Dove season opener Saturday looks good

By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor News Service

In spite of the remnants of Hurricane Dean thundering across the desert southwest in the past week, dove numbers appear to be holding at very high levels for the hunting season opener on Saturday.
“I can’t see anyone coming down here not getting their limits the first hour of the morning,” said Bilroy Phipps, an avid dove hunter in Blythe. “Whitewings are everywhere. There are places where you could get them with a baseball bat or a badminton racquet.”
Leon Lesicka of Desert Wildlife Unlimited, a conservation group working in the Imperial Valley to improve dove habitat and hunting opportunity, echoed Phipps prediction.
“I’m going to make a rash prediction,” said Lesicka. “Dove numbers are going to hold for the opener – and it looks to be pretty good.”
Most years hunters bemoan the early southward migration of doves out the desert agriculture areas, usually blaming the move on a slight drop in nighttime temperatures or – more commonly – on thunderstorms clattering through the valleys where the birds congregate. With temperatures climbing this week, it looks like most hunters will have to blame their shooting abilities instead of thunder or cooler evenings for a lack of dove breasts on the barbecue.
DOVE HUNTING PARTICIPATION, SAFETY: The dove opener, which is shared by all 39 states that have a dove hunting season, is considered by many to be the largest nationwide participatory event held in the country each year with around a million active participants. Because of hunter safety training and just plain common sense, the number of accidents is incredibly small. Get a million people playing football, volleyball, badminton, or swimming on the same day and there would be a passel of fatalities and injuries. Dove hunting, by comparison, is incredibly safe – in spite of the guns.
ZOGBY POLL NOT GETTING PLAY: Sort of in that same vein, a Zogby International poll from early August shows a vast majority of Americans don’t believe we need more gun control laws. A survey of 1,020 Americans showed that 66 percent reject the idea that new gun control laws are needed. Didn’t hear about that on any of the big three evening news programs, did you? You didn’t read about it in any of the nation’s major newspapers. It’s funny how that 31 percent who believe more gun laws are needed are about to shove a really moronic new gun law down our throat here in California.
MICROSTAMPING LEGISLATION: AB 1471, which could be voted on as early as today (Thursday) in the state Senate for final passage, would mandate that all semiautomatic handguns imprint the make, model, and serial number of the gun onto the fired case ejected from the gun. This is supposed to identify the registered owner as a crime-fighting tool. Reality is that it would be of little help in criminal investigations since over 90 percent of all handguns used in crime are stolen.
Forget the added costs to gun purchasers, costs to administer the system, or that the bad guys can obliterate the microstamping mechanism simply. This is more of the 31 percent forcing stupid legislation on the rest of us. If anything clever crooks could confuse crime scenes by scattering brass collected at ranges. The forensic evidence could work against law enforcement as much as for it. It mostly will waste time and money that could be far better spent on tried and true crime solving and prevention methods.
But apparently the 66 percent of us who don’t want more stupid gun laws don’t know squat.
MORE ON CONDORS AND LEAD: While the Fish and Game Commission is doing a very thorough analysis of the science and speculation related to condors and lead bullet residue suspected in their high blood lead levels, AB 821 – the so-called Condor Preservation Act – is poised to be passed by the Senate. It would ban lead based big game and varmint hunting bullets in the range of California condors. The DFG and USFWS have scientists examining the evidence, the Fish and Game Commission was created to handle these decisions, and yet the legislature is inserting itself into the process because of the shrill whining by a handful of environmental groups.
The legislature needs to butt out on this one and let the people charged with managing condors do their job. The net result might be the same – but it might not, too. The Commission might recognize that it would be better to enlist hunters to help under a voluntary program with a huge education component, rather than ram another piece of ill-conceived regulation down our throats, as it was poised to do in July. The Commission has since backed off, received more data, and is looking at a broader spectrum of issues related to condors and bullet lead. The knee-jerk legislation won’t allow for this. Let the Commission do its job.
BANK OF AMERICAN MATCHES OUR DUCKS UNLIMITED DONATIONS: From now through Sept. 15, Bank of American has pledged to match online donations made to Ducks Unlimited up to $100,000 total.
“This is our way of saying ‘congratulations’ on a job well done, and hopefully it will get more people involved in Ducks Unlimited’s critical habitat conservation work,” said Bruce Hammonds, President of Card Services at Bank of America.
Now I’d be the last guy to say you should donate on-line this year instead of attending a DU dinner, but regular supporters of DU should make sure they go on-line (www.ducks.org) and pledge a portion of the money they’d normally spend at the dinner to make sure DU gets the maximum B of A has pledged.
You might also drop B of A a note of thanks for their support of Ducks Unlimited, a group that does more than file lawsuits or shoot off their mouth. Ducks Unlimited has been a model organization that spends most of its money on the ground to help wildlife.
DOVE REPORTS: Send in your dove opener stories. Four-minute limits? Four-foot rattlesnakes? Pictures of your daughter’s first whitewing. Tales about your hunting buddy swimming naked out into a Colorado River backwater to retrieve a bird (but no pictures of that, pleeeese). I want to hear how about your trip. Send e-mails to me at odwriter@earthlink.net.

The news package is copyrighted and any use or reposting of the report, or portions of the report, is prohibited without written permission. Posting of links to the fish report on the Outdoor News Service web site is allowed.