north texas doves sucks

I sat on a tank 4.5 hours Friday, nothing.

Four of us 4 hours sitting on top of 200# of spilled corn with water nearby, not a shot fired.

6 of us under a treeline this morning, two small groups of dove seen far out of range.

I'm a little disappointed with north Texas dove this year. Been looking forward to this weekend for a couple of months, I don't even think I'm hunting tonight or Monday at all. Just not worth more chiggers to not see a bird. Might teal scout Monday, might throw in the towel for a week. Very disappointing.

We've been seeing lots of birds around Wichita,going this evening for the first time will report back later on outcome.

Well dadgum long haird dave, one pond aint all of north texas bud.Theres day leases everywhere u can shoot lots of dove.You just have to cough up 50 or more bucks.

We hunted a field in Lavon ( Wylie, Tx ) on Tuesday - 25 guys about 100 birds shot and about 200 missed. Very few Saturday. I assume the storm on Wednesday nite pushed em out. Hope some new birds arrive soon.

JD

Don't think I would admit to sitting over corn, spill or not, but it's your thread. Had limits yesterday morning, evenings still sux.

Mornings were good Tue and Wed, tapered off since then, better today though, hoping tonight them suckers are tired from flying south all day

You're right one pond ain't... I got a season lease at DJ, there's plenty of land, plenty of water, plenty of corn, and plenty of empty fields. Not the leases fault, sounds like some of the birds are west of 35 if you believe everything you read! Anyway I shouldn't sound so down, it's still early, it's just a 3 hr round trip drive to go hit the lease so you can see why I'm not real excited about going out again this evening.

It's why they call it hunting.

Where I was hunting west of DFW, each day there would be less birds than before and you could see the flight patterns becoming more random or less predictable. And many of the birds flying higher with some place to be. And then the rains Thursday night alone are enough to change those patterns too. I actually thought to myself how I felt sorry for the guys coming in to hunt Friday evening or Saturday morning. Though on the field I hunted, we were all getting limits during the week, I bet few did during the weekend.

IMHO Even if the exact location you hunted had little pressure during the week, the normal routines would have still been messed up for your local birds. Those routines so out of wack by Friday, there was no telling where they would have been.

With the pressure on them breaking off, you should start being able to pattern them on places again soon be it food, water, or roost. Those healthy Kansas birds are coming too.
Don't give up on them yet.

Enjoy the experience. Personally I am glad to just get out and hunt. I shot my limit Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then it slowed down Friday and I shot seven. Went out this afternoon and only shot two.

I guess I was kinda harsh, it's just a lot tougher start than it was last year. I think it's harder on my mental game too because of all the built up anticipation. It might have been easier to take these no bird hunts if we were a few weeks into the season.

Anyway I'm a sucker for punishment and enough of an optimist so I'll be up at 4:30am to start over again!

Last 3 hunts, not a shot fired. I think the cooler weather pushed 'em South and East according to reports. A week before the season started, I had birds all over the place. I guess the rain the other day didn't help any either. Oh well, they'll be back sooner of later. I'm waiting on them Kansas birds as well.

2 evening hunts in north-east McKinney (aka New Hope) area. Didn't pull the trigger once. Probably only saw 3 or 4 birds. Was in a cut corn field both times, 2nd hunt was close to a tank.

I'd be happy with having the opportunity to just get 3 or 4 birds, as opposed to zero.

I hunted in the Throckmorton area and it was fair. Myself and 3 other guys managed to get 64 between the four of us over three days. there were alot of other hunters that killed about that amount also. They flew good one day and were gone the next.

Just got in about an hour and a half ago hunting in Ellis county around a pond. Killed 10, had a swarm of over 50 birds come in around 9:30. Best morning so far this season, not a whole lot of birds around but the mojo doves seem to bring the ones that are there right on in.

i feel you long haired dave. friday night, one shot fired at a bird out of range. saturday mornin 2 shots fired at out of range birds. sat evenin we killed 4 between 3 people, then sunday mornin we hunted the same spot and never saw a dove. its kinda dissapointing when your all pumped up about the season

Saturday was a little slow for us near Godley but would have got 8-9 if I was was shooting better... shot my first limit ever Sunday morning nera fw....

didn't see one dove on three different public land options this afternoon. sucks

I was all over the LBJ national grasslands. I didn't even see a dove.

I did see at least a dozen wild turkey though.

I was in the field ready 15 minutes before legal this morning, hunted all day minus some driving to different fields time, minus a 1.5 hr nap in the truck, and I finished at legal watching the sunset tonight. Saw a few in Hunt county. This morning a father/son combo was on a flight path and son managed to scratch out 3-5 dove. I had some fly over me but couldn't position to see them coming because of the sun. I tried an evening hunt -- the father/son left after the morning and the spot was open, but no birds flying that position.

Dove in Hunt county so far:

9/1 1 hr evening hunt 1 bird (I coulda shot a few more, just busy talking with Team Hillbilly rather than "hunting" and it was more memorable that way, just wish I'd taken a picture of his puppy lab pointing my dead bird).

9/4 4.5 hrs evening: picked up someone else's cripple and put it out of its misery.

9/5 6 hrs afternoon / evening: 0 birds.
9/6 2 hrs morning : 0 birds.
9/7 13 hrs morning, afternoon, night: 0 birds.




CTK3, I enjoyed my time in the field, to some extent. Not nearly as much as if I had shot 52 birds in four hunts though.

Besides the fact that 52 birds tastes a lot better than 2. Dubs taste good!

LHD, you're hardcore my friend. LOL... I've been on 3 hunts so far and the longest one was maybe 4 hours. Best of luck to you...

Nah, more dumb than hardcore. I'm too new at hunting and like it too much to have to spend 10 years getting up to speed. I'm trying to get in whole lifetimes of "paying dues" in as few months as possible

LOL, look on the bright side LHD, at least your shoulder isn't as sore as mine is from hammering 12 gauge shells from a O/U pretty much every day since dove season opened.

And if it makes you feel any better, the dove hunting in my area has slowed down a lot since the rain from last Friday.

It wouldn't be impossible for me to arrange a dove hunt/carp fly fishing trip if you ever had the time to make your way to west Texas. Other than hunting, fly fishing is my second love.

Cry me a freakin' river CTK3! Rub some vagisil on it and you may feel better (insert jealousy emoticon here)

I think you just got FISHSMACKED!!!

Define west Texas for a cast and blast. Are we talking Ft Worth or New Mexico??? Man anything west of 35E is west TX to me and that's a lot of space!

Lmao cable, we just have a good number of birds here this year, it's not like this all the time. And I'm lucky enough to have a great spot that's less than a mile from my house.

LHD, I'm a little north of Abilene on hwy 83.

Excuse me while I go rub more vagisile on my shoulder.

Had a decent opening day on land between Venus and Alvarado. Wen yesterday to a buddies place in Itasca and it was on. Birds flew all day long.

We did not many Doves this weekend. Only to speak of.

We hunted near Grand Saline this past weekend and picked up 35 birds on the morning hunt and 34 the afternoon hunt between 7 hunters.

I got a limit on DJ on 9/1 but the next day I didnt see a thing. I went to Grayson Co. side yesterday and same thing not a bird in sight. I heard alot of shooting going on west of my location but did not take any shots.

P.S.

My biggest problem was that there wasnt enough shooters on 9/1 and the birds didnt move around much, basically took all day to get my limit....

Should be some more birds coming with this big cold front moving in this weekend...

One thing I learned early on hunting east Texas for dove is that there is to much food and water, not like back home (Odessa) where the water and food is concentrated in one area.

Opening weekend has never been great for me. The last 3-4 years everyone on our place has done a lot better the second and third weekends. We did fairly well in Throckmorton Co. this past weekend. It was hit or miss depending on your spot. Three of us sat one morning where they had a great shoot the night before and shot 4 birds in two hours. A little ways away, four other sat on a different pond and limited out in an hour. The next morning in the same spot, we shot 8 birds in two hours.

Got my limit near Godley, TX on opening day, had a great hunt. I saw probably 1000+ dove thay day. Been out of town since, so I hope the birds are there for next weekend if this rain gets out of here.

Our opening day was terrible, the day before we scouted this field and saw maybe 4 to 5 hundred birds, the next morning we might of had 50 to 75 birds come into our field. The next day was better, went to another field and got into a bunch of white wings.