Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunters)

DieselDave

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Dead birds pic loading.

dovehunt2003.jpg


This is a photo taken last week of a friend of mine, (far left) and his fellow hunters on their dove-hunting trip to Venezuela. The stack of dove is from one afternoons hunt. It is nearly 5,000 birds.

They hunted near a roost that's 3 miles by 1 1/2 miles and holds an estimated 25-30 million birds.

During the 4 days of hunting the minimum rounds fired by one hunter (my buddy) was 4,800 rounds. You take 2 or 3 guns each and change them out often because of heat and jamming. You have your own bird boy who brings you ammo and drink as well as picks up and cleans your birds.

You are not allowed to bring anything back so the days kill goes to local schools and orphanages.

This same area has been hunted this way since 1975. Every year at the end of the season the landowners go in and poison some of the birds to help knock down the population. This helps keep the numbers down to the measly 25-30 million in this one small area. The birds are a curse to the area. They decimate the crops and some view them as a plague. It's a dove hunters dream come true: Shoot till you can't shoot anymore while at the same time you're helping crop production and keeping birds from being poisoned. I'm in!

Growing up dove hunting 2-3 weekends a month I am in awe. We would go out and shoot our 12-15 birds and call it a day. The bad thing about a trip like this is you are ruined for domestic dove hunting. OK, ruin me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

tsg68

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

Holy crap, Dave!! That's a heck of alot more than the lousy 12 bird a day limit where I hunt in NM. NM is so lousy with dove too, but you usually bag your limit within 2hrs. of hunting, if you have a good spot. I wish we could shoot more but laws are laws. We go to a nice water tank and they come in to water at dawn. Grilled with a slice of bacon wrapped around 'em is the way I like 'em and I can eat more than my limit in a meal but WOW I couldn't dream of eating that many, sounds like a good deal all the way around, for the hunters, the charities and the wildlife and environmental conservation of the birds and the agriculture!

TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Darell

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

No, not here to crap on the parade, as you might be worrying...

I'm curious about shot being used now. Steel or lead? I'm probably WAY out of date on this question, so you can probably guess how much hunting I do.

Shooting yes, hunting no.
 

tsg68

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

I don't know of any jurisdiction here in the US that allows the use of "toxic" shot like lead anymore, Darell, most regs specifically call for a "non-toxic" shot be used. I don't know what they would require south of the border though.

TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Big Tex

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

It looks like these guys had some fun. Thanx for the pic.
 

DieselDave

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

I bet they are using the cheaper and more potent lead shot. You buy their ammo as part of the deal. $1,600 hunt comes with 3k rounds and then every box of 25 is $10 more. You can do the whole trip, including bribes (tips) and airfare for about $3,500.
 

Darell

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

[ QUOTE ]

sounds like a good deal all the way around, for the hunters, the charities and the wildlife and environmental conservation of the birds and the agriculture!


[/ QUOTE ]
Well, damn. Seemed like a good deal all the way around to me too...until that lead shot part. How many millions or rounds does that property see in a year? yikes.

Oops, wait. Now I'm crapping on the parade like I said I wouldn't. Sorry. Where's that damn tree I was just hugging a minute ago?
 

notos&w

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

hunting yes, shooting oh yeah.

thats sounds awesome. for the record, we use good ole toxic lead for dove hunts in mississippi and alabama. knocks down a lot better than steel. but i must admit, its not the best choice for the environment.

TSG, dove in bacon is heavenly.
 

1581zebra

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

lead shot is still legal for anything but waterfowl in NC. for the record... i dont think my shoulder could take that anymore without some serious padding.
 

DieselDave

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

[ QUOTE ]
1581zebra said:
for the record... i dont think my shoulder could take that anymore without some serious padding.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was one of my fist comments and was told: They wore a padded shirt, padded vest, strap on pad over that and of course a butt pad on the end of the stock.

[ QUOTE ]
Darell said:
Well, damn. Seemed like a good deal all the way around to me too...until that lead shot part. How many millions or rounds does that property see in a year? yikes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lead shot or poison, hmmmm, a real quandary for the environmentalist. I pick lead shot, its more fun. If they used steel shot their cost would go up, the birds killed would go down, (steel shot is far less effective) birds are more likely to suffer non-lethal wounds and more rounds would be fired which means more steel and ultimately more poison on the ground to kill off the birds that aren't killed by hunting. Of course they could not use either and let the bird population stabilize itself while the local population starved. Additionally, they hunt in a non-feeding area, this is the roosting area and there is no water there so I don't see the lead as much of a problem. The way I understand the lead issue it is mainly about waterfowl foraging on the bottom and eating the lead. The tree huggers didn't like the possibility their pressed duck under glass might have high levels of lead so they passed a law. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

When I was a young boy and through high school I hunted dove and quail around the southwest Texas town of Uvalde. Every year we would have all the mourning dove we could stand. They would come out of the corn in the late afternoon in groups of 10 to 200. For about an hour every evening it was great. About 1978-1979 I saw my first white wing dove in Uvalde. You weren't allowed to shoot them in our zone. As the years went bye you were allowed to shoot 2 (with a special stamp) a couple of years later, 5 and now you can shoot mourning or white wings with only the total limit as a stop point.

Now, the point of my story: The white wing came out of Mexico, they are larger and heartier than the mourning dove so guess what? They took the habitat of the mourning dove population. Now when I hunt I see 3-4 white wing for every mourning dove and the total numbers of dove are down by 75%. The white wing is moving farther north and ruining dove hunting. They need to have 2-3 years of white wing only shooting in south Texas. They should make it no-limit and try to kill them all so we can see if the mourning dove can make a comeback. This wouldn't hurt the total white wing population because there are about a zillion of them in Mexico. You can bet the reason they came north is because they needed a more favorable habitat because there are so many. This is a similar problem to the one in South America but thank goodness lives aren't at stake.

PS: I added the text to the photo so that in the event the photo gets passed around the net a game warden wouldn't have a heart attack when he/she sees it. Can you imagine the fine for shooting that many birds in your state? I believe the fine in Texas for over the limit is about $200-$300 a bird. That would equate to about a $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 fine. The only people that can afford that are non-hunters. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Saaby

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

So remember, next time you shoot over your limit and have photographic evidence of it, just label it as a "Venezuela hunting trip" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 

Empath

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

No, this is a dove. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
dove.gif
 

Sigman

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

Man I miss dove hunting...but I like to eat what I shoot! I can't imagine cleaning all those! That's where the bird boy would come in handy!

Dove breasts wrapped in bacon with a slice of jalapeno cooked on a charcoal grill...GOURMET!

BTW, you ever try to field dress a 1500 lb bull moose? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

DieselDave

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

[ QUOTE ]
Sigman said:
Dove breasts wrapped in bacon with a slice of jalapeno cooked on a charcoal grill...GOURMET!

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the way I like them best myself.


[ QUOTE ]
Sigman said:
BTW, you ever try to field dress a 1500 lb bull moose? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif


[/ QUOTE ]

Yea once but I couldn't get the t-shirt over his horns and the shoes kept coming off. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Josh

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

So where is the front end loader to carry all of them? All I can say is WOW!. I saw a Mexico hunt on espn and they also made mention of the fact they are a serious problem to farmers.
 

geepondy

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

OK, excuse my ignorance and I'm a former hunter, but I assume you use shotguns and bird shot to hunt the doves? 12 gauge?

I haven't hunted in the 20 years I have left Vermont but I bet Turkey hunting would be cool. They are much plentiful in the northeast then when I was a kid.
 

bigcozy

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Re: Dove hunters dream trip (Caution to non-hunter

I have some pics like that from my uncle back in the early sixties. When he was a student at the University of Houston that would fly hunters into Mexico to pick up flight hours. That would kill tons of White Wings down there. The first few hundred had to go to the local village, so the first day was pretty much feeding the locals, after that you could keep them. They were considered a plight on the land, and the farmers would posion them, too expensive ane time consuming to shoot them. They couldn't believe gringos would PAY them to shoot them.

You can still use lead shot down there, and in many places in the US. I live near the duck hunting capital of the world, and they have to use non lead shot. Steel shot is still used, but Bismuth is popular and there is a new shot called Non-Tox that is some alloy. Anything to make hunting more expensive is conducive to the non hunters. I had a local Game and Fish Biologist tell me the whole lead shot thing was really just something to get the green movement off the back of hunters. He has never seen lead posioning in a duck in 11 years.
 
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