Dove Opener

Let me start out by saying how lucky you Midwesterners are! You really have no idea what it is like to hunt in wide open privately held land versus hunting the public stuff with the white trash.

I went to Gray Lodge (which is a state-run refuge and hunting area) to hunt doves with my neighbor and his entourage of family and friends. All in all 14 guns, quite a group from all classes of life (a story for another day :lol: ). A little background, the group has hunted the same spot on the refuge for the past seven years. The record for limiting out (e.g., you can shoot 10 doves per license) was seven minutes for 12 guns last year. This broke the record of 12 minutes for 14 guns set the previous year. Anyway, we got to the field at 5:30 am, donated huge amounts of blood to the local mosquito population, and awaited in anxious anticipation. One of the guys had dubbed this opening days as "The Fast and the Furious." Well it turned out to be anything but that.

As it turned out, unbeknownest to all in group, the field was not planted to safflower, and the doves had absolutely no reason to the fly to that end of the refuge. So we ended up with three doves collectively amongst the group of 14. As to my first quote, there were 505 people hunting doves on the 8,000 acre Gray Lodge property. We then went to another state run game property, and the local warden told us that between 700 and 1,000 hunters showed up on that 8,500 acre parcel.