Holy cow is dove hunting fun! For some reason I've always shy'd away from dove hunting because the mental picture of it wasn't appealing. Based on what friends described I envisioned mass quantities of people, alcohol, getting peppered with shot and not a lot of fun. For whatever reason I just pictured a scene like the sandbar in Havasu except everyone had guns. Boy was I wrong.
I tried last year, one day and never saw a single bird flying. I got a few but that was because I started walking the ditches and flushing dove.
So this year I figured I'd give it a real effort. I went out the Friday before opener to Blythe and spent the day scouting around and saw tons of birds in two different fields and had a plan. My old man and I drove out late Wednesday night and hit the field Thursday morning.
What an amazing experience. There were so many dove flying that I actually had a hard time because a lot of the times I would go for a shot there were multiple birds in the sight picture and I found myself hesitating for a moment to pick a single and then squeezing off a shot in desperation as they got out of range. That and I swear those huge dragon flies are in kahoots with the darn dove. A number of times I'd mount the gun and a freaking dragon fly the size of a sparrow would buzz around the end of the muzzle and throw me off LOL. On Thursday it took me 5 boxes of shells and an AM-PM hunt to get my limit. No excuses, I need to work on my shooting. This was after the morning shoot, I didn't take pics in the afternoon.
It was so cool that I drove out Sunday with my two sons, age 5-6 and my old man again to hunt Sunday afternoon and then again Monday morning. My sons painted up their own buckets, had their bb guns and haven't stopped talking about it since. As a father I couldn't have been more happy to have them with me and to watch them enjoy themselves. Both my boys were calling out birds for me and at one point my oldest said "papa needs help he is to old to see all the birds" and went over to my dad and sat with him to call em out. In hind sight I should have done a better job of taking pictures because we had 3 generations out there and I only took one picture the entire time.
My youngest tuckered out
I'll probably go out again this weekend with my boys. Hopefully I can work on improving my hit rate.
I had so much fun and am now hooked. My only complaint was the amount of trash left by dirtbag hunters. Truly disgusting in my opinion. Each session we were out I filled two 5 gallon buckets of shells, boxes and drink containers and that was just a drop in the bucket vs the amount of trash out there. What kind of A hole just throws their shell box on the ground and leaves all their hulls around. I thought it was very sad to see.
I tried last year, one day and never saw a single bird flying. I got a few but that was because I started walking the ditches and flushing dove.
So this year I figured I'd give it a real effort. I went out the Friday before opener to Blythe and spent the day scouting around and saw tons of birds in two different fields and had a plan. My old man and I drove out late Wednesday night and hit the field Thursday morning.
What an amazing experience. There were so many dove flying that I actually had a hard time because a lot of the times I would go for a shot there were multiple birds in the sight picture and I found myself hesitating for a moment to pick a single and then squeezing off a shot in desperation as they got out of range. That and I swear those huge dragon flies are in kahoots with the darn dove. A number of times I'd mount the gun and a freaking dragon fly the size of a sparrow would buzz around the end of the muzzle and throw me off LOL. On Thursday it took me 5 boxes of shells and an AM-PM hunt to get my limit. No excuses, I need to work on my shooting. This was after the morning shoot, I didn't take pics in the afternoon.
It was so cool that I drove out Sunday with my two sons, age 5-6 and my old man again to hunt Sunday afternoon and then again Monday morning. My sons painted up their own buckets, had their bb guns and haven't stopped talking about it since. As a father I couldn't have been more happy to have them with me and to watch them enjoy themselves. Both my boys were calling out birds for me and at one point my oldest said "papa needs help he is to old to see all the birds" and went over to my dad and sat with him to call em out. In hind sight I should have done a better job of taking pictures because we had 3 generations out there and I only took one picture the entire time.
My youngest tuckered out
I'll probably go out again this weekend with my boys. Hopefully I can work on improving my hit rate.
I had so much fun and am now hooked. My only complaint was the amount of trash left by dirtbag hunters. Truly disgusting in my opinion. Each session we were out I filled two 5 gallon buckets of shells, boxes and drink containers and that was just a drop in the bucket vs the amount of trash out there. What kind of A hole just throws their shell box on the ground and leaves all their hulls around. I thought it was very sad to see.
