Drawing down on the new dove in town
There’s nothing else really like it. Teal can zoom into the decoys, zigging and zagging all over the place. Grouse sometimes flush out of trees straight down. Speckle-bellied geese lose altitude with a side-slip maneuver beyond dizzying. And most times snipe fly like caffeinated neutrinos, with no predictable path. But when the bottom drops out and a high-flying Eurasian dove does a wings-folded power swoop into ground decoys, it’s heart-stopping.
What’s that, you say? A Eurasian dove?
The Eurasian collared dove is a relatively new species in North America. Originally from subtropical Asia—from Turkey to southern China and India—it was introduced in The Bahamas in 1974 with the accidental pet-shop release of 50 birds. Soon the doves reached Florida, and then Arkansas, and now they have overspread most of the continent, including New Mexico and southwest Alaska. Today the doves occur across the US in varying numbers—the only area in which they are largely absent being the Northeast. The rest of the country finds the doves in subdivisions and farmscapes—anywhere man is active. In fact, they have become so abundant in many states that they are considered an invasive species and can be hunted with no closed seasons and no bag limits. All that is generally required to hunt them is a basic license.
Before even considering a hunt, however, shooters need to imprint on themselves what the bird looks like. About one-quarter larger than a mourning dove, the Eurasian is powdery, buff tan with a long, blunt-tipped (not sharp) tail. The tail is all black underneath and vividly white-tipped. It’s also perfectly fan-shape when flared—one of the best identifiers. The Eurasian is much lighter in color (some are almost white) than a mourning dove and has a black, semi-circular collar around the back of its neck. Learning these identifying marks is very important, because mourning doves are strictly regulated under federal law. Shooting an out-of-season mourning dove could be costly. A pre-hunt trip afield with binoculars and online video examples is a great way to learn. And don’t skip listening to the Euro’s cooing call, which often helps with identification.
A couple of hours before sundown doves will often stage on utility wires or in dead trees before heading to cropfields or feedlots to gorge on grain.
So how does a hunter go about finding enough of these birds for a productive shoot? Food is the key, and this usually means corn, milo, sunflowers or wheat. Drive country roads about two hours before sundown and look for groups of birds perched on utility wires or dead trees. It’s rare to see Euros in wide-open, treeless areas. Keep a lookout for flying birds, and use optics to track the flying routes and, hopefully, destination. If the birds are flying to a cut-over cropfield, try to get permission from the landowner to shoot there. More likely the doves are flying to a feedlot to glean grain from the bunks and bins. Most feedlot operators see the birds as nuisances, as they compete with livestock for food and vector diseases. Such operators may be glad to direct hunters to a spot well away from the livestock where it is safe to shoot. Either that or gunners can try to intercept the birds approaching the feedlot.
Decoys are a good way to lure birds within range, and it’s smart to emulate waterfowl hunters, who seem to be using more-realistic decoys every year. For Eurasian doves, realistic decoys are important, and the namesake collar is one reason. In the science of animal behavior, the collar is what’s known as a sign stimulus.Such a stimulus can be a color or shape that triggers an automatic, stereotypical behavior. Ethologist Niko Tinbergen was studying territorial stickleback minnows when he discovered the phenomenon. It seems male fish have red bellies during breeding season and vigorously attack other male fish crossing their territories. Tinbergen noticed one male in an aquarium near the window going on attack every day at the same hour, but there were no other fish in the tank. Eventually he realized that the stickleback was “attacking” a red postal truck that was driving by the window. The fish was simply responding to the red sign stimulus. In other studies gulls have been shown to prefer painted wooden eggs much larger than their own. This is called a superstimulus. Such stimuli explain why a neck collar on an oversize Eurasian decoy can be effective.
I am not aware of a commercial Eurasian dove decoy featuring a collar, but it’s not hard to make one. Take a standard mourning dove decoy, and lightly spray light-tan, flat (matte) paint over the whole head and back area. Once the paint is dry, paint a white, ¾"-wide strip around the back of the neck. When that is dry, finish it with a black, ½"-wide strip within the white strip and also redo the eyes and beak. (Using a permanent black marker is fine.)
Collared-dove decoys can be made by taking mourning-dove decoys, spray-painting them light tan, and then creating collars on the backs of the necks.
A trick that the Brits employ for wood pigeons is lofting, and it can work with Eurasians. Like most doves, wood pigeons often stage an hour or more before feeding time. They gather on a high perch, typically within a quarter-mile of a food source, and when it’s time, they fly off in small groups to feed. A lone tree makes a perfect staging spot, as danger can be seen in all directions, so the Brits try to find this type of tree in which to place decoys. The problem is often getting the decoys high enough to be seen. This is where lofting comes in. A long, lightweight pole has a fitting to hold a special hanger hook and decoy. The hook with the decoy is then attached to the end of the pole and “lofted” up in the tree—that is, draped over a branch—and the pole is slowly lowered, leaving the assembly in place. The length of the pole depends on the tree, but it typically ranges from 15 to 25 feet. The pole can be made of any strong, light material and is often in several sections. Lofting hooks can be purchased or made as well. The hook is sort of like a heavy-wire clothes hanger with a vertical pin welded on its crown. Below the hook, the wire hangs vertically, and 10 to 12 inches down a ¾" cylindrical ballast is attached. The ballast keeps things hanging upright and allows for wind movement. It’s also the male portion that fits in the female end of the pole. Taking the decoys down is just the reverse. Care must be taken to avoid damaging the paint and so on. In Europe it’s common to loft decoys in a single tree growing in a wheatfield. When the wheat is cut, a few dozen decoys are placed on the ground in the stubble. It’s incredible how well this works.
The Brits have another pigeon-shooting invention called a “cradle.” This is a wire frame bent and welded to support a dead bird in a lifelike pose. It consists of a horizontal oval supported on a single wire leg. It also sports a pin to support the bird’s head and neck in an upright, natural position. Like waterfowlers’ stuffer decoys, dead doves arranged carefully on a cradle can really pull in birds. Cradles are also light and stackable, so packing along a few is easy. Some folks dispense with other decoys entirely and carry only a dozen cradles to make decoys after they’ve pass-shot a few birds.
Hunters can take advantage of collared doves' penchant for perching by lofting decoys in trees. Photo courtesy of Gary Kramer/GaryKramer.net
My good friend Randy Babb has probably killed more Eurasian collared doves than anyone I know. In his opinion they are “tougher than mourning doves but easier than pigeons.” According to Babb: “Shooting the birds can be accomplished with a fairly light load in a small-gauge shotgun, but be sure to take all shots closer than 40 yards.” I would add that my favorite 20-gauge handloads seem to work well with one ounce of No. 7 lead shot and give me an edge over standard dove loads. I also like to avoid long, straightaway shots, as the backside of a gamebird consists of a coat of shingle-like feathers that is hard for shot to penetrate. On crossers I try to shoot before the bird reaches the “equator”—90 degrees out from me. Unless you are directly underneath the bird, it’s hard to get pellets into the vitals at greater angles. It’s never wrong to hit up front. And we’ve all seen butt puffs. On real speedsters, I’m not sure how I hit them, but I manage to. It’s move, mount, shoot—muscle memory and instinct much like hitting a tennis ball. When doves are flying in a 15-mph-plus wind, I go home. I’ve never been able to hit anything in the wind . . . .
On the table, collared doves are dark and lean. Because they have very little fat, they require something like a bacon wrap to keep them moist. My favorite cooking method is to grill them—plucked or skinned—over real charcoal hot and fast, so that they are crispy outside yet pink inside. The usual dove popper recipes work too.
The author took this healthy bag of Euros along with one (legal) mourning dove (front row, center).
One late-fall afternoon, my shooting partner Bill wrangled us a hunt on a high-desert cattle ranch. There was a line of dying Lombardy poplars on the place, and the collared doves were day-roosting in the trees before hitting the corrals and feed stalls for waste grain in the evenings. It was a little difficult finding horizontal limbs, but we managed to hang a half-dozen Euro decoys in one poplar. Bill opted to stay with the decoys, while I circled a half-mile away to push the far end of the treeline. The birds were well dispersed, and I jumped a small group only 100 yards in. Like any good waterfowler, I didn’t shoot the jumped birds but left them alone to find the decoys. Fifty yards farther, another group of doves—along with a rooster pheasant—got up. Less than a minute later two distant shots proved that the plan was working. As I kept walking, I spied three doves streaking toward me 40 yards up. Luckily they did a dive-jink, and I took one Station 8 high house before they were gone. Bill and I enjoyed great, steady action as the birds moved back and forth, and I bagged seven before reaching the end of the treeline. Bill had done even better, with a dozen birds in a neat pile behind him where his Brittany Cooper had dropped them. Now all that was left to do was fire up the coals.
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