The dove is never an easy bird to hunt. I say that after losing a bet with a friend
over 40 years ago. Hank and I were not
much for bird hunting, but we did do a little.
He and I had both hunted ducks and quail, and he had hunted dove, but I had
not. I was decent with a shotgun,
although I wasn’t great, and I had discovered there are differences in shooting
skeet, trap, and live birds, but birds are birds—right?
Over the years I had run many boxes of shells through the
old bolt-action twenty-gauge I had inherited from my grandfather, and I thought
there were no birds that could fly through the pattern that gun made. Hank bet me some small change that the dove
could do it. No Way! But Hank insisted it could be done, so I
took that bet, and we went dove hunting.
My cousin’s family had some property in west Texas where the
doves were plentiful in the fall. One
particular stock tank must have had the right flavor of water, because the dove
population would always be rather dense for two or three hundred yards around
it. I didn’t remember ever hearing of
anyone hunting these birds here before, so I thought it would be a perfect
place to test Hank’s theory and take his money from him. I didn’t think about the fact that the cost
of the gasoline just to get there was several times the amount of the bet. Sometimes cost doesn’t matter when money is
involved.
As we were driving from Fort Worth to the ranch, I decided
to make a second bet. I told Hank I
could take the limit of birds (I think it was fifteen) with one box of shells
and have several left over for the next hunt.
I drove from Mineral Wells to Abilene before he stopped laughing, and we
were past Odessa before the snickering subsided. Come to think of it, his big grin never did go away.
When we arrived at the ranch, my cousin was waiting on
us. I had talked to him for permission
to hunt the property, but I didn’t expect to see him at the ranch. However, there he was, and he was planning
on joining in on the hunt. When he
found out about the bet, he sided with Hank.
“I’ll double Hank’s bet.
Shooting dove is like shooting a hole in a cloud. It can be done, but it ain’t easy.”
Two against one.
Great. I’ve seen dove fly, so
why are they supposed to be so hard to hit?
Both of these guys know my hunting ability, yet they think I’m going to
have a difficult time filling my limit.
They should know better.
We were up very early the next morning, and by first gray
light we were near the stock tank awaiting the sun’s rays. Just before the first long shadows appeared
we began to see flights of white wing dove, and we were ready.
All three of us let go at about the same instant. The double boom of Hank’s Ithaca twelve and
the rhythmic pounding of Vern’s Browning pump along with the unsteady popping
of my little Mossberg 185d made the morning sound like a war zone. And the dove fell. We gathered our first round of birds and settled in for three
more rounds before the flights became more sporadic. Hank and Vern had their limits and I had one more to go to fill
my bag, but that one proved to be my undoing.
By now the birds were flying alone, and every shot could be
judged on its own merit. No more of the
‘two birds with one shot’ scenario. I
had to make this work. I had just seven
shells left in my pocket, and I had to go back with 1) my limit, and 2) several
shells left over. I wish I had sneaked
in a few extras, but I was just too confident.
I wasted two or three shots on cross flights about thirty
yards out. Another shot followed a bird
as he flew from behind me, over my head, and in front of me, but he was just
too fast for the pellets. And then it
happened. I loaded my last three
shells, two in the magazine and one in the chamber. In the distance was a dove flying straight toward me. When the bird was about forty-five yards
away, I pulled the trigger and immediately chambered the second round. Again I pulled the trigger, and the last
round went into the chamber. And I
fired again. I had seen that dove fly
right through the oncoming shot three times, and then it flew over my head and
away to the nearby hills.
I paid my bets, and I took a lot of ribbing, but later on I
discovered the real quality of my friends.
I never heard about my humiliation after that day—not from Hank or Vern
or anyone else for that matter. They
never said a word about it to another person.
And I learned a valuable lesson.
