Late season doves

[Stan Hillis]

Six of us shot doves this afternoon in our sunflower field in Burke Co., GA. It's 24 acres and normally in the early season we have 15+ guns to shoot. But, late season it's tough to get a big group out in the cold, so today we only had six. I normally shoot small bores at doves, but it being late season and the big migratory doves being tough as they are, I decided to deploy the BE Fox 12, with 32" barrels. I set up my MOJO decoy on about a 12' pole and placed three immobile dove decoys on top of some sunflower stalks. They started coming in to feed about 3 o'clock, and for about 45 minutes it was fast paced. I was in a good location, and the Mojo pulled most droves by me, allowing for a shot or two. Then, as the pace slowed, I actually shot better. This gun is choked LM right and IM left, which worked great this afternoon.

I got my limit easily, and early. The other guys struggled with the fast flying birds in big droves. I missed my share too, but it was gratifying to find out, back at the trucks, that the 100 yr. old Fox was high gun on the field. BTW, the other five guys were shooting modern made jammamatics. Next highest bag was six.

Late season doves will test you!! Pics tomorrow.

SRH

[Stan Hillis]

Shot exactly 50% on these late season bombers. What sporty shooting! Big droves of as many as 20-30 strafing the field. If they weren't coming straight toward you there was not a chance of getting two good shots per drove, as fast as they were flying. One nice double ..........killed the incomer with the right then killed another crossing to my left with the left.



Happy New Year to all!!

SRH

[vaturkey]

Looks like fun. I do like eating those little suckers. Wrapped in bacon and flopped on a hot grill for about 6 minutes and you are in heaven.

[Jim Cloninger]

Great shooting, Stan. I went out for late season doves here in CA one time. Only saw 1 dove! Talk about good eating, dove is second behind green wing teal for me. You can send me any extras you have!

[Jeff S]

Thanks for sharing your hunt. That's a beautiful gun!

[tnmike]

Stan: Great Pic. Curious as to when the sunflowers were planted for this late season hunt? We plant here (near Memphis) between April 15 and May 15 for September opener. I have had them regenerate from fallen seed but the frost always catches the "second" crop.

Mike

[Stan Hillis]

I plant them as soon as I finish corn planting, in April. These are sunflowers that we dessicated in mid-August, shot on opening day, which is the first Saturday of September, and again on Labor Day. We left them alone after that until last Saturday to let the numbers build back up.

Excessive rains and warm weather combined will deteriorate the sunflowers to the point that they are no longer attractive to doves. We haven't had that kind of weather here this fall/winter, so there's lots for the doves to eat. With this cold we're having this week I suspect they will be hitting the peanut fields hard tho', there's a lot more energy for them in peanuts than sunflowers.

Our season goes out on the 15th and we will jump around shooting some fields here and there from now until then, but I doubt I'll have another late season day, like that one, this season. But .............. you never know.

SRH