Just wanted to share my experiences for my very first year of hunting. I shot my first dove today!
Last year my dad gave me a gun that's been in the family for years. It's a bolt-action 12-gauge from the 1950's with a screw-on choke modifier. I've been shooting with it for awhile now but it's always been at targets or bottles. Both slugs and birdshot. Only just recently have I started shooting clay targets and I can say they helped improve my aim significantly.
When dove season started, I missed the opening day and didn't get to visit the public dove field for the first few days. There were multiple hundreds of doves shot there the first two days of season. Went on the 5th and was there before sunup and it was a barren wasteland over the sunflowers, lol. I saw 4 doves in about 5 hours and only got to shoot once. Now I know why no one else was there. They were flying like they were leaving the atmosphere and I just ended up wasting a shell.
Tried two places of private land and neither provided anything at all. Think I saw 1 dove in 3 days. I started glaring at them when I see them lined up on the power lines as soon as I get back into town. Haha.
Well today I went to my boyfriend's parents farm. There's a rarely-used gravel road with power lines, corn fields and trees around their yard and their machine shed. We walked the gravel road one morning and saw some doves but they booked it well out of our range.
Today we walked the road again and noticed the doves are in the same two spots again ( next time we will set up at one of these areas for sure. )
Then we set up outside the machine shed and a large dead tree we noticed them favoring with shiny new decoys in the late afternoon and they did help. I watched flying doves turn when the decoys were in sight and fly right over me. I shot almost every one one of them before they could land.
They kept trying to land in the dead tree too. It lost a few little branches as I blasted landing doves before they even touched bark. It really was an amazing feeling.
As the sun got lower and lower we saw more and more rolling in. I've never seen so many doves. Singles, doubles, triples. Packs of 6 or more! They were everywhere! At one point just before it was getting a bit too dark to shoot, I was shooting and trying hard to watch where my bird landed and more were flying over me even right after my shot. I would walk to retrieve my dove and more were swooping in from all directions landing in the trees all around me! It really was an amazing feeling after feeling hopeless from my last efforts.
We would have shot more but his gun was having problems so it was just me shooting and we had to be careful and not shoot towards the house. The setup isn't the best, as some of the bird's favorite trees were too close to the home and even if his parents didn't care as long as we didn't hit the house, I just wasn't comfortable. So I ended up deliberately spooking them from the trees to my boyfriend who's gun would eat the spent shell ( he'd miss the birds ) and get stuck almost every shot. So...we only got a dozen. Or I should say -I- got a dozen doves today! Woohoo! And I only used 16 shells! Next time he'll have a different gun-so lookout dovies!
It really was a memorable day today and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to hunt. I hope you all have wonderful luck in your hunting!