In The Beginning: Texas’ nine-month hunting year fires off with dove season opener

Published 9:35 pm Friday, August 30, 2024

There is a lot more to the start of dove season than just dove hunting. It is the beginning of nine months of hunting opportunity in Texas.

In many ways it is like the first week of the NFL or college football. Optimism is high, and until that first kickoff, or in the case of hunters, the first shot, everyone is anticipating a championship year.

I have a special attraction to dove hunting because it was the first hunts I went on before I was old enough to shoot, and the first I participated in as a shooter way back in the 1960s.

That is the way it used to be. Hunters were introduced to outdoor sports through small game. If you lived in East Texas it might have been squirrels or rabbits, but if you lived anywhere west of the Trinity River your first hunt was most likely to be dove.

The primary reason was that small game was plentiful, easy to get access to and it did not cost that much if you were bringing kids along.

Deer hunting was barely on the radar for a lot of hunters because in East Texas and many other parts of the state there were not the number of deer there are today. In East Texas it was mostly because of overharvest and a changed landscape. In the remainder of the state it was because screwworms had decimated the herd, and it did not rebound until well after 1964 when they were eradicated.

Something else in dove hunting’s favor was that school usually did not start until after opening day. To go hunting you did not have to drive across the state and get a motel room, so with afternoon-only hunts it was easy to make it a family affair. In my family’s case that was exactly what it was, with uncles and cousins on an aunt and uncle’s farm. Even my mother, a non-hunter, would come along to read a book, dispense cold water in a universal cup and probably corral young heathens while the elders tried to actually hunt.

Of course this was pre-hunter education, and what you knew about hunting and handling guns you learned from an older hunter. There are a lot more moving parts in dove hunting than deer hunting with flying birds, other hunters nearby and shotguns constantly being loaded, swung around and shot, there was a greater emphasis on safety.

We only had one gun in our house, a 12-gauge Remington Model 31, a model built from 1931 to 1959 that was designed to compete with Winchester’s 1912, and preceded the 870, which arrived in 1950.

It was my dad’s gun and to me sat like a trophy in my parent’s closet with a couple of boxes of ammunition high above on a shelf well out of reach of curious young hands. Since it was the only gun in the house, when it came time for me to shoot I first used a 16-gauge double-barrel that belonged to my uncle. He did not hunt, but always had the gun around their farmhouse I guess to ward off skunks or the human equivalents that got too close.

It was way too much gun for a kid still in single digits, and especially so on those occasions I got too excited and simultaneously pulled both triggers. But I proudly wore the bruises back to school, and thought so much of the experienced that the last gun I bought was a side-by-side, except this time I went with a 20 gauge with triggers that could only be pulled one at a time.

It was years from that first time shooting until I brought home a limit, but by then I was hooked. The only thing better than being able to hunt was being old enough to drive, and slipping out of school in the afternoon to go hunt with your buddies. Ok, maybe that my aunt would always have fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans and sweet tea ready for us when we finished helped the experience.

For me dove hunting opened the door to deer, quail, turkeys, ducks and pheasants, but each September I always circle back to where it started.

Not trying to sound like the get-off-my-lawn guy, but I wish there was a renewed interest in small game, just like fishing for bream, catfish and white bass. It is only my opinion, but youngsters are given too much too easily and don’t earn an appreciation for what it takes to be successful. They start hunting with their own gun, and their first hunt too often is not just for a deer, but a quality buck or trophy buck.Then get bored and leave hunting because there is no challenge. At least their video games require them to conquer one level before graduating to the next.

That all said, good luck in the coming months. Whatever it is you set your sights on, I hope it is a championship year.

— Contact Steve Knight at outdoor@tylerpaper.com