Dove Season - Opening Day 2009

Dove season opened this past Tuesday, and as we usually do, Les and I took the day off to go throw lead and see if we could knock a few down. Gary met us at Greg & Cindy's before sun-up and we took our places. We had standing corn on one side and soybeans on another with a telephone line at the split. This typically produces birds for us. However, on this cool opening day, there were just not many birds flying. I ended up getting 5 but lost one in the soybeans. Les and Gary each got one, and around 11:00 we gave up. We hadn't seen a bird in over an hour and just got discouraged. Come to find out Brad went down that evening and nearly limited out. I heard other stories that as the day went on, the birds started coming in.

We went down again on Saturday morning. Got there before sun-up again, but sat in the barn for a couple of hours as the rain just kept coming down. Finally around 9:00 or so the rain lightened up enough that a few birds were moving around. We shot at a couple that were probably too far to shoot, but when you've been sitting for so long, you'll shoot at anything. Then we walked across the field (the corn was now cut) towards a small patch of tree. One bird flew in and any of us could have shot it, but I pulled my trigger first and that was our only bird of the day.

Saturday night I cooked all the birds for some friends and they were really good. I filet them off the breast bone then put a piece of pepper jack cheese and a jalapeno slice between the two halves. Wrap the whole thing with half a slice of bacon and put a toothpick through it to hold it all together. Once on the grill, we dab them in barbecue sauce just before we pull them off the grill. They are delicious! - cld