Hey Gang. I own 23.5 acres near Hwy 21 and 183. About half my land used to be open field but now is full of Mesquites. I would like to remove some of the mesquites and plant some sunflowers for next years dove season. Do y'all have any advise for this? I have a bull dozer to clear the mequites. How many acres do y'all suggest I plant in order to attract enough birds? When should I plant them? etc?

Thank y'all in advance for all of the advise.

I would plant as much as you can afford. The more flowers the more birds it can support. Plant sunflowers in the spring.

Isn't this considered baiting???

Not if he shreds them (i.e. normal agricultural purposes)

Sounds like a gray area to me. Too close to the line to risk for me.

no gray area, and it is a good practice.

It feeds alot more birds than you will kill.

Thank you Hayraker.

I think the game book says it OK if for ag purposes or use. Not for planting spreading seed.

I may be completely wrong here and if I am, my 155 acres will be covered in sunflowers next year.

as I understand it, you can plant them, but not manipulate them outside of normal purposes. We just plant them (and milo), and then leave them alone until after dove season. The doves know what to do to get what they want out of them.

That sounds a little closer to my understanding. However, if not for grazing, or harvest, they are not considered ag use and is then considered "baiting". You can also hunt over seed on the ground if it was from ag purposes such as combining. But I really don't think I can just plant/shred and it be legal.

If you are standing at our ranch looking in a line from right to left, you have a garden, followed by a small orchard, followed by stand of sunflowers, milo, and sorghum, followed by about 150 yards of open space followed by a large stock tank (pond).

I don't hunt doves, but those that do sit in the open area on a lawn chair.

I should say that in the late fall, after dove season, we generally let the cows into the sunflowers and milo. They mow it all down in short order.

Native sunflowers are best planted in Dec. or January and food plots for dove are a widely used practice and sold by seed companies and "dove plots" are demonstrated on tv shows like "Get in the Game." I dont think they are considered baiting and if so people are blatently disobeying the law here. The good thing about native sunflower is that the seed will disperse on its own as it dies and dries out, no manipulation needed really. Good luck and i'll be planting some native sunflower in December myself. Great food for doves.

I wouldn't cut all of the mesquites. Dove seem to love them around here.

Thank you for all of the advice. Looks like I'll be knocking down some of the mesquites and planting sunflowers here soon. And to those of you that think that this is illegal, please look it up before you speak. Thanks.

I do know you have to plant them right after the last freeze in early spring. I don't know if it is illegal or not. I called the feds twice and one said it was legal and the other said it was not. It is hard to figure out because planting a crop and leaving it in the field does not fall under the "Normal Ag proceedure". I could not care one way or the other but it doesn't matter. What matters is the feds opinion at the time he visits. It can be fought and won in my opinion based soley on how vague the law is written. Who wants to go through all of that crap.

The second season should not be a problem regardless as long as they came back on their own.

It is normal agriculture procedure to not harvest a crop and shred it down if it would cost you more to harvest it than the final product is worth. Farmers do it all the time.

There are thousands of acres of milo around my house that were not harvested because it went bad before they could get it out. It will be shredded. I will hunt over it when season opens back up.

I'm looking at an AgriLife Extension handout right now that states "various seed bearing crops can be planted for the SOLE PURPOSE OF ATTRACTING DOVES".

The baiting issue is more towards the scattering of seed when planting during the hunting season of small seeded grains, oats, etc. You have to do this in a manner that is an accepted ag practice.

Planting a food plot for birds in the spring and allowing it to mature, and/or shredding it in the fall is NOT ILLEGAL.

If shredding sunflowers were illegal, half the dove outfitters in Texas would be notorious outlaws.

Shredding sunflowers is not illegal. However, planting them for the sole purpose of baiting is (and that is what this post is about).

Unless of course, the OP is a farmer of some sort and show evidence otherwise. Do you have the equipment of harvesting the bait?

That is 100% true. There are several different crop species that dove love. Unfortunately for you, the Agrilife extension is not the TPWD.

I know my GW personally and I asked him the question. His response.

"Hunting over crops is perfectly legal if they are planted for ag use and even if seed is on the ground from ag activities." He said, if you plant for the sole purpose of shooting dove, you better be able to prove you had the resources to harvest or were/are grazing said crop.

You guys go ahead and risk it, Dove taste good to me but I aint willing to pay a fine, lose my gun or hunting license for them.

It is legal to plant sunflowers for the sole purpose of attracting doves. This is taken directly from the Fish and Wildlife website. (http://www.fws.gov/le/HuntFish/WhatisLegal.htm)


Manipulation of Crops and Other Vegetation

Agricultural crops, other feed, and natural vegetation may be manipulated to improve dove hunting. Manipulation means the alteration of natural vegetation or agricultural crops by activities such as mowing, shredding, discing, rolling, chopping, trampling, flattening, burning, or herbicide treatments. Manipulation does not include the distributing or scattering of seeds, grains, or other feed after removal from or storage on the field where grown. You should be aware that although you can hunt doves over manipulated agricultural crops, you cannot hunt waterfowl over manipulated agricultural crops except after the field has been subject to a normal harvest and removal of grain (i.e., post-harvest manipulation).


Summary: Planting grain in the spring and letting it grow all summer to feed thousands of dove and other wildlife is legal. Scattering millions of David's Sunflower seeds you bought from 711 in your fields to attract migratory birds = illegal. You do not have to have an intention of ever harvesting the crop. A common agriculture practice is to disc (manipulate) fallow fields or dead crops back into the soil in order to improve and prepare the soil for the next year's crop.

So you don't have to have the equipment to harvest sunflowers. You just need a tractor, plow, seed drill, and a disc. I'd probably recommend a chisel plow too so you can get through all those mesquite roots. Or you could own none of the stuff and say you hired someone down the road to do it for you. I wouldn't worry about it at all. Like someone said before, you do so much more good for the animals than you do by harvesting a limit of juvenile dove on opening weekend.

Yall are making my point come clearer by the minute. Nobody has a direct ruling so far as baiting. Ask one GW he will tell you it is OK. Ask another and he says no it isn't.

I know very well that farmers have to leave crops all the time. Some times they have to leave it for disease ect. There are rules in place they have to follow to be within the regs. Simply planting and leaving it to hunt is not a part of the ag ext office plan, at all.

SO my point is if we can't get a straight answer how are you going to defend yourself other than I could not get a straight answer.

Just because people have not been busted for it has no bearing on whether it be legal or not. I again state I have no idea if it is or not. I can't get a straight answer.

I spoke to a retired fed and he gave it to me straight. The law needs to be written with clarification. From his mouth to my ear he said it is subject to whom is interpreting it right then and there. That is way to vague for me to risk it.

Now I hunt baited fields every year. It is no question what will happen to the crop when it is finished growing. It will be harvested by the ag ext office. It would actually be legal for farmer to use whatever means needed to get the birds off of the field. He can use a rifle a canon or a freakin grenade if he wanted to. The law is sided on the farmer, not a hunter setting up decoys and attracting the birds to the field.

Bingo Wayne. You hit the nail on the head. My GW even told me that since my deer feeder was in the same field, other end of 20 acres I hunt, that it depended on what the acting GW thought was going on.

Here you go fellas. This should answer y'alls debate whether this is illegal or not.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16750457/Normal-Agricultural-Operations-and-Dove-Hunting-in-Texas