waiting for a dove or two
It
is a nice time to hunt squirrels because there are lots and lots of them,
mornings are cooler, and the understory vegetation is thinning a great
deal. There are still plenty of
ticks of course, and this time of year there is one thing a woodland wanderer
has to deal with that drives me crazy… spider webs. Down in Arkansas there are
those doggone timber rattlers.
In
the big trees behind my porch up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, there are fox
squirrels and grey squirrels alike, and they give away their presence by
dropping pieces of hickory nuts and acorns from the boughs above in the
mornings as I sit out there and drink coffee and watch birds.
For
every fox squirrel, there are about 5 or 6 grey squirrels. The woodland habitat of the two is
comparable, but different. Gray
squirrels do not like to leave the confines of what we look at as brushy
woodlands, lots of vines and small trees mixed among the bigger ones. Fox squirrels prefer a more open
woodland. But then, if you ever
hunted squirrels, you know that.
This
week, a great deal of attention will be given to dove hunting. Comparing dove hunting and squirrel
hunting isn’t often done, but I like the shade of the woods much better than
the open sunlight of a sunflower patch where it gets hot in a hurry. Early dove hunting always finds me
itching and sweating because dove hunters usually are hiding in the weeds.
But
if you have done much hunting, you know that in the cool of the evening as the
sun sets, you can hunt water holes with barren banks where doves will come to
water before going to roost. Doves like to alight several feet from the water’s
edge and walk to get a drink. And they do not like to roost in trees filled
with foliage if they can find the barren branches of a big dead tree close to the
fields where they feed or small ponds where they water.
Once
years ago I was fishing Bull Shoals lake when I noticed that doves liked to
come to a shallow point with bare or short grass ground behind it late in the
evening, because some trees which had been killed by high water years before,
stood just up the bank aways and were perfect roosts. On opening day, about dusk, without another dove hunter
within twenty miles, I killed a limit, and my Labrador got some great
experience retrieving them, some from the water beside that point. I didn’t go back there for two weeks,
and then some new doves had moved down and I got a limit again.
I
have often written about hunting doves at a little pond north of Columbia
Missouri when I was a student at M.U.
I took a rod and reel with my shotgun and caught several catfish while
waiting for birds to come in, and finally just figured out I couldn’t do both
at once. A catfish seemed to
always bite as I reached for the shotgun and doves wheeled over the pond when I
was trying to land a fish.
I
have written about embarrassing times too, like the morning when I took Ol’
Rip, a black Labrador that a north Arkansas hunter had given me when I lived
there. She bolted at each shot, so
I tied her leash around my boot.
Boy was that a mistake.
Imagine firing one shot and then being jerked into a milo field by one
foot, trying to aim at another dove.
I never did get Rip to stay when she saw a bird, so she didn’t go
hunting much, but she started me in a lifetime of raising hunting Labradors
with a beautiful litter of puppies.
Maybe
the most embarrassing thing I remember is the very first dove hunt I was ever
on. Of course we never hunted
doves on the Big Piney. September
was teal time, and smallmouth time and trotlining time and squirrel hunting
time. My dad thought dove hunters
were right up there with fly fishermen and skeet shooters!
So
my first job was in Little Rock, Arkansas as the very first outdoor editor for
the Arkansas Democrat newspaper. I
was only 21 at the time and when dove season opened, six months after I got
there, a fellow who worked in the printing shop asked if I wanted to go dove
hunting with him some evening after work.
I bought a box of dove loads and grabbed my old Model 12 Winchester, and
off we went.
He
took me to his favorite spot, a shallow little waterhole next to a junkyard and
as I recall we hid behind a rusty old piece of farm equipment. The doves were thick that evening and I
was proud that I wasn’t missing many when I caught sight of a bird flying
around behind me to my left. I
knew when I pulled that trigger that I had goofed up. The bird I dropped behind me was a robin!
The
guy told me later he was a little surprised that I had done that, considering
that I was an outdoorsman who had been published in Outdoor Life magazine. But he said he was impressed by the
fact that I cleaned the robin and counted it as one of my limit. Truthfully, I didn’t much like the
habitat we hunted that evening, but the company was good and Gloria and I made
a good meal of the doves. When you are just starting out, any free meal is
worth something.
I
told her the robin was just a smaller dove! She said it had a different flavor than the others. Even today, I do not like those
cut grainfields in early September, nearly as much as I like walking a wooded
creek bottom with a .22 rifle watching for chewed up hickory hulls and falling
acorn bits. You cannot beat a small-bore rifle when it comes to hunting
squirrels.
The light rifle is more of a challenge than hunting with a
shotgun, as I always did as a boy, but I definitely cleaned more squirrels when
I took my little 16 gauge Iver-Johnson. A squirrel, cut up and marinated and
grilled over mesquite charcoal, is better eating than a dove. You can pressure
cook the older ones for awhile to make the meat tender, but this time of year
most of the squirrels are younger, probably 6 or 7 young to 1 old one.
It
is best not to kill older females because they will produce lots of young
squirrels. Here are some tips to
help you identify older female squirrels… 1. They are a lot fatter. 2. They really do a lot of barking and
chattering. 3. They watch TV all afternoon! ---Just joking about that, a
little humor there!
Well,
when these city folks go home after Labor Day, I think I will go fishing. When it gets a little chilly later on,
I may take ol’ Bolt and waste some shells on doves. Then I think I’ll go out
and bag a squirrel or two amongst the yellowing leaves announcing the coming of
the greatest of all months… October.
But shucks, I love the woods in September…except for those danged spider
webs.
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