Opening Day of Dove Season...Translation...The First Day of Autumn

In the southern United States, autumn doesn’t begin on a calendar or when the moon is located in the proper place in the sky.  It doesn’t depend on the Autumnal Equinox.  No, it begins on the opening day of dove season.  

It is a good three weeks until the calendar tells us we are ready for the seasons to change but yesterday was "opening day."  The college football season is underway and we have now been on our first hunt of the year. Opening day of dove season is as much a social event for the whole family, with as many as five generations joining in the activities that start early and last until well after dark. Because yesterday was Sunday and, in our state, dove season can’t open on Sunday morning while folks are in church, shooting was delayed until 2:00 p.m.  So everyone in our hunt gathered for a lunch on the lawn.  Barbeque pork and baked beans, cornbread salad, slaw, crab dip and more than a score of other dishes awaited everyone. There were at least a half dozen desserts for us to enjoy but the real main dish was the hunt.

We all enjoyed the feast and then sat around in lawn chairs and swapped stories of days gone past…some true, some embellished and some out and out fairy tales (lies) until the time was right for the hunt. That went on for a couple of hours and then one by one we decided to take our spots in the field. 

Dove hunting is like no other hunting.  It often times is a waiting game.  You can prepare a field by mowing it close to the ground and disking it slightly and, you can even put out decoys to lure the birds in from the sky but there is almost nothing else you can do but wait for the birds to come in.  Well, yesterday they did just that they came in by the dozen.  Almost immediately they started flying and we were able to get a lot of shooting in.  For those that don’t know, this little bird is capable of flying at speeds up to 55 mph or 88kph and, with a tail wind, they can exceed that.  It is not as easy as it sounds.  Yeah sure, there are those few hunters that are such great shots that they can get the limit with the same number of shells but for those of us that are average with a shotgun,  the bird has the definite advantage over us.

    

Yesterday was an extremely warm day to be sitting in the sun all afternoon, but the excitement of the hunt made it worthwhile. The temperature was in the upper nineties and the heat index was hovering around 100 degrees F but Holden, Logan and I sat there patiently to shoot our limit of birds.  We sat there in the hot September sun from 2:00 until 6:30 p.m. when we went back to tell more tales and talk about all the great shots we made as well as share the stories of the ones that flew past us unharmed.  The food was brought back out and more desserts were eaten, then all the hunters posed with the days bounty of birds. 

The festivities went into the night and the young guys planned the next day’s hunt while the older generations sat and visited about yesterday, today and tomorrow.

 

Another opening day has come and gone but next year we can add stories from this hunt to those we tell around the lawn as we gather for the 2014 celebration of this passage of seasons.