Who would have thought....

[Smoke]

Every year I make the pilgrimage to Monahans to shoot at more dove than one can count. It was an exceptional year.

This week a friend of the family and I were talking birds. He commented that he had an unusual amount of dove that fly over his house twice a day. WE set a time and I show up.

He lives in a mildly populated area on the outskirts of Waco. He told me the birds fly by every morning but are too high to shoot. They return late in the evening.

Sure enough...about 7:00pm we are mauled. Birds flying by as thick as skeeters in Florida. WE had a fast thirty minutes of shooting. Then they just quit.

Simple explaination is, these are local "town birds" that are going from roost to feed and back. I've not had that kind of fun in this part of the world. Seemed like west TX all over again. Large selection of White Wings.

How is everyone elses season going?

Smoke

 

[sm]

Glad you had a good time, flights like that are a lot of fun.

Folks I have mentioned I hang with, had a great opening day and subsequent hunts for them have been great as well.

 

[jmorris]

It doesn’t happen every year, but there have been times like that where we hunt in Frisco, Anna and Royce City. I prefer a steady stream of a few birds all afternoon, but it does get exciting when they are flying like bats

 

[MCgunner]

We hunt my buddy's place north of Waco. We did better in the afternoons. His place wasn't really hoppin', but we went to his dad's farm, hunted back on the tank. Not all that great, but they were all flyin' up and down a creek there. We set up on that creek and it was fast and furious. They were coming down it like a highway goin' for the trees to roost, I'm thinkin'.

Their places are just out of West, north of Waco. We went one morning, Sunday morning, over to Whitney on the edge of town. Larry has a buddy with 10 acres over there. There were a lot of birds in the grain field there, but weren't flying well. Probably woulda been better in the afternoon, but we knew they'd be flying in that creek again. I shot a ring neck at that place in Whitney, though, first ring neck I ever got. It was HUGE for a dove. Almost all mourning dove except for a few little aztecs and one whitewing my buddy shot. Limits every day, so it was good.

My buddy, Larry, has an insurance agency in Bellmead. Not sure where you guys were, north or south, but he lives about 10 minutes north of his agency and 30 minutes by back roads to his farm. He's leasing 42 acres of pasture for hay and gonna put a few head of cows on it. Not sure if there'll be doves on it next year, though. It's sorta all pasture, no grain around it. It is closer to Waco and town is where all the whitewings are, it seems.

 

[Lennyjoe]

Me and my 2 other buddies went out Sat/Sun and took a total 42 birds. Both times out were to a new area.