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DOVE SEASON KICK'S OFF
WITH A BANG
By: Ron Wilson
September 11, 2008.... The Dove season
opener was great this year. I always look forward to September 1st as it
means I can pick up my shotgun from then until the end of January. Its
usually a rifle or shotgun day for me since retiring.
The Monday opening was not to my liking
as most guys had to return to work
on Tuesday. I was
glad I no longer have that problem as me and the
Modesto Bee parted
ways last year when I retired.
I have been very fortunate to have an
open invitation to hunt doves on private land for some time now. Bob
Woods, my neighbor, had introduced me to his brother-in-law Terry
Robinson several years ago. Terry has access to lots of private property
that he has given me permission to hunt on.
Opening morning I loaded up Peggy Sue, my
Brittany, and followed Bob Wood to met the gang where they had set up
camp on the private land we would be hunting.
When Bob drove past the gate that was the
hot spot on last years hunt, I knew he had missed the road. So we headed
back threw the pasture and found the road over the knoll to where the
group was located. They were in a tree covered ravine, the last wild
tree grove standing as the rest of the ranch has been put under the plow
and planted into almonds.
The land may be more productive and bring
in more money than the cattle did but Bob and I sure miss the way the
land used to be.
Bob and I met Terry and said hello and
then headed to where the hot spot was last year. I set out some dove
decoys and as day light shown over the pasture the many flocks of doves
that came over last year never materialized.
 The
first bird that came by was a duck and a father and son down from us
blasted away at it. I hollered, "hey that’s a really big dove you guys
just shot at"!
A short time later they shot again. I
couldn't see what they shot at as I was on the other side of a bunch of
almond trees that had been piled up. I asked Bob on the other side of
the pile what they had shot at and he said, "a tweedy bird". I said,
"well they are going to shit when that flock of honkers in the distance
come flying overhead".
The hot action just wasn’t going to
happen. I could tell as the doves were not using the pasture this year.
The father and son duo knocked down a dove out in the pasture and the
son went to retrieve it. As he was walking around out there he evidently
had his finger on the trigger as I watched his gun go off in his hands
and the dust boil from the blast that hit the ground a few feet away. I
thought man that duo needs to go home and play Nintendo or some type of
computer game before someone gets hurt.
A dove came by and Bob and I blasted
away. Bob made a great going away shot on it. One came by on my side of
the brush pile and I nailed it. Peggy made a great retrieve out in the
pasture, brought it to the fence, dropped it and crawled under the fence
and sat by my side. I told Peggy to go back and get my dove a couple
times but all she did was look at me with her eyes seeming to say, "I
brought it this far if you want that damn dove reach through the fence
and pick it up"! Bob sure got a kick out of that.
The father and son duo decided to walk
out into the pasture and sit down right in front of us, Boy that sure
screwed us up big time! About that time Terry Robinson came up on his
quad and asked how we were doing. Bob said, "not worth a shit"! Terry
told us to hop on as he had his limit already, Bob hopped on and I told
Terry I would walk with my dog to his hot spot.
After walking down the dirt road over
several rolling knolls of almonds I found Bob blasting away. He already
had a couple down and missed a few. I couldn’t believe it after walking
over several of these rolling knolls of almonds here was a ravine that
the birds were using to travel threw. Hundreds of acres of land to hunt
on and if you were not in a hundred yard area you just weren't going to
get much shooting.
I setup about 40 yards away from Bob and
we started pounding them. The birds were flying down this ravine flyway
and it was steady action for Bob and me until we had our limits. It was
great having Peggy crawl under the fence go out in the almonds find and
retrieve the fallen doves and then bring them back to hand. I never had
to cross a fence one time to help her out.
Bob and I made some great shots and we
made some bad ones but we didn’t care because it was all about the hunt
and being out in the outdoors, watching Peggy Sue do her thing hunting
down the doves we knocked down, retrieving them back to us and that
great feeling of being out hunting and feeling truly alive. |
