Doves and dragon fly doves

Jeff in TX

After only pulling the trigger once in the first two days of dove season the third day proved different. My buddy five miles down the road called and said they were limiting out in an hour and has more doves than he's ever seen. He's the only one in Young County Texas that is shooting. He said come on down and shoot your fill this evening. We had company out for the long weekend and he said bring your buddy if he wants to hunt. We loaded up and went over. As we sat on his porch within 10 min we had counted 40 doves fly across his side field. My buddy and his 13 year old grandson Eric walked over and set up. It was five in the afternoon. For the next hour we shot at a bunch of birds.

I'm not very good at dove hunting but I really try hard. My best for a single outing was nine. I got 10 on evening hunt and shot just over two boxes of shells. Yes, I know I'm really bad at this. My buddy got 7 and lost a few in the tall grass. By 7 PM all we saw were a couple more birds until it was dark. Kinda screwy as we thought there would be a bunch more once the sun went down.

This was his grandson's first time hunting. It brought back warm memories for me watching the evening play out. I'd here him yell doves!!!!! Sorry it's a dragon fly! This went on throughout the evening. I had to say those stupid dragon flies for a split second make a lot of shooters think doves are coming in. Eric was shooting a single shot 20 ga. Like a lot of 13 year olds he listened to some of what we had to say but not all. Grand pa kept yelling the birds were too far away that he was shooting at. The boy was having the time of his life just shooting his shotgun at birds hoping one would fall out of the air which it never did. Then I'd hear doves! Sorry another dragon fly! By the end of the evenings hunt grandpa was frustrated and Eric had had a great time. I told him he did a great job but needed to listen better when grandpa was trying to help him. Thinking back, I saw a lot of myself in the boy and my dad had a ton of patience with me!

Heading over tonight to shoot some more doves if they fly and maybe one dragon fly for Eric!

NN

Sure is a ball when they come that fast.

timc

Sounds like fun times and yes I'm a dragonfly dove victim too!

Bigslug

I don't know how many dragonflies I was starting to lock phasers on during the opener at Salton Sea, so it seems the phenomenon is not a local one.

Any critter as voraciously hungry for skeeters as a dragonfly is a friend of mine!

Six-Gun

Regardless of the bird counts at the end of the week, it sure sounds like "mission accomplished" to me. Great job initiating the young man to the dove field.

gator

Many dragonflies made my shotgun start it's way to my shoulder, we also have a kind of swallow that resembles a dove at first glance. However they fly more erratic than dove.

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Jeff in TX

gator wrote: »

Many dragonflies made my shotgun start it's way to my shoulder, we also have a kind of swallow that resembles a dove at first glance. However they fly more erratic than dove.

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We have those same swallows or splittails as they're called around here. Eric yelled doves on quite a few occasions only to be told they were splittails. Again, first time out dove hunting and learning as he went.

snake284

gator wrote: »

Many dragonflies made my shotgun start it's way to my shoulder, we also have a kind of swallow that resembles a dove at first glance. However they fly more erratic than dove.

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Yeah and they're a bit smaller. I've shot at em but I can't remember ever hitting one of those, I think they fly right between the shot pattern.

This year I really would have loved to have a place to shoot doves. I wanted to take that Sweet 16 out and blood it.