Dove Hunting

[snagged in outlet 3]

I was drawn for day 7 at Columbia Bottoms CA. It's located at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi, literally. Almost 3000 entered the draw and they only pull 50 a day, so even getting day 7 was lucky. It's managed for dove and they had sunlowers, corn and wheat.

You can't start shooting till 1PM so we arrived at 12:30 to scout a spot. We've never been there before and we didn't expect much. How wrong we were. We limited in 3 hours and would've been done quicker but chasing cripples ate up a bunch of time. Steel shot is mandatory and it doesn't kill as well as lead. Some birds would fold up and bounce when they hit the ground only to get it together and fly away.

We had a blast though and everybody at the parking lot reported the same success. Wind was howling between storms and down wind you could lead 3 feet and into the wind the were almost standing still.

SIO3

[DoveTail]

Here's the field I hunt. The game there is to see if you can bag a limit with firing less shells than the bag limit!