Pssst, Michigan legislators. Don’t look now, but Wisconsin just won a court decision that will let our neighboring state hold its first dove hunt next fall.

Now that Wisconsin is the 33rd state to allow its citizens to hunt the nation’s most popular game bird (and one of the tastiest), maybe Michigan legislators can figure out that we’re long overdue for a dove season.

Doves already are hunted in our neighbors to the south, Indiana and Ohio.

Several thousand Michigan hunters travel to those states just to shoot doves. I go nearly every fall and can assure you that a lot of Michigan money winds up in places like Mongo, Ind.

With Wisconsin now in that group, don’t you think we should add doves to our list of game birds as well?

Or maybe you would prefer to see several thousand more hunters from the Upper Peninsula drive across our northwestern border to spend Michigan dollars in Wisconsin.

Make no mistake dove hunting would prove a windfall for small towns all across Michigan, probably on the same scale as turkey hunting, which has become a wonderful spring revenue-producer for places like Mio, Fairview and my own home of Grayling.

The dove season in most northern states opens Sept. 1, two weeks before Michigan’s usual small-game season. But unlike grouse and duck hunting, which usually improve as the season goes on, most dove hunters go out only for the first couple of days.

And for all you non-hunters out there who are concerned about anything happening to the doves that come to your backyard feeders, forget it.

A huge number of those doves will be dead by the next spring whether we hunt them or not, killed by hawks, foxes, house cats, each other and bad weather.

And yet because they have two to six broods a year, there will be just as many doves the next season.