Thank God Hunting Season Is Almost Here

My wife figured out hunting season was coming soon when she found me in the garage the other day reloading shotgun shells. "I guess this means that for the next five months we'll only see you on weeknights," she observed.

September first brings us the opening of dove season here in the southwest. And no, not the white, "symbol of peace" doves, but the drab-gray mourning doves and white wing doves. They are an extremely challenging bird to shoot on the wing, and they are quite tasty, particularly when stuffed into a jalepeno with a slice of cheese and smoked on the BBQ.

So the first of next month me and my buddies will again make the trek across the desert to a little Arizona burg known as Dateland. We'll get up before the crack of dawn, brave the chill of the morning (it's usually around 90 degrees by 6:00 A.M.) and stumble out to our fields where we'll only get to hunt for about twenty minutes because that's about how long it takes to get a limit. Then we'll spend the rest of the day lounging around the swimming pool at the trailer park while imbibing our favorite adult beverages.

(As an aside, what genius decided to schedule my son's first Pop Warner game on the dove opener? I am actually going to miss my first opening day in thirty-five years to watch a bunch of six-year-olds running amuck, pretending to play football.)

I chase lots of bird species that require physical fitness, endurance and skill if I am to hunt them successfully. I'll be after chukar partridge later this fall, an insidious bird about which it's been said one hunts the first time for sport, and thereafter for revenge. In November I'll be slogging through wet alfalfa fields on the unlikely notion I'll get an opportunity to shoot a rooster pheasant. December and January will find me in the duck blind, where I will have hauled sixty pounds of decoys and my eight-pound 12 gauge through the mud for a chance to shiver in the sleet as the ducks largely ignore my spread.

So yeah, most bird species present a formidable challence. Doves aren't one of them. My wife seems to have caught on to this. The other day she told me she knows "dove hunting is just an excuse for you to go drink." That pretty much sums it up.