Horrible opener! Went down to the eastern part of the state for our traditional get together for the opener. Got there about an hour after the shooting started, all the good spots were taken, and by 10:30 the birds were at water and in the trees until their usual 2:30 resumption of flying and feeding. By then we were the only three in the fields and the temp had reached 96 degrees, so we bailed out and went to the air conditioning; to hell with the dove hunting. First time in my life I'd ever left the field before the afternoon flying unless I had limited out, but it was unbearably hot. Only got eight, but enough for a small pie.
$60.00 for gas
$10.00 worth of shells
$98.00 for motel room.
$50.00 for meals
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$218.00 divided by 1.5 lbs. of breast meat equals $145.30 per pound. Isn't this sport fun?
Got out for the Arizona opener on Saturday, but my boys wanted to sleep in. The goal was to get my 10 bird limit in 15 shots but my dog was a little wild which I'm *sure* distracted me. Lost 2 birds to the nearby cattle pens, so I finished in 24 shots by 7:30am.
Tomorrow morning we're going to give it another go. Youngest boy is already in, but my oldest is going out so I doubt he'll be in the field at 6:30...
Congrats on the doves! How do those eurasians taste compared to mourning doves, any different? Last couple of years we've been getting quite a few of the eurasians showing up, but I haven't tried one yet.
Our season finally kicked off Saturday at noon. We hunted one of the WMAs up on the Tennessee River. They had several browntop millet fields that had recently been baled. I really think the birds will be in those fields in a few more weeks, but I won't have time to go back for awhile. We had a cold front coming through and got a few showers. The birds were coming in most of the afternoon but where HIGH and FAST. They were mostly singles. I ended up switching to a heavy dove load of #6s to slow them down. This didn't help the kids out, they had a really had time hitting anything with there 20 gauges and 410s. My brother Jeff also had a really hard time hitting any. But they got to shoot and seemed happy with that.
My nephew Chris brought his chocolate lab Goose on his first real hunt. I am proud of how hard Chris has worked with him. Goose nailed 4-5 blind retrieves. He stopped on command and took the hand signal like a pro. I was impressed. He's only a year old.
I think my dog Raina had the best day ever. There were birds, kids feeding her parts of their hamburger's and hotdogs, and my wife was out of town so she got to sleep in the bed.