Dove Opener - 01 SEP 2016

Dove season opened in Indiana yesterday, Thursday, 01 SEP 2016.  It was a cooler day, mostly overcast with only a slight breeze.  I think it was about 65 F when we finally hit the woods at 5:30 pm.  Of course you cannot go to the woods without liquid refreshments - you might die from dehydration!  So before we went out, we hydrated ourselves with some Dos Equis and the keg RePhil has in his garage.  I'm not sure what brand of beer it was - but it was my favorite - free and cold!

Here's RePhil taking it straight from the tap.
As you can see, we have not even changed out of our work clothes at this point.
Gotta get hydrated quickly!

Davey could not join us as he had a funeral to attend.  Krueger was invited but had other plans already.  So it was just me and RePhil doin' what we could to drain that keg.

We walked W from RePhil's house and set up our decoys.  We had 2 Mojo's (moving) and one wind-driven deke.  We also had about a dozen 'sitters' that we put up in trees, on weeds, and on the fence.

Craig in the decoy stand.  Picture taken facing to the N.  Creek behind me.
Stay thirsty, my friends!

We saw somewhere near 30 birds.  Only about 8 came within shooting range.  The first one tried to land in our decoy spread while RePhil was, can any guess?  Yep, taking a leak.  I shot behind it TWICE.  Zero for Two.

We got up and moved to the bridge over the creek, as the majority of the birds were flying W to E down the creek.

Looking W down creek.  Birds are flying right to us here.
We are standing on the bridge.

Two came in on us and tried to land in the trees.  I shot the lead bird and dropped it right on top of RePhil.  He could have caught the dang thing.  It ended up landing on the bridge.  And yes, I planned it that way.  We both shot at the second one, but it flew off.  I'm now One for Four.  We walked around looking for more birds.  We jumped one and I blasted it as it flew directly away.  It was a great shot - with a witness.  RePhil tried to shoot, but his gun had stove-piped his last shot (failed to eject the empty).  I'm now Two for Five, or 40%.  That's good for doves!

RePhil scanning for doves.

And that's how we ended the night.  The sun started to set.  We picked up our decoys and went back to the house for a dinner of beer, deer salami, crackers, and cheese.

We had an awesome night of retelling old stories and just catching up.  We laughed hard.  We sent some of these pictures to Davey just to haze the crap out of him.  Funny.  We never got a reply.

The birds were a bonus.  At least that's how we count it anyways.  They are sitting in the fridge, soaking.  Hopefully we will add another mess to them on Saturday.

Sun setting on the opening day of Dove Season 2016 at RePhil's house.

Yes, it was a great day!

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