Opening Day of Dove Season

As most hunters know today was opening day of dove season. As we usually do, Les and I headed up to Blackwalnut to the Wehmeyer's place to see if we could take down our dozen birds. We didn't expect to see any, just becuase we had not been seeing any flying in the days leading up to today. We suspect it is due to the cold snap we got for the few weeks prior to today. I picked Les up about 5:30 and we were at our spot before 6:00. We finished our coffee and watched the sun start to give the back side of our hunting area an early morning glow. That was our signal to load the guns and take our positions, dove season was open. We sat for a while with some gun shots off in the distance. Distant shots are good, because it wasn't long after that and we had our first round of birds coming through. Most of the morning they would come in waves. A few at a time, mostly towards Les. They would circle in the field next to him where the neighbors had a decoy line set up and when they missed, Les would BLAST them. Brad showed up about an hour after we got there. We each had about 4 birds, and it didn't take long and Brad had 3 on the ground. Brad and I hunted 75 yards from each other facing opposite directions and calling out birds for each other while Les sat over behind the barns in his perfect spot, blasting one bird after another. By the end of the day Les had 10 with one lost, I had 9 with one lost and Brad had 4, two lost and one on top of the barn. For not expecting to even see any birds, we had a really good morning. By 11:00 we were home with the birds soaking in brine just waiting to be wrapped in a half a slice of bacon with a jalapeno pepper slice and a slice of pepper jack cheese sandwiched between the two pieces of breast meat, grilled with a dab of barbeque sauce. Now that is some good eatin'!