The Feel of Steel

Knock off the rust, and fill your bag this month with fast-flying, sweet-tasting doves.

Floodwaters left by Tropical Storm Ernesto were still rising, but that didn’t prevent several dozen hunters from finding a refuge from their day-to-day cares on opening day of the 2006 dove season. Some roads were closed to vehicle traffic around Greenville and Kinston.

Nevertheless, all the invited hunters made it for lunch.

Satterthwaite Road was nearly underwater at the sign marking the entrance to Feather Creek Farms, a licensed controlled shooting preserve owned by Joseph Briley. Briley at age 40, has been farming all of his life.

“I’m a farmer,” he said. “I plant corn, beans, wheat and tobacco. Feather Creek Farms is on 3,000 acres, and we set aside 200 acres to plant just for hunting upland birds and dove hunting. The dove hunt kicks off the year, and guests come from all across the state. It’s just like all the other small farms where dove hunting is a tradition.”

Friends and families come to hunt, and everyone brings their wives and children. Briley sends out invitations for the dove hunts and offers a big barbecue dinner, a Carolina dove-hunt opening-day tradition.

But the foundation for the first-hunting-day-of-the-year tradition begins during spring planting season. While in the past, dove hunters relied on the normal planting and harvest routines for supplying doves, farmers such as Briley plant crops specifically for attracting doves. He cultivates 200 acres with an early-maturing variety of corn, which is most of the secret of the success of his dove hunt. But he also plants other small grains that don’t have harvest as a goal.

The “harvest” is counted not in pounds or tons but in bag limits of doves.

“We plant 25 or 30 acres of sunflowers in strips around the dove hunting areas,” Briley said. “We try to harvest our corn by opening day. We pick it and put in a bin to use for deer feeding, and we also sell some to pay for planting the other grains. We also have milo planted as buffers around the corn fields for upland birds and that also attracts doves.

“We also have lots of water holes. The doves need the water holes throughout the planted area, and they’re also great places for cooling off hunters’ retrievers. They’re also good for training retrievers and getting them ready for dove hunting. You don’t want your dog to get overheated while you’re getting him ready for hunting.”

Darrell Holland is the manager of Feather Creek Farms. He said it takes a lot of time to prepare for the farms’ annual dove hunts, which occur on opening day, Labor Day and the following Saturday if there are enough doves for hunting after opening weekend.

“This year, we built a road to break up a wet field into four areas for better drainage,” he said. “We let everybody pick their own spots and get over there at the same time. It lets them spread out when everybody is within 100 yards of a road. We always have a safety meeting before the hunt, and I can use the roads to drive around in an ATV and spot situations that can be corrected.

“You don’t shoot low so you could hit somebody with your shot pattern, and we don’t want you to load your gun until you get to your spot. You also must unload your gun when you get ready to leave. I drive around the fields to make sure everybody’s happy and having a good time and being safe.”

Besides supervising the planting of dove fields, Holland mows once a month around the property to keep the roads open once the season begins. While most hunters have four-wheel-drive vehicles or trucks, some have only sedans. There’s nothing worse than not being able to drive near a dove-hunting site, so hunters can move back and forth between their vehicles to get extra ammunition, cool drinks from an ice chest or things they forgot in the excitement, such as a wallet with a hunting license inside.

“Maintaining the roads is only secondary to planting the fields,” Holland said. “A good dove hunt takes a lot of planning ahead of time to make it an exciting event.”

Some hunters mark the start of a new season by buying a new shotgun. But some don’t shoot their guns at the range to get a feel for them before taking them to the field. Holland said that’s a mistake.

“You can shoot doves with any gauge shotgun you shoot well,” he said. “Most hunters shoot a 12- or 20-gauge with No. 7 ½ or 8 shot,” he said. “That’s fine as long as you can handle the recoil. But you can shoot up lots of shells to down a limit of doves. A good shot will kill 12 doves with less than a box of 25 shells. But someone who hasn’t had as much experience will take four or five boxes to down a limit of doves.”

There are two classes of hunters who use the smaller gauges like the 28-guage and .410 bore shotguns. The first is young hunters and small-framed women who aren’t able to handle the larger guns. The second is hunters who have been around a while and like to use the sub-gauges for the extra sport they provide.

“The important thing is not shooting at a dove too far or you’ll just waste shells,” Holland said. “You also don’t want to shoot at one too close, so you don’t have enough pattern spread to hit the bird. If you’re shooting a smaller gauge with a lightweight shot charge, you have to hold your shots down to 20 or 25 yards. With a 20-gauge or 12-gauge, the range increases to 40 yards.

“If there are plenty of doves around, which there should be if you’ve done your homework by planting the right kinds of dove foods, there’s no need to take out-of-range shots and waste shells or cripple birds you can’t retrieve.

“Besides picking your shots within the ideal range for your gun, choke and load, the next most important thing is making sure you follow through with your shots. If you get your gun swinging and stop when you shoot, you’re going to shoot behind the birds. You have to keep swinging the gun. It just takes a bit of experience to get the hang of it. The more you shoot, the better you’re going to get.”

Some other tips Holland has is to not put doves on the ground after retrieving them because fire ants will find them. He said it’s a better idea to put downed doves in a cooler full of ice to keep the sun off them so they’ll taste better than if they were allowed to ferment in the heat.

He also said to walk straight to a dove you’ve just downed without taking your eyes off the spot where it fell. It’s hard to find doves that land in a sunflower field because they can look just like a seed head on the ground. Other crops like milo and corn are so thick, finding doves in them if standing crops can be difficult. If a dove can’t be found, the spot should be marked by lining up an object or using a piece of paper towel or toilet paper so the area can be searched later with a dog.

“If you have a dog, keep him in the shade and let him cool off in a pond when he gets hot,” he said. “You also need to keep water and ice nearby so you can keep cool. It can get awfully hot and muggy out there in September.”

Talk of so many doves on the electric wires it made them sag turned out to be true. There were several thousand doves on the wires when the hunters entered the field at Feather Creek. The birds flew away but returned in moments, resulting in a shooting spree that lasted a couple of hours.

Jonathan Warren, 33, of Efland, made the drive to Feather Creek Farm. He works for an automotive supplier who makes a protectant for plastic parts.

“I’ve really missed hunting the last couple of years,” he said. “I like to hunt ducks, deer and doves. I used to come every opening day. But I’ve been in Brazil the last two years, and I’ve missed being able to come.”

Warren’s shooting was a bit rusty at first. He missed what he said should have been easy shots. But the sun was straight behind the doves, making them difficult to see. They also flew between light wires, dipping and diving, and he had to wait until they cleared the wires. It was hot and the sweat was getting in his eyes and on his sunglasses.

“My shooting’s off because I haven’t been able to practice,” he said. “But with doves, you don’t really need an excuse to miss. If there are plenty of birds, you’ll get into the hang of it again soon. Usually if you’re missing, you’re shooting behind the birds. Even if you’ve only been waiting since last dove season for a hunt, they’re still going to look like they’re going a lot slower than they really are. It’s easy to shoot behind them, but it’s hard to miss them by shooting too far in front of them.”

Soon he connected on a dove. Then he hit another and another. His tiny pile soon grew into the better portion of a 12-dove limit as the swing of the shotgun came back to him after the long layoff.

“Whether you have a good or bad day of shooting, a dove hunt is pure fun,” he said.

Sam Martin of Greenville walked with his 11-year-old son, Caleb, and his 8-year-old daughter, Amy Kate, to take up a position near a power pole in a sunflower patch. Doves flew near the power line, offering steady shooting. The trio sat on stools and tried to stay in the scant shade offered by the power pole. When it grew too hot, Caleb walked over to the edge of the field where some tall pines offered the relief of deep shade.

While his father was shooting a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, the more diminutive Martin was having a go with a featherweight, shooting a Noble 28-gauge double-barrel shotgun that had been his grandfather’s gun.

“I’ve been hunting since I was 7,” Caleb said. “I hunt duck and doves because it’s fun. I like doing other things, too. But the most fun on Labor Day weekend is being out here hunting with my dad.”

“That little gun was given to me by my dad,” his father said. “Now I’m passing it on to my son. There’s nothing like hunting to bring families together.”

Amy Kate helped find the doves downed by the men. She said she was still too young to shoot. But once she got old enough, she would like to try dove hunting.

“I just like being outside,” she said. “It’s fun finding all the birds that fall and watching the other ones fly away.”

“I’ll start her off with a small gauge, too,” Martin said. “It really matters more that they’re not afraid of the gun than how many doves they hit or miss when the kids are starting out.”

Caleb downed his limit with the Noble 28-guage opening day. But on Labor Day, his prized 28-guage quit working. He had no other small-bore to shoot and thought he was out of the hunt. But another, much-older hunter nearby was shooting an old Stevens .410 double-barrel. He had killed his limit and gave Caleb his gun, along with several boxes of ammunition.

Martin offered to pay for the growing pile of empty shells. But the benefactor shook his head. He just sat and watched, smiling, happy to be seeing another lightweight hunter being initiated into dove hunting without taking a bruising by using a lightweight shotgun.

Helping other hunters have fun and success is also part of the dove-hunting tradition.