The Great Dove Hunt of 2007

My Pop and I packed up and headed out early Friday morning, the last day of August, heading west. We followed my buddy Stout and his brother David out to the deer lease for opening day of dove season. Wait, that should be capitalized. Opening Day of Dove Season.

So we got out there Friday night and got everything unpacked and settled in at the lake house. We then sat out on the patio and tossed washers for about two hours while drinking beers like we were in a contest. The point of all this was to do as little as possible. To get away for a weekend out into the country – to do as little as possible… To disconnect. To unwind. It was so nice to be able to become one with nature. And the birds. The boids.

Stout and Space after a long day of, well, hunting.Gorgeous weather, cold beer, good burgers on the grill, shotguns loaded, ready to go. We got up nice and early Saturday morning and headed out to the pond on the four-wheelers. We picked our spots and sat quietly against the backdrop of nature. A totally peaceful morning. It was just before ten o’clock when I cracked my first beer open and lit a cigarette, waiting for the boids. The peaceful morning was interrupted by a single crack of a shotgun going off, and a dove fell from the sky. Pop had made the first kill of the day, and that single crack was surely the beginning of a successful and glorious dove hunting season. We’d be filling our bags with fresh dove and celebrating tonight, for we’d cleared the skies. Up to our limits, of course.

Well, we uh – um, well, we… That um, well – you know, that one bird was the uh, the only one we got that morning. We, of course, went back to the pond that evening and sat out again, and that, my friends… That was when we struck gold! We got three more doves. Well, Pop got them. But now we had four birds to eat! Between four grown men, we had four boids. We went for some chicken fried steak. And beer.

There just weren’t any boids flying during this Opening Day. Well, maybe that shouldn’t be capitalized after all. Not this year.

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