Contrary to the preseason predictions, several Lawrence dove hunters enjoyed some stellar shooting during the first six days of the season.
Moreover, hunters who feared the cold front and rain that hit the area on Sept. 4 would send the doves south found the cool rain did not affect the doves at some locales.
Consequently, last Monday, a bevy of hunters had a field day on several fields immediately south of the Kansas River between Lawrence and Eudora.
Then in southwest Douglas County, Joey Suitt and Brad Harrell, both 14-year-olds from Lawrence, hunted a field of cut corn, where the doves came to feed, and these youngsters fired many rounds and bagged their limits each day of the Labor Day weekend.
Blair Flynn of Overbrook reported the doves he killed were feeding on wheat, but he couldn't find the field where they were feeding. He hunted a pasture full of hedge trees southeast of Overbrook, where the doves roosted every evening.
The trouble with that spot was the doves didn't appear until the sun was about to set, giving hunters only 15 minutes of shooting time. Thus Flynn had time to kill only seven birds every evening.
After a couple days of hunting that pasture, several other hunters joined Flynn, and then there were too many hunters and too few birds.
Over the Labor Day weekend, Flynn and a friend traveled to Ness County for 2 days of prairie dog and dove shooting.
They shot 202 dogs, but couldn't find a good spot from which to hunt the doves. According to Flynn, there were lots more doves in Ness County than there were in Osage County. He counted several hundred doves sitting on electric wires along a mile of a gravel road, but after one shot they disappeared.
This season, Flynn said, the best way to hunt the doves of Ness County was to walk the prairie dog fields that were littered with milkweed. But spending part of a day traipsing across fields full of prairie dog holes is more than Flynn's 83-year-old knees can endure.
Flynn misses the old days when there were doves galore hereabouts. Then he and a friend could sit at a spot, fire several boxes of shells at doves and sharpen their aim for the approaching quail and duck seasons.
-- Ned Kehde
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