RoosterTim
New member
Will it ever get here? If I don't shoot at something that is alive and flying soon I think I will go quite MAD!
September 1st
- Thread starter RoosterTim
- Start date
NElabaholic
Member
I'm in complete agreement! The pup and I are gettin a little hard to deal with according to the wife lol
kansasbrittany
Banned
Big 10-4 there good buddy! I'm itching to do some wingshooting myself.
BritChaser
Well-known member
Shooting dove on Sep. 1 helps with ITF syndrome (itchy trigger finger).
Last edited:
BritChaser
Well-known member
Some kind of dove is in my city neighborhood. They look like mournings but not sure.
Last edited:
SetterNut
New member
Driving back from my son's baseball game tonight, I drove by the KSU wheat plots north of the football stadium, must have been 100 of them on the wires and landing in the field. Too bad you can't hunt there
RoosterTim
New member
I keep seeing more and more. I hope the weather stays warm and they don't go south. Seems like every september 1st there is a cold snap and we miss out.
SetterNut
New member
Yep, I think that must be a law of nature, cool wet weather right after Dove season opens
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
That's alright! I kinda like to shoot those little ole teal too!!!
CloseRange
New member
Like SetterNut, I'm seeing doves visit recently harvested wheat fields. Pretty exciting -- exciting to the point that yesterday while visiting Bass Pro Shop I couldn't resist grabbing two boxes of Remington Premier STS Target Load, one box with #9 pellets (for the skeet barrel), the other #8 (for the improved cylinder barrel).
Seeing all those doves perched on telephone wires like vultures, a thought crossed my mind: Wouldn't it be cool if wheat growers had a business option arranged through KW&P whereby they could be paid a certain amount to burn off all or part of their wheat stubble -- even during the off-season months of July and August -- for the purpose of providing easily accessible food for doves.
Growers would not be required to enroll these burned stubble fields in the Walk-In Hunting program (although they'd have that option). The main purpose would be simply to feed doves and thereby keep more in the general area longer, so as to encourage a higher population of birds in the state come hunting season.
Seeing all those doves perched on telephone wires like vultures, a thought crossed my mind: Wouldn't it be cool if wheat growers had a business option arranged through KW&P whereby they could be paid a certain amount to burn off all or part of their wheat stubble -- even during the off-season months of July and August -- for the purpose of providing easily accessible food for doves.
Growers would not be required to enroll these burned stubble fields in the Walk-In Hunting program (although they'd have that option). The main purpose would be simply to feed doves and thereby keep more in the general area longer, so as to encourage a higher population of birds in the state come hunting season.
sounds good, but doves are migratory, any benefit would be minimal and short lived, one good cool down and most of them head south. i doubt KDWP would put any money into a short term venture.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
I do some crazy things at my farm, which is one of the reasons I will never make the cover of Successful Farming, but dang it, it is my farm and I will do what I want. One year I went to work a little patch in the spring that had sunflowers the year before. I started to work it and noticed the nice stand of volunteer sunflowers coming. I pulled the plow out of the ground and let it go. It turned out to be a dove haven. That year I had doves staying in that patch into December. That was back when the season ended on October 30th, so couldn't hunt them, but kind of neat seeing them hang around so long.
One year I went to work a little patch in the spring that had sunflowers the year before. I started to work it and noticed the nice stand of volunteer sunflowers coming. I pulled the plow out of the ground and let it go. It turned out to be a dove haven. That year I had doves staying in that patch into December. That was back when the season ended on October 30th, so couldn't hunt them, but kind of neat seeing them hang around so long.
CloseRange
New member
I do some crazy things at my farm, which is one of the reasons I will never make the cover of Successful Farming, but dang it, it is my farm and I will do what I want.
M.R., you are doing with your sunflower patch exactly what I've been thinking of doing if I can find an affordable modest-size piece of land to buy. I'm mostly ignorant of farming technique, and since I own no farming equipment I'd have to hire a nearby farmer to do the job for me. Still, the idea of developing a customized dove hunting field by means of growing stands of wild sunflowers is super exciting.
Mourning doves are indeed a migratory bird; however, many will over-winter if they have access to a nutritionally adequate food supply. I know this firsthand because while house-sitting a friend's city home three years ago I set out bird seed twice daily in the back yard and saw doves flying in all through the winter. When it snowed I cleared off the feeding area and the birds still came in. One winter morning I counted 95 doves feeding on the ground and perched in nearby trees just outside the living room window.
In managing fields for public dove hunting, one tactic KDWP uses is to develop stands of wild sunflowers and then right before the season opens they have someone crush those stands to ground level so the doves can feed in their preferred location -- on the ground. It's a bird-attracting, bird-holding management trick any landowner should be able to duplicate if they just decide to.
What you did with your sunflower patches is really cool.
Toad
Active member
My best public land dove spot was on a huge patch of wacky weed. It was a low spot that was just downhill of a natural spring, and the "weeds" grew about 15'+ high with stalks as big around as your arm. When we cleaned the birds, their crops would be packed with the seeds. KDWP must not have been too concerned about "baiting" the doves with pot because it was in a fairly high profile area and they never sprayed it or tried to kill it off... We hunted there for several years until I kind of got burned out on eating doves so I pretty much quit hunting them.
Planting a patch of the stuff might attract the wrong kind of attention for a landowner, but if you ever find some growing wild it might be worth an afternoon sit.:thumbsup:
Planting a patch of the stuff might attract the wrong kind of attention for a landowner, but if you ever find some growing wild it might be worth an afternoon sit.:thumbsup:
carptom1
Well-known member
That's funny stuff. Did you feel like eating chocolate covered twinkies after eating the doves?
CloseRange
New member
I've read many places where quail love eating the seeds of the marijuana plant. However, I wonder if whoever wrote those stories confused the marijuana plant with the common hemp plant. Hemp has no psychoactive properties and is used commercially in making various fabrics and fiber-type things, especially in Canada where growing the hemp plant is big business.
That's very interesting, though, this post reporting that doves also favor eating hemp or marijuana seeds. I would think that sunflower seeds per gram have more nutrition value than hemp seed, but I really don't know.
It's been so long since I last saw a big stand of wild hemp, I can't even remember. Probably almost impossible to identify those stands in the fall after a freeze drops their leaves.
That's very interesting, though, this post reporting that doves also favor eating hemp or marijuana seeds. I would think that sunflower seeds per gram have more nutrition value than hemp seed, but I really don't know.
It's been so long since I last saw a big stand of wild hemp, I can't even remember. Probably almost impossible to identify those stands in the fall after a freeze drops their leaves.
wolfcreeknc
Active member
I read a story in North Carolina Wildlife years ago about some guys that were hunting over a watermellon patch and they continually saw lots of birds in a field near by. When they asked the farmer if they could hunt the field he said they could, it belonged to a neighbor (at that time in custody) and a fews days before their hunt the Feds found that it was a field of marijuana and destroyed it. Turned out that that they left behind lots of the seeds and the birds aparently just "floated" into the field making for a great hunt.