Report from National
by Rocky Evans
Quail Unlimited President
It's finally here. Well, at least it's just around the corner. Dove season, that is. September, the first hunting opportunity, the premier of all the other seasons that will soon follow. In my part of the country, we open with September doves, then go into deer season, then ducks and quail, then doves again in November for a short mid season. If all goes well, we'll enjoy great gunning again in December.
Ahh, September - doves, college football and fall are almost here. The leaves will be turning soon and the hot days of summer will be gone. In the South, that's a huge relief. We made it through another summer and it's time to get the hunting gear down and check it out. There's something exciting just about that. It will remind me of a great shoot I was on last year when everyone in the field had a limit before 4:00 p.m. and we all feasted together in the corner of the field with old friends, with what our club refers to as the "thirteenth dove." It's a time to see old friends, to see how their sons and daughters have grown over the year and to wonder how we were so busy over the spring and summer that we had not gotten together before now.
Now, however, it's dove season, and our shared passion brings us together. After the shoot, the younger kids will still be shooting their air guns at cans. Some will throw sticks for their labs to endlessly retrieve. Some will be on their dads' ATVs, cruising the field edges, and some will be acting like kids. But it's great to have them at the opening day dove shoot. They'll remind me that it wasn't so long ago that my son carried his pellet gun into the field and helped retrieve my birds. He's 22 now, and he'll be graduating from college this semester (I'm looking forward to the raise). I hope that one day, he will know the thrill of taking his own child into the dove field for the first time, answering endless questions and helping groom him into a sportsman and a steward of the land. It's the responsibility of us all to hand this great sport down to the next generation.
Things have changed greatly since my dad first took me into a dove field. Gas was less than 25¢ a gallon. JFK was our president. A loaf of bread cost 10¢, and you could get a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells for less than a buck. I remember when my dad brought home his new Browning A-5 shotgun (Belgium made). It cost $144, and they threw in the case for free. That gun now belongs to my son, and it'll always bring back the memory of those great times I had with my father.
We still gather at a designated staging area for our shoots as we did back then. Someone will always have the best spot on the field, and a few will always grumble about having the worst. Some shoots will be spectacular and some won't be. The whiners will still whine about the bad shoots, and we will always relive the great shoots at the end of the day. That much hasn't changed, and I hope that it never does - except for the whiners.
Dove hunting ... there's really nothing quite like it. There's something about it that still stirs the passion of an old hunter and makes the hearts of young hunters beat faster in September. I hope that it's that way when our grandchildren are taking their kids into a dove field on opening day.
 - From the August-September 2005
issue of Dove Hunter Magazine
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