Dove may be challenging to find

By Sam Waller

The start of dove season saw continued extreme heat, but a surprise rain shower early this week cooled things off for a few hours.

“It didn’t hurt us,” said Justin Trail, who guides hunts throughout the area. “I don’t know if it was enough to help us, but it certainly hasn’t hurt.”

Trail said that while having the season open on a weekend provided a surge of shooters getting out, the activity is just ramping up.

“We haven’t hunted much,” he said on Monday. “My big groups start Tuesday of this week, and they’ll go through this week and two or three days a week for the next month.”

Trail said there are birds to shoot in the area. The trick is finding their hiding spots.

“They’re a little finicky,” he said. “They’re coming into the fields a little later in the afternoons, as one might expect.”

Still, Trail said, he expects a good season.

Spring surveys conducted by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department found an estimated 28.3 million mourning doves and an estimated 11.7 million white-wing dove in the state.

The season in the North Zone, which includes Shackelford County, runs through Nov. 12, then  Dec. 15-31.

Trail said the main problem with drought conditions in the area has been dove spreading across a wider range.

“Farmers haven’t been able to plow their fields,” he said. “There’s a bunch of country the birds are using that normally would not be available to them.”

Trail said having more acreage under cultivation would force dove to congregate in smaller areas.

Trail said he expects to guide 450-500 hunters over four hunts this week.

“We’ll be hunting all around Albany, up to Haskell, over to Hamby, probably down to Eula,” he said. “We’re checking fields every morning and every evening to see where the birds are.”