Winamac Dove Hunt 02 SEP 2014

Re-Phil, who did not join us for the opener, got picked to hunt Winamac Fish & Wildlife Area for doves on the second day, Tuesday, Sept. 02.  He could bring one other person with him.

Winamac is about 75 miles NE of Mulberry, close to the Tippecanoe River State Park, N of Logansport.  Just suffice it to say that it's a 90 minute drive.  We left Mulberry at 0830.

We packed a cooler and then stopped to get sandwiches from Subway.  We had to register by 1100, but hunting did not commence until Noon.  If you did not show, your spot was given away to "stand by" hunters.

We checked in, and I will have to say that the assistant manager did a great job.  The safety / rules speech was concise, all questions were answered, and we were underway very promptly.

Winamac allots 7 sunflower fields to 70 hunters.  There were not 70 people there, including stand by hunters.  More like 50 maybe.  We got to pick our field to hunt (outlined by black boxes in the photo below) and headed off to set up.

We drove down to Field A, parked, and hiked our buckets and guns to a likely spot.  Some rules to follow:  non-toxic shot only; limit of 50 rounds per hunter per day; no alcohol in the field; shoot in one direction only; and hunting ends at 1800.  Now since the "take" was so poor the day before (less than 150 birds), the DNR allowed hunting to continue through sundown, or 2015 for that day.  They called their harvest "poor."  And we can attest to that.

Map of Winamac F&W Area.  We hunted Field A in the lower left-hand corner.

We found our spot for the day, and started assembling our Mojo (TM) decoys.  Oops.  I forgot part of one at home.  Thus, we had only one moving decoy.  We had six stationary ones though.  We loaded our guns at Noon and awaited the "blackening of the skies."  

In the next two hours, we each shot one round and both missed.  Probably never saw more than 20 birds total.  Only saw 2 dropped by other hunters.  And we ate our sandwiches and drank Gatorades.  Mind you now, we are facing E, it's hot, and we are in direct sun.  Not cloudy at all, unlike yesterday.  And a very good thing we took bug spray.  The mosquitoes could have carried you away otherwise.  Did I mention that it was HOT?  Africa hot.

To Re-Phil's surprise, he turned around to catch me cooling off...

Craig's attempt to cool off at Winamac

You probably weren't aware, but doves are actually attracted to red.  Ok, not true, but it was much cooler this way.

Here are some facts on doves though:

Doves come off the roost in the morning, get a drink, pick some seed, pick some gravel and then roost up around mid-day to grind seed.  The come back in the evening to feed, pick gravel, and get another drink before heading off to roost for the night.  

A doves diet consists of 99% seed - grass, corn, sunflowers, etc.  They eat between 12-20% of their body weight in seed each day.

20 million doves are harvested annually in the US.  Current population of doves is estimated at 350 million.

Now, I will attest that last week, we were seeing about 300 doves each day in our sunflowers.  Winamac said the same thing - tons of doves last week.  Nothing this week.  True.

We bailed at 1430 and walked back to the truck.  Just in time too, for as we got in, a huge wall of water (rain) came down.  It did not last long, but man was it a worm drowner.  Good call.  We would have been wet and hot.

We got back to my place and mowed the yard.  We then set out to kill more doves here.  Not to be outdone by Jon Myers (see blog post on Season Opener) I shot two birds with one shot TWICE.  This was witnessed and confirmed by Re-Phil.  All four birds recovered and verified.

We shot lots more here, and Kathy & Alex joined us.  We called it quits around 2000.

So we didn't kill a lot of birds but we had fun just being in the field, reliving old hunting stories, and dreaming of the day we can retire and do this full time.