Arkansas Sportsman

River's edge excellent spot for a dove hunt

If you don't measure success in terms of numbers, then last week's dove hunt with Alan Thomas on the Arkansas River was one of our best.

We killed a few doves, but the hunt was memorable because of the place, the fun we had, and because we made the right decisions to salvage victory from the makings of a dud day.

Al and I do one annual dove hunt in the Morrilton Pool of the Arkansas River. We launched Al's boat at about 3:30 p.m. and went to a remote section of bank that has all the things that doves love. It is a backfilled area of sand, gravel, and grass. The ground is so open, with a wide band of thick refuge cover between the gully and the riverbank. It seems ideal for bobwhite quail.

The outside banks of the Arkansas River demonstrate how comprehensive the channelization of the McClellan-Kerr Navigation System has been. That entire stretch of bank was once part of the Arkansas River's vast braided channel. Its backwaters and sidewaters were spawning and nursery habitat for fish. They were loafing, feeding and roosting areas for ducks.

Since the 1960s, the vast array of rock jetties that jut into the river have funneled the current into the channel, and the backwaters have filled with silt, sand and gravel. What was once many miles of wetlands is now dry land.

This has reduced flooding and improved navigation, but by concentrating more water into a narrower, faster conduit, it actually increases the risk and severity of flooding farther down the system. Someday the Corps of Engineers will probably be compelled to undo some of this work and restore the floodplain, just as it is now doing on the Missouri River.

In the meantime, this new land can be a great place to hunt doves. Much of the floodplain is open to the public below the high-water line, but not all. You have to know where you are, and which landowners have established ownership to the water's edge. They are few, but they are protective of their boundaries.

The place Al and I hunted was deserted Thursday, but it had been busy. Piles of shot shell hulls littered major choke points and ambush spots.

In his autobiographical novel Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck wrote extensively about the art of studying human "spoor." You could learn a lot about people you'd never meet merely by examining the things they leave behind. Like the contents of a trash can in a motel room where Steinbeck stayed, for example. A business card, a matchbook with a room number written on the inside panel and a lipstick-smudged tissue told of a traveling salesman's one-night tryst. Steinbeck based many a vignette on "spoor," and I have adopted the practice, as well.

Red 12-gauge hulls and a smaller number of yellow 20-gauge hulls in a grassy gap between low hills suggested a father and child hunted here. Nearer the river was a pile of mixed black and red 12-gauge hulls. If I didn't have so many already, I would have been tempted to take them home for reloading.

After our separate wanderings, Al and I rejoined at an area of low, open grass where doves feed and eat grit. They must eat grit -- sand and small gravel -- to grind up the seeds they ingest.

A few doves were behind a high mound of sand. We didn't know they were there until they flushed at our approach. I used to hunt an area similar to this at the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge on the Missouri River. I kicked up doves wading through the grass and shot them on the rise, like quail, so I felt comfortable here.

Al shot the first bird and observed that its crop was stuffed with milo.

"They don't care a thing about this grass," I said.

"Naw, man," Al said. "They've been pigging out on milo somewhere, and there coming in here for grit before they go to roost."

Al was in the better spot. Doves flew out of my range across the vale, hooked a left on the back side of the hill behind us, and then cut back into the vale through a gap between the hills. When they made their turn, they were at eye level with Al, about five gun lengths away.

There weren't very many, but they never knew what hit them. We ended the day with a perfect amount to cover the grill.

Sports on 09/28/2014

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