A sportsman’s favorite season

I have long believed that September and October — along with April — are the three best months on a sportsman’s calendar, especially in South Carolina. April is obvious: there’s turkey season, and, I guess, some pretty good fishing for bass, crappie, stripers, redfish, plus the offshore bluewater species. Of course, since the turkey-hunting bug bit me around 1990, it seems that spending a free day anywhere except in the woods is a waste of time. I can count on both hands the days I’ve spent fishing in the past 10 Aprils. I’ve warned bass fishermen who have asked about going turkey hunting: go only if you never want to catch a spinnerbait fish again.

But I digress.

This is really more about September. It is one of the true times of transition in the wildlife world. Finally, the weather starts to cool off a bit — at least by the end of the month. September mornings are crisp and often cool, even if it’s 90 degrees by lunch time. Wildlife and fish respond to the change of seasons.

September is Labor Day weekend. That means dove hunting, and I have been on some magical hunts.

For several years, my father prepared a little field for a shoot; it was a chance for him to return to his farming roots, getting the field ready for the sunflower and sorghum seeds he mixed together in the hopper. I can remember weekly telephone updates on the state of that field: how much seed the plants were producing, how big the heads were on the sunflowers, his schedule for bush-hogged strips so the doves had bare ground on which to land.

Rarely was there ever a question that anybody who could shoot reasonably well could kill a limit of doves. Once upon a time, I set a limit as my goal every time I went to a dove field. When I arrived for Dad’s annual shoot, my goal was a limit before I finished my second box of shells — the shooting was always so good, a limit was never in doubt; the variable was how long one would take.

One afternoon at about 6 o’clock, after we’d breasted all the doves, packed them on ice and cleaned up, everybody else left and headed home. I climbed into a tree stand in a little sliver of woods that separated the dove field from a half-acre field of clover. By 8, I was dragging out a deer that was my first with a bow.

I’ve never really been able to put in the time needed to really thin out the deer herd in September. For one thing, my right shoulder makes all kinds of cracking and grinding noises when I draw back a bow, and it feels like an alligator is biting and holding on tight. For another, there’s too much good fishing to be done. I can always wait for the rut to kick in to really devote my time to deer; the fishing at the coast in late September and early October is too good to pass up.

As water temperatures moderate, fish start to move, saltwater and freshwater alike. One guide I fished with several times said he rarely visited one local lake unless he could hear the band playing at halftime of the football games at the high school just up the road. In other words, when September arrived, the stripers in that lake turned on.

Largemouth bass and crappie key in on creek channels in our bigger reservoirs as baitfish make a move toward the back of the creeks. In mountain streams, brown trout start to stir as their spawn approaches. At the coast, flounder start to move toward inlets, eventually heading out to spawn along the continental shelf. Redfish, specks, spot, king mackerel — they all start the great feed that carries them through the winter.

Oh, and how can we forget shrimp-baiting season? I’m sure the seafood counters at the grocery stores do quite a bit less business in the fall.

I can’t think of any reason not to like September. I’m going to try and remind myself several times this month why I love it so much. A spinning rod will probably be involved, and some plastic shrimp. And how long will it be before my father notices that I haven’t returned that over-and-under .20-gauge I borrowed in 2006? It almost points itself at the doves.