Weekend Number Two For Dove Season

I was able to take Friday off this week so Bama and I headed over to Illinois for some more dove hunting. The weather has turned cool which is nice and didn't seem to be cool enough to push the birds out of the area. Bama as always had a good time and certainly keeps me from losing as many downed birds as when I go by myself. Plus he's a good listener and seems to agree with pretty much everything I say :-)

Oh Yeah, My Dove Tree.

I made a portable dove tree out of found objects in my garage and basement. As the season grew closer it gave me a little distraction and something else to do to get ready. I took two old bamboo tiki torches and cut the torch parts off. Then I had an old tent pole piece that was two parts with a swivel in the middle. One part slides down into the the bottom pole and then stops where the cross tent pole piece swivels. Then I slide the top tiki torch pole down and it stops there. I drilled a hole mid-way up the top pole and a slid a rigid 1/2 inch a tomato stake through that. Then wrapped the pieces in camo tape. Stuck some decoys on the cross limbs and a mojo on top. Happy days! It worked like a charm this morning. I even had a couple of doves hover in front of it like humming birds. Big mistake on their part! Oh and I put a siren on it for added attraction! Kidding, it's just a firetruck going by in the background.

A Happy Opener After All.

Sometimes things go your way when you least expect it. Before going to bed last night I checked the weather forecast one last time. The weather man predicted rain all day particularly during the morning hours and continuing rain Sunday and possibly Monday too. Oh well, maybe Sunday afternoon or Monday the weather will cooperate and I can get a little dove hunting in before heading back to work.

I went ahead and got my gear together and laid out some hunting clothes just in case. Well I'm not sure I should be happy to report that I have a lousy weather man but in this case it worked in my favor. For once. I rolled out of bed at 5:15 walked downstairs and looked out the front door to see if the newspaper was here yet. Yep there's the paper. I'll let Bama out to fetch it up... but wait, something was missing. Hey it's dry out...no rain! Woo hoo! I check my computer real quick and on the weather radar there's a big break in the clouds right where my hunting property sits. Much scrambling, gathering, and coffee drinking ensued. By 7:30 I'm sitting on a dove bucket, decoys and mojo's set and sporting a big smile on my face. Life is indeed good.

All in all a good morning. I got a dozen birds and lost several in a thicket (Bama was a casualty of the need to move quickly this morning and didn't go with me) that Bama would have found easily so I could have limited out but that's not important. I got to hunt on opening day. That my friends makes
me happy.

Here is the radar image for this mornings forecast. My hunting spot is just a little to the right of the red pin marker. As you can see pretty socked in with rain predicted for this morning.

Sorry for the bad photo here but what you're looking at is a stand of sunflowers which runs for about 125 yards. To the left of the sunflowers on the ground is one of my Mojo decoys and on the right side of the flowers is my dove tree with a mojo on top and four decoys perched on the limbs. The picture is a little deceiving in that it's only about 20 yards from my position but looks much further than that. 

About half way through my first box of shells.