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| More shells than doves is a typical late season scenario |
Each year the hunting seasons and regulations for hunting migratory birds is formulated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal government provides a framework of dates for individual state to choose from, and this year the last leg of dove season is running a little later than usual. The S.C. Department of Natural Resources shifted the late dove season, so there can be no Christmas Day dove hunts, but once the season opens on December 28, it will run two weeks longer than usual and won’t conclude until January 30, 2020.
In recent memory the late dove season has run from December 15 until January 15. Most small game hunters agree that the cold of winter sometimes doesn’t build up sufficiently by mid-January and that extending the dove hunting season would be beneficial. Cold weather requires doves to eat more and stay active to keep warm, which means they are more likely to come to fields prepared for dove hunts. A couple of extra weekend hunts for doves in 2020 means that if doves congregate in good numbers due to late cold fronts, wingshooters can spend some extra time in the outdoors.
Losing the traditional Christmas day dove hunt is a trade off to shifting and elongating the dove season. Even though the bag limit of doves remains 15 doves per hunter per day, overall dove numbers are average at best, and doves can be especially fickle in the late season. When your humble correspondent was a young man, Christmas day dove hunts in Western Colleton County were common. Lots and lots of doves were reliable back then, so invitations to come hunt could be issued, and usually the affair ended with a barbecue pig pickin’. I was shooting a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun on one such hunt when I was a youth, and those holiday dove hunting memories still resonate with me today.
To view the entire feature article in the newspaper click on Colletonian.
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