Who can blame any of us for the high anticipation of September 1 and the mourning dove opener in most states? After long birdless months of clay-target shooting and of training our dogs with check cords and retrieval dummies, we can finally swing on wings, and kick off the upland seasons with flitting, zipping, delicious doves. Naturally, we want our dogs—especially those freshmen and sophomores—to accompany us on this gateway experience, which is often defined by lots of shooting, party hunting with buddies, and all the boisterous ballyhoo of a corn-country carnival. Problem is, all those attributes that characterize a classic dove hunt are precisely what your young dog doesn’t need in early September as it transitions from the practice squad to varsity.
Your dog needs steady consistency, with few surprises, and opportunities to experiment with low risk and high rewards. An older, experienced dog needs less than a young pup, but none of those are possible in a full-on, public-land dove shoot, where there seems to be a momentary suspension of rules, and where chaos replaces deliberation. But, if you’re like me, the pull of spending time in the field with a canine companion is just too strong to resist. The prospect of leaving your favorite hunting companion behind while you enter a brand-new season is almost too hard to contemplate. You’re going to take your dog. For those of you who do, here are some of the more problematic parts of early season dove hunting, and ways to minimize their potentially ruinous effects on your dog.
Excessive shooting without downed birds can be discouraging for a young dog. (Photo courtesy of Andrew McKean) 1. Too Much Shooting For sensitive dogs, whose early aversion to gunfire has been carefully replaced with scaled-up exposure to sudden noises and then live-fire, dove season is to be avoided at all costs. But for those dogs who associate gunfire with hell-yeah fun and joyous work, and a kinetic bond between themselves and you, the dove opener can be sensory overload.
I’ll use my own Lab Nellie, now six years old, as an example. In her first couple years, she was an unfocused mess. Even now, I have to minimize distractions lest she bounces around like a free radical in a physics experiment. The dove opener, especially on crowded parcels of public land, is too much of a good thing. A volley of shots from the far end of the field puts her right on the edge of tremulous mania, and then when I finally shoot, she’s so overeager that she doesn’t focus on the downed bird, doesn’t trust her nose, and doesn’t check back with me for visual commands. Instead, she runs helter-skelter around the field like she’s lost her mind and forgotten rules, manners, and even her name. None of those are useful qualities to bring into the start of another upland season.
Solution: As long as Nellie is physically (and cognitively) capable, I’ll take her dove hunting. She simply loves it that much. But I pick my days and my places. We hunt alone when we can, and when we can’t, I don’t shoot. Instead, I focus her on a few simple tasks: retrieving those doves that fall into water, or into problematic cover that’s thick enough to slow her down. And I impose a rule—with various rates of success—with my hunting companions that when Nellie is retrieving, nobody shoots. By slowing down the game, we can focus on sight retrieval, on reinforcing whistle and hand commands, and on rewarding her when she puts all the pieces together that have gotten rusty since late December’s rooster season.
2. Too Much Missing You’ve heard the statistics: Dove hunters shoot over five shells for every hit. In some fields I’ve hunted, that’s a very generous average. All that gunfire has the unfortunate result of messing up your dog’s summer training. I’ll bet that over the past several months, your dog associates a single shot with some positive action, a retrieval, or a bird contact. It has probably never heard multiple shots, and it certainly hasn’t heard the unfiltered cussing that follows them. Unproductive gunfire causes confusion at first, and then apathy, and then an unraveling of the discipline you’ve carefully built.
Solution: Easier said than done but pick your shots and work on connecting. Who cares if you don’t have a limit of doves at the end of the day, the important part is that each bird reinforces your training, whether a sent or blind retrieve, or a steadiness lesson, or a whistle or voice command. And employ all the usual ways to increase your hit rate: practice prior to the opener, know how your load and choke are patterning, know your effective range, and shoot premium ammunition. Employ decoys to bring birds into close range. Aim for first-round hits; if you miss, don’t unload your gun at an aerobatic bird that offers decreasingly low odds of going down.
3. Too Many Dogs Every other dove hunter is just like you—they think their dog is ready for the opener. So, they bring them, even when it’s not productive for dog or human alike, to the most volatile situation imaginable: public shooting grounds with lots of birds and lots of unready dogs and hunters. Many strange dogs thrown into a chaotic situation can amplify tensions and lead to unfortunate conflicts. Not only is this distracting for your dog, but it can be dangerous, and lead to physical confrontations between dogs and even their owners.
Solution: Assess the situation. This is another scenario where you want to be able to control at least some variables, and the most controllable one is taking your dog to an area where they’ll be undistracted by other dogs and where you can focus on them, and your dog on you.
The heat during dove season is dangerous for dogs, be sure to keep them watered. (Photo courtesy of Andrew McKean) 4. Unhealthy Heat The definition of superfluity is a long-sleeved dove-hunting shirt. It’s hot—often blisteringly hot—on the dove opener, and dogs can quickly become hyperthermic. One of my buddies brings a 5-gallon jug to our dove shoots, and it’s usually gone, both inside and outside his dog, within a couple hours. While some dogs can dissipate heat better than others, retrievers that are just starting to build winter coats are especially susceptible to heat stroke. Keep an eye on their activity, and if you see excessive panting, glazed eyes, or lethargy, get them out of the field and in a cool area immediately.
Solution: You’re not going to avoid heat altogether, but hunt early and late in the day—when the shooting is better, anyway—and make sure you keep your dog well-hydrated. Hunt in the shade. Like my buddy does, keep the outside of your dog as wet as her insides, and if there’s safe and accessible water nearby, break up the shooting action with periodic swimming. Make sure your dog is in shape—too many hunters use the dove opener as the start of physical conditioning. Finally, if it’s too hot, stay home. Scenting conditions will be lousy, anyway.
5. Venomous Vermin Warm weather on the brushy edges of agricultural operations, two ingredients of dove season around the country, are also favorite haunts of snakes, raccoons, skunks, ticks, and mosquitoes. None of those is particularly problematic, so long as the snakes and raccoons don’t bite, the skunks don’t spray, and the ticks and mosquitoes don’t carry debilitating viruses. But early season dove hunters should be prepared for the worst. Ohio veterinarian Dr. Mark Hayes says the prevalence of Lyme disease in dogs is increasing rapidly, and dogs can be infected with mosquito-borne West Nile Virus.
Solution: While you’ll never eliminate environmental hazards, you can reduce the number of contacts with problematic animals. Hunt in relatively well-cleared areas, and if you send your dog into brush to retrieve a dove, go with her to defuse any encounters with snakes or biting mammals. Inoculate your dog against tick- and mosquito-borne diseases and use insect-repellent collars and topical sprays. And, in areas with high likelihood of snake encounters, don’t hunt a dog that hasn’t been recently snake-proofed with aversion therapy.
6. Unnatural Bird Encounters Unless you plan to spend your upland season shooting driven pheasants, how often do birds fly right at you the way doves do? They simply don’t in the course of a normal grouse, pheasant, or quail season. Instead, you approach unseen birds, which flush away from dogs, become seen inside shotgun range, and then when everything goes well, become downed game. Most of our training is predicated on that simple behavior and consequent action.
But one of the maddening appeals of doves is that, when you’re set up in the right spot, they come right at you, offering challenging targets and abundant shooting but making a well-trained dog’s head explode with the novelty of the experience.
Solution: You can still have good shooting while reinforcing the off-season’s training cues by walking up doves. This requires a property that doesn’t have many other hunters, and enough cover—standing sunflowers or sorghum is perfect—to hold doves as you approach. This situation will mimic flushes of the upland season and allow you to fine tune steady-to-shot drills, appropriate ranging distances, and other foundations of your training program.
7. Bothersome Feathers Unlike upland species, doves have fine feathers that often detach from the carcass and can absolutely fill a dog’s mouth. My Lab prior to Nellie loved hunting doves, and Willow was a phenomenal retriever, but she would nearly always short-drop doves, then spend the next minutes trying to remove feathers from her mouth. A buddy claims doves made his GSP hard-mouthed, either because it was aggravated by the feathers or because the bite-sized bird leaked tasty juices.
Solution: This is the most obvious reason to not introduce your bird dog to hunting through doves. An experienced dog will understand that this feather-sloughing is a situational hazard with doves, but will retain good mouthing habits learned through other species. I’ll help a dog through the feathers by offering water, and by helping to clear those fine feathers from her mouth, and I don’t punish a dog for not bringing a dove to hand.
If done right, dove hunting with a dog can be a great start to the upland season. (Photo courtesy of Patrick "Buzz" Hayes) Should You Dove Hunt with a Dog? If all those situations sound like a recipe for sitting out the dove season, you’re missing the point. Go. There’s a reason it’s the most popular day of hunting across the nation—birds can be abundant and naïve, there’s lots of shooting opportunities, the weather is generally good, and the rewards are delicious. Just be judicious, especially if you have a young dog raring to go.
A friend of mine, retired for a few years with an older arthritic dog, thrives in dove season for reasons that are becoming increasingly appealing to me. He sits on a bucket in the shade a long way from other hunters, a gun across his knees and his dog at his side. He only shoots birds that he knows will fall on the picked wheat field in front of him, and he makes sure his dog sees them. It’s a slow, deliberate, rhythmic hunt for them, and he wouldn’t dream of missing the opener, just as he wouldn’t dream of hunting it without ole Cade.
