Dove Season

One of the great outdoor opportunities in Georgia is the abundance of hiking and biking trails. They’re a great way to enjoy the scenery, see wildlife and stay in shape. It’s important to be in strong physical condition throughout the year, and it pays off throughout the upcoming hunting seasons.

Although the weather this summer has been a scorcher, getting out on the trails early pays dividends with cooler temps. During my biking workouts through shaded paved trails, I’m always on the look out for those I share the trails with: squirrels and deer. Rarely does a ride go by that I don’t see both. The squirrels seem to wait at the last second to dart across, while the whitetails seem very accommodating and just mosey across. A lot of them hide in the shadows of the wooded landscape, and I often wonder if others on the trail see them, as well.

As a hunter, you get a sense of what to look for in body shapes or portions of a body. I would wager that most humans on these trails just pass on by. On a recent hike, I almost stepped on a mourning dove. I came right up to it and flushed it as I stepped close by. This reminded me that the opening day for dove season is Sept. 7. If you’re one of the thousands who will take to a field on that Saturday, make sure you stay hydrated. You might consider a way to listen to the Dawgs at Sanford Stadium as they take on Tennessee Tech.

According to Terry Johnson, a retired DNR program manager and executive director of TERN, the Wildlife Conservation Section’s friends group, doves are “the only bird native to the U.S. that breeds in all 50 states. This dove is also one of the country’s most abundant birds (with numbers estimated at 400 million) and is our most popular game bird (hunters harvest more than 20 million each year).”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service includes the mourning dove in the list of animals they monitor. According to their “Mourning Dove—Population Status, 2023” report, “Maintenance of dove populations in a healthy, productive state is a primary management goal. Management activities include population assessment, harvest regulation and habitat management. Each year, tens of thousands of doves are banded and thousands of wings from harvested doves are analyzed to estimate annual survival, harvest rates, recruitment and abundance.”

If you harvest a banded bird, report it at www.reportband.gov with the band number. When you report the band, you get a certificate on when and where the bird was banded, and its species, sex and age. Getting a bird with a “money” band on it is extra special because they are relatively rare. Also, it’s pretty cool because you get paid to hunt!