THE FLIP SIDE

Hunters face private options for dove season

Hunters will be afield at first light on Sept. 3 for opening day of dove hunting season.
Hunters will be afield at first light on Sept. 3 for opening day of dove hunting season.

A hunter's heart beats a little happier in August. Hot weather and back to school mean dove season is near.

Dove hunting starts Sept. 3 and closes Oct. 23 statewide. A second dove season runs Dec. 8 through Jan., 15. The daily limit is 15 mourning doves.

Fast flying doves

Season dates: Sept. 3-Oct. 23 statewide. Also Dec. 8-Jan. 15.

Daily limit: Fifteen mourning doves; no limit on Eurasian collared doves.

Shooting hours: Thirty minutes before sunrise to sunset.

— Arkansas Game & Fish Commission

It's a good news, bad news scenario for dove hunters this season. Options for public land dove hunting have always been minimal in Northwest Arkansas. They're even more limited now. Hunters with permission to hunt on private land should get some good shooting.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has planted wheat and sunflowers in fields at the McIlroy Madison County Wildlife Management Area to attract doves in past years. Those fields, north of Huntsville, haven't been planted this summer, said Mark Hutchings, wildlife biologist with Game and Fish.

Blame chronic wasting disease. Hutchings said dealing with the disease has been the focus for wildlife managers this year. Dove season has been on the back burner.

There is some wheat on those fields, Hutchings said, but it won't offer much in the way of hunting this season.

Game and Fish planted sunflowers on fields near Lake Wedington, west of Fayetteville, to bring in doves. The fields are on Ozark National Forest land along Arkansas 16, one mile west of Lake Wedington. There is no sign or landmark to find the fields.

"The sunflowers we planted there didn't do well," Hutchings said. "But I was over there last week and evidently the annuals and some of the bare ground has attracted some birds. I flushed about 30 to 50 doves. Whether or not they'll be there when the season opens, I don't know."

Fields on what many call the Wedington small game unit, southwest of U.S. 412 and Kinchloe Road, have not been planted, Hutchings said.

People with pastures, particularly overgrown fields, have time to prepare their property for dove hunting.

"If someone has a weedy field, they can mow it real short and the seeds might bring in some birds," Hutchings said. "If the field is a heavy stand of fescue or bermuda grass, it probably won't be much good."

The hottest dove fields are those where corn or wheat have been harvested. Doves fly in to eat the waste grain. There is still a couple of weeks for hunters to ask permission to hunt on these promising crop fields.

The fee dove hunt at Razorback Farms near Lowell will not take place this year, said Gerald Tate, who has run the dove hunt for 23 years. Tate said he isn't aware of any other fee dove hunts in the region.

Interest in dove hunting is high on opening weekend, then fades as duck and archery deer seasons begin. Tate said the best hunting last season at Razorback Farms was the second weekend. There were far fewer hunters, about a dozen, but far more birds. Each hunter shot a 15-dove limit, Tate said.

The doves hunters see on opening weekend are almost all local doves that have been raised in this area, Hutchings said.

"Then, as fall comes on, we'll see some migration of doves just like other migratory birds," he said.

Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAFlip

Sports on 08/16/2016

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