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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil.  All of that bakes in the son
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down into a channel in the housing."  Bam. 
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The two little "
Read more