘unofficial holiday’ in North Dakota as it is in other states. It’s a shame because we really do have a lot of dove hunting opportunities and not many dove hunters,” he said.
Moreover, dove hunting participation and harvest has been on a steady decline the past 30 years. In a good year the number of people who hunt doves in North Dakota may near 7,000. Based on state surveys, the harvest is roughly 25,000 birds.
Rewind to 1980 when nearly 25,000 hunters took about 107,000 birds.
The highest mourning dove harvest is Texas where over a quarter million hunters harvest nearly 4.5 million birds.
In North Dakota and the nation, the recruitment, retention and reactivation of hunters is a high priority. Dove hunting is generally thought of as a starting point or gateway for other hunting. Given the early season, plentiful dove numbers, it makes a strong case for hunters of any stage looking for another opportunity in a hunting landscape with more competition and where access continues to be a hurdle.
Would a landowner deny a young hunter or anyone a mourning dove hunt?
Szymanski adds insight: “It could be that as North Dakota becomes more urbanized, going dove hunting means traveling farther, which is less appealing. Or in our modern and highly scheduled age, fewer kids want to go, or have fewer opportunities.”
The case can also be made that doves are simply overlooked in North Dakota.
“As an avid waterfowl hunter, I like how dove hunting has a lot of the same strategies as duck hunting, even involving decoys. I enjoy them all, and all are classic dove hunting methods,” Szymanski said.
Tips on Dove Scouting and Hunting
Waterholes
The best waterholes for a good dove hunt are those featuring bare soil leading up to the water’s edge, with at least a portion of the bank having a shallow grade. These waterholes are often in pastures or hay lands and may also be a dugout. Just like duck hunting, not every nice-looking waterhole will have birds using it. I like to see a couple of small groups go in before hunting a hole I haven’t scouted.
Crop Fields
Standing sunflowers, which generally are unharvested during the first couple weeks of September, also attract doves, but it is illegal to hunt in unharvested cereal and oilseed crops, including sprouted winter wheat, alfalfa, clover and other grasses grown to seed, without the owner’s consent. Make sure to get landowner permission to hunt within standing sunflowers, even if they are Private Land Open To Sportsmen acres.
Doves feed on the smallest of seeds, many of which are annual weeds such as pigeon grass or barnyard grass, so any field with weedy patches or a weedy perimeter can attract doves.
I like to sit in fencerows or rock piles, but occasionally there will be some slough grass in the middle of the field to hide in. Most of the shooting is at birds entering and leaving the field. (Note: It is illegal to shoot doves or other birds resting on utility lines or fixtures adjacent to such lines.)
You can also walk the field and flush birds off the ground. I try to stay near the edges to keep from pushing all the doves out of the field.
Day Roosts
Day roosts, or loafing areas, are an excellent backup plan when early morning hunts don’t go as planned. Doves typically find places to sit between morning and evening feeds in sometimes nondescript areas.
Abandoned farmsteads, small tree plantings, sometimes even just a telephone wire or fence that runs over or through a few trees or bushes, can attract doves to hang out for the day.
Tree Rows
Walking tree rows for doves is a tactic that provides the opportunity for some quick action when more traditional hunting situations aren’t available.
Doing so can be especially rewarding once sharp-tailed grouse and Hungarian partridge come into season. There are times you just never know what will flush from the shade of trees.
Equipment
One of the nice things about dove hunting is that so little gear is required – a bird bag, water for hunter and dog, and a box or more of shells is generally all that I carry. The bird bag can be a bucket, which works as a seat, a place to hold food, water, birds, hulls and other garbage.
Decoys can be employed in all of the aforementioned hunting situations. Dove decoys are fairly simple and inexpensive, but some hunters do use spinning wing decoys. Camouflage and elaborate blinds are not a necessity. Typically, I just wear a dark or drab T-shirt and jeans. When hunting in the open, uprooting a few large weeds can provide a quick and simple blind.
I use and recommend nontoxic shot for all hunting, including doves. A big advantage is that by using nontoxic shot loads that have similar velocities to nontoxic loads used later in fall, you are truly warming yourself up for other hunting seasons. I use steel No. 6s with an improved cylinder choke for most of my dove hunting. If I know that shooting situations will be up close, I switch to steel No. 7s, again with the improved cylinder choke.
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