White Winged Dove Hunt

Daniel Sowell and I left for Hondo Texas at 3pm in search of a White Wing Dove Hunt.   Troy Leblanc, our cameraman was with us to make an HD Television show.

Hunting Season in this part of Texas, the South Zone, runs from September 17^th to October 31^st and December 25^th to January 18^th.. 

Texas Parks and Wildlife sets the Bag Limits at 15 birds with a Possession Limit of 30 birds.   The most common birds are White Winged dove and Mourning dove.

The White Winged dove are slightly smaller that the grayish-brown Mourning dove.  Their name comes from the noticeable white-marked feathers on the upper wing surface. 

They are migratory birds, wintering in Mexico and also Central America.  They inhabit scrub, woodlands, deserts and even cultivated areas.  They build a stick nest and generally lay two cream-colored to white unmarked eggs.  The flight of a white winged dove is fast and they have regular beats with an occasional sharp flick of the wings.  They feed on grains, seeds and fruit.

 The White Winged dove’s cooing sequence sounds like “Who Cooks for You”…and   “who, who, who” with the emphasis on the last note.

In the early 1900’s as farmers introduced irrigation and grain farming in Lower Rio Grande Valley, white winged dove populations increased to over 12 million birds.  Over the years the populations have decreased but they are still very strong.  In fact, Texas Parks and Wildlife estimates that 35,000 to 40,000 hunters travel to the Lower Rio Grande Valley to hunt White 

Winged doves.

Hunters Note:

Pay close attention to the layout of the area you are hunting.  In this case we first identified the flight pattern of the dove and identified where we can position ourselves to be able to take the birds in such a way that they would fall to us and not into a ranch that was adjacent to us.  If the birds fall into private property, you can not retrieve them. 

The migration patterns were very much as we expected.  The birds begin flying to the sunflower patches from the city at about 1pm and therefore they were coming from the North to the South.  Later in the day, at approximately 4pm, they were returning to the city and were coming from the South back to the North.  They had their fill of sunflower seeds and were on their return pattern. 

All in all it was an awesome hunt.

Thanks for your time today and I’ll see you in the outdoors.

Dave