17 replies to this topic

[BCF]

10 days boys. Seen more doves lately than I saw the first season. I'll be heading back up to Porterville area with my son for a 3 day camping/hunting trip. Can't wait!

The itinerary goes....

1) Pre-sunrise Coyote calling.
2) Rabbit hunting at sunrise. Mostly brush rabbits, but lots of them.
3) Dove hunting around 8 am. Plenty of water up there. Saw as many dove as quail a couple weeks ago.
4) Go get some quail after that maybe around 9 or 10 am.
5) Squirrel control mid-day- as many squirrels as a person would want to shoot.

Reverse the order in the afternoon.

Can't wait!

Anyone else going to hit up Dove second season? Or everyone going turkey hunting? There's some turkeys in the Sequoia's where I'll be hunting, but never seen any.

[sxshooter]

I'm headed down to Yuma and maybe up from there to Blythe. We almost always do well down there and there's hardly anyone around.

[bunktheclown]

We plan on shooting them while pheasant hunting. Seen quite a few last season.

[turkeyman85]

ill be chasing pheasants in imperial.

[Rico]

i might be In Imperial with my 2 dogs chasing pheasant quail and doves

[turkeyman85]

Hey rico are you chasing pheasants on public or private lands? Or are you with a club or going guided?

[Rico]

ill be hitting the public lands lol

[PigHostile1]

<<heading to Fresno, CA for dove. I know a pretty decent area that doves flies over head

[BCF]

Going to be cold this weekend...56 high, 33 low where I'm at. Can't wait...got 300 rounds of target loads ready to go.

[ShooterJohn]

Going to rain tonight and tomorrow and drop 25 degrees around here. Bye Bye Doves!

[sxshooter]

'...run for the border!'

Looks like Yuma didn't get any rain. I'm headed down tomorrow afternoon. It might be decent.

[Jeff]

You may be better off going for turkey or pheasant...

[bretmoua]

<<heading to Fresno, CA for dove. I know a pretty decent area that doves flies over head

I'm in Fresno. Hmmm....now whereabouts were you referring too? By any chance, would it happen to be along highway 180 out towards Mendota?

[BCF]

Left Friday night and stopped on the way out in Gorman, and the snow falling on me had me a little worried....rained on us all night and still raining in the morning....had us pretty much figuring NO dove were going to be flying, and we were right! We did an early morning coyote stand after seeing one, and I called one in to 40-50 yards, but I couldn't see it. Flanked us from downwind, definitely saw the truck and definitely smelled us already. It ran in front of where my buddy was posted. He'd never been shotgun coyote hunting, and hasn't done a whole lot of coyote hunting, and just didn't know that he should have just shot it. Anyhow- that's how you learn... no big deal. I did the same thing my first time shotgunning coyotes. We spent a lot of time just long range shooting squirrels with my 22 rifel and benjamin air gun which was a lot of fun. By 3:00 pm, we had just one dove. Then the sun came out and we managed to put down 15 or so quail real quick. On the way back to camp at about 5 pm, right at sundown, we see dove flying. Craploads of them. I don't know what happened to me, but I was not missing. I've never shot dove so well. I put down 7 in about 10 minutes, it got too dark to see, and that was it. I think my buddy shot 4 or 5.

Next morning was okay on dove. Truth to tell, we were pretty tired from hiking 10 miles for not much game the day before, so we weren't hunting real hard. I think we got around 15 more dove? Something like that. We shot a few more quail, but not many. We both agreed we were too tired to hike up and down the hills even though there were lots of quail. It's some really tough terrain because the ground is soft and squirrel holes all over mess up the knees. Also shot 7 cottontails, and saw two bobcats. One was medium sized and only about 10 yards from us, but we didn't have anything that could put it down. The other was pretty far but it was huge. Saw 5 coyotes throughout the weekend.

Good times. Gonna let everything sit for a few days, firm up and get nice and tasty.

[sxshooter]

Got to Yuma Friday afternoon. Almost turned back when I ran into rain and wind in the Imperial valley. Rolled into Yuma around 2pm. My friend had been there a day or so scouting. He had a private property all lined up for us. Turned out to be a hog farm. An old nasty one. But there were lots of birds flying over it all day. Blackbirds, pigeons and dove. Even in the blustery wind that never let up all weekend. Shot a lot of pigeons and Eurasian dove. We gave the old pig farmer $100 for allowing us on his property but he didn't want it. We were persistent and he said we could hunt there for life. Nice guy. His daughter and son in law came by later and thanked us for our gratitude. Anyway we burned up a few flats of 410 between the two of us, with nonstop shooting.

[BCF]

Sounds good sxshooter. Personally, I'd take pigeons over doves any day. About 4 times the meat and tastes about the same. I didn't see any Eurasian doves, but I saw tons of bandtail's. They were thicker than the dove.

[sxshooter]

Never saw any Bandtails down there. All Rock Dove (Columba Livia, or common pigeon). There were nearly no morning dove and zero whitewings. The pigs ate all the birds as they fell in the pens.

[BCF]

Yeah. Too bad bandtail season is like 9 days in September with a 2 bird limit. I saw thousands of them in my spot. I'll probably go up there and do a coyote/bobcat/bandtail hunt next year.

I guess the pigs had a tasty meal. I've been wanting to find a spot with pigeons (rock dove) outside of an urban area. I think I have one out near Phelan lined up. They really are good to eat. I would say they are actually BETTER than dove or quail. I've never actually hunted them, but have eaten them at Vietnamese restaurants in Garden Grove. Who knows...they probably trapped them in the back alley.