By Rich Miller
Summer is winding down and we have gotten a little bit of rain in the last few weeks. When I say little bit that is all it was where I live even though a lot of people got a lot more than they wanted. When the tropical storm formed in the Gulf and headed our way, we all thought that that was going to bring us the much needed rain to help get us out of this drought we have been in; but we didn’t get but 5/8” of rain out of that thing.
When the storm came in it was projected to hit us on opening day of dove season. In the south, opening day of dove season is as big as anything going on that day. We get to hunt on fields that were planted months ago – and babied till opening day – to try and get as many doves as possible using the field. There has been a lot of time and money put into the fields to have friends and family to have as good of a hunt as possible. On most hunts, everyone shows up before lunch to start watching the football games that start up also on the first Saturday in September. Then the barbeque ensues until we hit the field about two o’clock.
I hunted in Alabama with some friends Saturday for the opener – and man did we have a good shoot. There were probably 35 people there to shoot and just about everyone got their limit. The food was good and I got to meet some really nice people there, also. The barbeque at lunch was good and then we had some fresh shrimp after the hunt that some guys form Mississippi brought up with them. That was a great hunt, but the one I was waiting on was on Monday when my wife and little boy were going with me.
My wife doesn’t hunt very much, but since my little boy wanted to go so bad, she didn’t want to miss it. We got to the field about 2:30pm and everyone else showed up about the same time we did. When we walked out in the field there were birds on the lines and feeding everywhere. After everyone got in position, the shooting started and it was pretty steady form the start. This field hadn’t been hunted yet, but since the birds got shot at Saturday everywhere else they were flying pretty high. My wife had her 20 gauge and they were a little out of her range.
The rain and storms that were forecast to hit us on Monday still hadn’t showed up but around 4:30pm when we started hearing thunder in the distance. Tye loved being my bird dog and I think he ran all over the field we were in. I told if he could smell he would be better than a dog. I think we had eleven birds when the rain came over the trees from the east. We tried to get our stuff and get out of the field, but by the time we got back to the truck we were soaking wet. I don’t think my wife was expecting that, but she handled it pretty well. Tye didn’t care; he was just glad to be there. It was a great time overall and despite the rain we all had a blast. We were all soaking wet but at least the barbeque helped warm us up.
