It Takes a Bubba

To find late-season dove hunting areas, it’s always good to know a local boy who understands how these birds have changed since Labor Day.

For many hunters, a Labor Day hunt for mourning doves is the highlight of the season. That’s fine if that’s the only time someone wants to burn some gunpowder. But some hunters continue the sport into winter and say it’s the best time for the sportiest game bird.

A crowd gathered at Kopps Convenience store in Bolivia. The air had a chill and coffee cup lids issued steam as lips gingerly sipped hot liquid.

Yankee accents mingled with those of good old boys as everyone chattered about work, families and told jokes. But when a pickup drove up and a lanky country boy jumped out all voices hushed at the scouting report as if listening to a preacher in church.

“It’s a big field,” said Kenneth Howard, owner of Kenneth Howard Concrete. “We’re going to need lots of shooters to keep the birds moving today.”

Howard’s nickname is “Bubba.” This nickname is honored among local country folk, who are becoming outnumbered in Brunswick County, one of the most rapidly developing counties in the nation.

Loss of farms is one of the worst problems besetting coastal hunters. But Howard has permission to hunt several surviving farms.

“I love hunting doves in the winter,” Howard said. “I also love hunting them the first season and the Thanksgiving season. I hunt deer and by December or January, it gives me a break from deer hunting.”

The pickups and minivans formed a caravan, headlights shining into the dawn. They followed Howard’s vehicle through a gate he unlocked then fell off one by one as he pointed out hunting locations.

“Doves fly the tree lines and the power lines or along the ridges and dips,” he said. “There are certain places they like, and after you’ve hunted a field a few years, you know where their fly ways are. But they can still shift with the wind direction and the shooting pressure.”

Howard led hunters along a power line right-of-way that bisected the field. Some put spinning wing decoys on the ground and others used foam-bodied or plastic decoys. But some like David Dawson sat on folding stools with their backs to the poles.

“I’ve gotten eight today and it’s my first time,” he said. “I’m shooting high brass No. 6s.”

“Late season doves are full-grown,” Howard said. “They’re wary. They fly faster and they are harder to bring down because they’re fully feathered. It can take expensive shells to bring them down. But when you kill one, you have something. Some of the juvenile birds you shoot opening day are so small there’s hardly anything to cook.”

The important thing during the late season is finding a place to hide. Howard’s preferred location is a harvested soybean field. Soybeans are harvested later than corn and the stubble is often not turned under until spring.

“Corn is great during the first season,” he said. “But the corn is gone and the stubble is plowed under by now.

“Soybeans are a high-energy food source so doves like them. The ground is open and they like that, too. But sometimes you can’t find a place to hide. When the doves land in the middle of a 100-acre field, you can’t get enough hunters in the middle to keep the flying.

Wearing rubber boots and brush pants can be a smart move for a late-season dove shoot because one of the few places to hide from doves is a ditch bank.

Soybean fields are open and light colored so anything sticking up such as a makeshift or factory-made blind will flare hard-hunted doves. But grass and weeds sticking along a ditch bank provide cover.

Brush pants and rubber boots also make it easier to cross the ditches and get through the briars to retrieve doves at the opposite side. When hiding along a ditch, odds are 50-50 doves will fall on the other side.

“My dog is 3 years old,” Howard said. “She gets a lot of practice and has had a good trainer.

“Keeping a retriever steady is the most important thing when hunting them on doves.”

Howard trained Lucy, making her lay down while most hunters make their dogs sit. Lucy is a chocolate Lab. Her color doesn’t blend with light colors winter soybean fields. Any movement can alarm a late season dove that’s “been there before.”

Howard made a nice double on an incoming flock numbering just over a dozen. His girlfriend, Amy Helms, was watching.

“I don’t shoot,” she said. “I just like to be out here and watch the dog work.”

“She’s my other retriever,” Howard said. “She likes to get out here and have fun.”

Lucy retrieved the doves while Howard continued shooting. Although it was late season, he was shooting the same gun and load he uses for the early season.

“One ounce of No. 8 shot in a 12-gauge is usually enough,” he said. “I shoot 12-gauge over-and-under with an improved cylinder and a modified choke. It’s a fixed choke gun, so I can’t change chokes. If the birds are flying high, I switch to high-brass 7 1/2s.”

Doves fly higher and faster when the wind is blowing or it is cold. But those are the best times to hunt. Weather fronts bring doves to the state and send them out. Overnight, they can bring a feast or famine of doves to a particular field.

“You have to do your homework and keep scouting,” Howard said. “Nor’easters bring them in or move them out. They feed right ahead of the front or come in behind it.

“They also eat all the food in field and leave because they feed in huge flocks in winter. I also like to shoot in the morning because you can ruin a field with an afternoon shoot. Shoot in the afternoon and the birds might leave. But if you shoot in the morning, it gives the birds time to feed the rest of the day so they’ll stay.”

Howard hunts all kinds of game at farms where he hunts doves. At some of them he has permission to hunt deer. Whenever he heads for a tree stand to hunt deer, he is always on the lookout for doves.

The doves fly early in the morning and in the middle of the afternoon during their prime feeding times. The rest of the time, they may gather along the road sides on the power lines.

Howard uses binoculars to spot doves on the power lines if they are a long way off the road. In the distance, other birds could appear to be doves. But most of the time, especially at the larger fields, he has to drive the edges of a field or get out of his pickup and walk across the field to find doves.

“You might have to get out and walk across a field until you jump the doves because they can all be feeding in one spot,” he said.

Doves form much bigger flocks in winter than in September when the birds are in family groups and small flocks. When doves migrate, they can move in or out of an area after gathering into a flock of hundreds Before migrating, they “stage” just like waterfowl, with every dove in an area coming together in one field with a high-energy food source to store reserves for a long flight ahead of a cold front.

When one of these huge flocks is in a field, sometimes one shot can shock them into moving to another state. The same can be true when the first doves arrive. But if you let a new flock stay in a field a couple of days before hunting it, the birds will stay and attempt to feed despite gunfire. Finding a big flock in a field right after the passing of a cold front can therefore be a bonanza for late season hunters.

While some of the hunters stuck around the edges of the field a few watched where the birds were flying then sat on stools in the middle of the field. They used full-choke shotguns for the longer shots and high brass shotgun shells with No. 6 or No. 7 ½ shot. The hunters in the field kept doves from landing, helping hunters along the edges keep shooting.

“All I use for hiding is a camouflaged hat and I keep my face down,” Howard said. “They flare from the shine of your face and from any movement.

“In the middle of the field, doves can give you some shooting. The secret is not to move at all, not even blink an eyelash until they’re in range. You can’t turn to face them or lift your gun.

“It’s no place for a dog out there because a dog is going to move. It might just be a wagging tail tip or panting or the dog may only turn his head to watch the birds and that’s enough to cost you some shooting.”

Howard has earned his hunting rights after a lifetime of getting to know land-owners and taking care of the fields he hunts. He makes sure hunters don’t leave a lot of trash or drive into wets spots and always makes certain gates are locked.

It’s harder to get permission to hunt during the early parts of the season. But by the late season, the greater difficulty is getting enough hunters to surround a dove field.

“Even though they may know what shooting means, doves still land out in the middle and stay there, in spite of all the gunfire,” Howard said. “These birds get hungry when it gets cold. Someone might have to go out and walk them up. Once one lands, the rest of them land with him. Pretty soon, they’re all landing where you can’t get a shot. You can send a kid, your dog or your girlfriend out to scare them up.”

Hunters should know for certain who the property owner is before hunting and just asking or just getting invited is not always a guarantee. The way I met Howard was under circumstances that come under the “friend-of-a-friend” gray area in many types of hunting.

Another Brunswick County hunter had invited me when there were many hunters in field. Later, he said it was all right to go back alone with a few decoys. Howard noticed my decoys and blind setup.

“Do you have permission to hunt here?” he said.

When I named the person name giving me permission to hunt, he said that was O.K. because he knew the other “Bubba.” Then he said the field I was in was “burned” out and invited my to come along to join the crowd in another field.

“Some of these farms are really big,” he said. “This one is 750 acres. You need a lot of hunters to keep the doves flying. But the farmers want to know who’s out there hunting and that they can trust not to abuse their property.”

Sometimes more than one land-owner owns a field. Sometimes a dove field’s farming rights are leased with or without hunting rights. Short of going to the registrar of tax office, ownership of property can be difficult to determine. Even knocking on doors of nearby homes and asking does not always determine the owner.

Sometimes the doves aren’t in a field at all. Howard has had some excellent hunting in cutover timber areas.

“It’s thick in the cutovers,” he said. “That’s when you really need a dog. They can find doves where you can’t even go. It can get you into some good shooting that other hunters don’t even consider. But I’ve had some really good shoots in a cutover.”

It takes someone with local knowledge to find doves no matter where they are congregating, including under-utilized places like cutovers.

But anyone with the nickname “Bubba” is sure to have the inside track about what remains of rural Brunswick County and doves found there.