Dove opener update: Numbers 'spotty' to 'few and far between'
Guide's weekend scouting tells him numbers are lowest he's seen in 30 years
Not a week into my new residency in Oklahoma I owned a non-resident hunting license and I had “jumped in the truck” to learn about birds I never had hunted before.
Mourning doves were something I heard cooing on summer mornings growing up in Iowa. I’d never even dreamed of hunting them, and now I was in Oklahoma rumbling down dirt roads from Adair to Ponca City in an F-350 with a Ranch Hand bumper daring anything to get in our way.
I had a full day with guide Jack Morris. I learned a helluva lot and that one day in August 2008 I saw more mourning doves than I’d seen in my lifetime. I learned what kinds of fields they liked, where they loafed, where they roosted and a little about how the dove game was played—and just how much dove hunting relied upon the status types of crops and the weather, the damned weather.
Thirteen years later the “lot” was lacking this past weekend and things are looking grim for Wednesday’s opening day, according to Jack.
“It’s the absolute worst I’ve seen it in 30 years in northeast Oklahoma,” he said with a chuckle. “I might just go golfing this weekend.”
Some birds are around, of course, and he has some clients to hit the fields, but he’s of the mind that the hatches were not happening this year in many locations. Season likely will improve with a cold front or two if birds flock together and the last young of the year come off their nests.
Many cornfields have yet to be harvested and a lot of milo is just starting to be picked as well, he said. Things are running a little later than average due to rain.
“Spotty” is the common word right now. Morris said it’s more like a few in a spot here and few in a spot there—and far in-between.
“Out west of I-35 it was a little better and I saw a hundred birds here and a hundred there, but I’m not coming across any 5,000 in one field,” he said.
He knows of a sunflower field that produced so much that “seed is laying on the ground like around the bird feeder at Utica Square,” he said.
“There are about 100 birds around that field, the same 100 birds that were there a month ago,” she said.
Hatches in a lot of locations just didn’t come off, he believes.
“Look around your neighborhood, how many birds do you see on the wires? One? Two together? It should be family groups, four, five or six,” he said.
My neighborhood has a lot of construction right now and I’d blamed the lack of doves on changes here, but Jack might just be right. I have two mourning doves in my backyard. I had two mourning doves in my backyard two months ago. Usually I’m seeing small groups on the powerlines around Bixby by now.
I drove about a five-mile radius around my house Monday evening and the biggest group of doves I saw was three. I saw eight singles (three of which were European collared doves). I should be seeing larger groups around Bixby by now.
Even guide Gordy Montgomery—who puts more work into managing crops to favor doves than any man on Earth—said things do indeed look spotty, but he has some decent fields, one of which is the best he’s seen in a few years.
But, where good fields often hold more than 1,000 birds, he’s seeing counts of 250-450 average, and those are good fields this year—where a normal count is 1,000-1,500 or more.
“Doves are down for sure per square mile, and across most counties,” he said. “I think it may be better later this year.”
Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation wildlife biologist Matt Mattioda said the week since we last talked looked good for the birds and for the fieldwork the Wildlife Department has been doing on Northeast Wildlife Management Areas.
“I still think people will do OK,” he said.
Like I’ve always said (for the past 12 years and 370 days), dove season can be a crapshoot even if you’re not a crappy shooter, but it is always a great traditional day to get together with friends and shoot at the breeze.
Be safe out there, keep those shotguns swingin’ and try not to miss—your chances to take a shot might be few this year.
Just a few pairs in pastures around here in far eastern Delaware county. Dove season takes me back to my youth as Bo Morris was my Dad’s close friend, a hunter’s hunter. I learned hunting and shooting from them. Early morning breakfasts at area motels, placement around fields Bo had scouted and befriended farmers, ending with morning with the men smoking cigars and drinking beer while I cleaned the bounty in a roadside culvert. No was one of the kindest “man’s man” I knew growing up. Good luck this season.