The upcoming Dove Season here in West Central Texas (Central Zone) is shaping up to be a good one. The fields of the ranch are rife with uncut wheat and sunflowers. Our practice of sowing wheat, allowing it to mature and not spraying herbicides allows the native sunflowers to come up in the wheat and is the optimal situation for attracting and keeping the mourning dove that are so plentiful in this area. (being in a natural flyway for the dove helps more than a little)

The state of the fields on the ranch are near perfect… The wheat has matured and the sunflowers are coming on strong. There’s a big difference between hunting over wheat fields that have been harvested and wheat fields that have not. Having the grain still on the stalk makes all the difference!

This is our Middle Field near one of our deep tanks.
Our Middle Field has sunflowers only. When the sunflowers don’t have to compete with the wheat, the sunflowers are thicker and taller.

Our South Field with uncut wheat and native sunflowers.
The sunflowers are still maturing and by the time the season starts will be much thicker than depicted here… It has been our experience over the last five years that the best condition is wheat and sunflowers (grain and seed) and our South Field has both!

This is our West Field. In this field we sow the wheat late (December) and allow the sunflowers to take it over in the spring. We also have volunteer dove grass mixed in with it… This field is right next to the pastures where the dove roost where catching then coming and going to their roosts has always been good.

Our East Field also has uncut wheat and sunflowers. The wheat was sown earlier (last October) and will be thicker than the sunflowers though the sunflowers are not mature at this stage and still have a ways to go. Our east field is a little different than the other fields in that it is a bit more rocky giving the birds a good place to get the gravel they need to help grind the grain and seed in their craws before going to water.

All of our fields are close to water….. There are two large tanks in the middle of all the fields and three more less than 200 yards from the west side of the fields.

Going where the birds are….

4B Outfitters also leases fields in Runnels and Taylor counties. We scout those fields as well as our own fields to determine where the thickest concentration of birds are prior to each hunt and that’s where we hunt. The patterns of the Mourning Dove are such that they move around so having fields in different areas is key to having a successful weekend of dove hunting….

Of course the food and accommodations are also a big part of the weekend and in keeping with our reputation, we will be serving our hunters high quality food, the air-conditioning will be on full blast in the hunting lodge, the big screen Satellite TV will have college football on, and the open air Pavilion will be open to all hunters. We’ll have mid-day sporting clays each weekend for those that want to practice their shooting or just have a little fun busting some clays.

For questions or reservations, call 325-668-5030 days or evenings……. I hope we all have a GREAT dove season. It’s sure shaping up to be a good one!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 11:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.