Thunderstorms scatter doves
before hunting season opener

By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor News Service

YUMA, Ariz. -- The dove season opener was a mixed bag across Southern California and Arizona as thunderstorms romped through the desert hunting regions Wednesday night and throughout the day Thursday last week, almost washing out hunting in some areas and not seeming to have much impact in others.
There was withering heat opening day just about everywhere doves were hunted, and hunters who didn’t have limits early headed for air-conditioning earlier than even normal.
“We had record heat – the hottest I can ever remember,” said Richard Sprague, owner of Sprague’s Sports in Yuma, which functions as “dove central” in this region and is home of the annual Big Breast Contest. “It was 114 degrees on opening day -- just ridiculous -- but pretty much everybody had a good shoot.”
Then another massive storm moved through in the pre-dawn hours Sunday morning, flooding roads and knocking out power to several thousand residents in Yuma, where thousands of dove hunters were congregated for opening weekend, leaving many without air-conditioned rooms to retreat to after the second morning hunt.
Over 150 hunters entered doves in the two-day Big Breast Contest, said Sprague, and the winning dove -- a whitewing -- weighed in at 84.7 grams, a fat bird taken by Matt Loghry, a Yuma native living in Tucson who came home for the opening weekend.
Mike Mascetti and three of his sons, Scott, Jason, and Mark, all of Yucaipa, hunted just south of Yuma the first morning of dove season and two of the four shot limits with the other two just a bird or two away before the heat drove them from the field. The next morning they hunted north of Wellton, about 30 miles east of Yuma, on a cut sudan field, and three of the four had limits before 7:30 a.m., while one was stuck at eight birds and finally gave up and decided that air-conditioning and breakfast sounded better than two more doves in the bag.
Dennis Mahoney of Moreno Valley also hunted south of Yuma near San Luis and said the storms didn’t seem to run many birds out of the lower Colorado River valley, and he found a couple of fields holding predominately whitewings.
“Even though the weather was bad, everybody did pretty good with just about limits across the board -- if you could hit ‘em,” said Mahoney. There’s always that “hitting them” caveat.
Sprague said on Wednesday that a lot of local hunters were still having good shooting in both the Yuma and Gila river valleys.
“For the guys who are coming back this weekend, there will probably still be some good spots,” said Sprague.
The popular hunting areas in the Imperial Valley definitely saw a decline in dove numbers across the board after the storms last week, and some areas lost most of their birds before opening morning.
Leon Lesicka of Desert Wildlife Unlimited, the group that arranged public access to 26 plots of private land and planted all of these fields with dove feed, said he was out of the prediction business. Just last Wednesday, he’d concluded that the valley would be stacked with doves for opening day.
“I was out the day before those storms and there were birds everywhere, and I went out again the next morning and the doves were really gone. Gone,” said Lesicka. “These things happen. I think a lot of birds came back the two days before the opener, but it moved a lot of doves out.”
Lesicka said he thought hunters in the north end of the valley averaged five or six doves each.
“Some had limited out in 45 minutes, which really surprised me. I didn’t think it would be that good, but there were some guys that only had one or two birds by then two. I talked with warden Joe Branna and he said he thought the average was about five or six birds, too,” said Lesicka.
Ed Rister, a guide who hunted 320 acres of private ground near Niland, said the storm ran the birds.
“It was terrible. I got one bird. My son got five birds and most of the guys only got two or three birds. After the Wednesday night rain hit the birds were gone for the opener. The Niland area was a dove ghost town,” said Rister.
Bill Lawson of San Bernardino hunted with his young daughters Cheyenne and Micaela in the Mecca area, and all three bagged limits of doves. It was Cheyenne’s first hunt and she used a .410 to bag her limit. Those limits also included both girls’ first whitewings and Eurasian collared doves.
In the Blythe area, Billroy Phipps said the hunting lived up to expectations.
“It was awesome. We had one day of paradise, and then the hunting dropped off. We had a little storm go through here Saturday night, but there are still some fields shooting really well,” said Phipps, a Blythe resident. “My shoulder is so sore I look at a bird and I start to cry.”
Phipps said local hunters are still shooting limits of birds on the Department of Fish and Game property – the relatively new Palo Verde Ecological Reserve – on the north end of the valley off Second Street along the Colorado River. There are also a couple of milo fields to the south that are still holding whitewings, but more storms projected for late this week could change things in a hurry.
Across the river from Blythe, desert hunting was good but not great according to Matt and Debbie Gangola of Glendora.
“The Arizona opener was not the best on record, but certainly good enough to give us limits in short order,” wrote Matt Gangola in an e-mail. “Every stock pond in the area that we hunted held dove. Despite the scattered thunderstorms we had, there were still a few flights of whitewings in the area, and Debbie even managed to whack one.”
As predicted, the Camp Cady Wildlife Area in the desert east of Barstow was very slow with only a handful of birds reported. The area is normally planted with grain fields, but equipment problems didn’t allow for plantings this year.
At the San Jacinto Wildlife Area in Western Riverside county, Scott Sewell was pleasantly surprised about how well some hunters did at the area near Lake Perris.
“The opener was pretty decent,” said Sewell. There were 120 hunters who filled out and returned report cards and they reported shooting 224 birds for just under two birds per hunter average.
“That means there were a bunch of zeros, but several guys shot limits,” said Sewell, who noted the dove hunting was better than it’s been in a couple of seasons.
Sewell went out himself Sunday afternoon and shot five birds just jump shooting doves with his dogs, hunting in the sunflowers along Davis Road opposite the headquarters.
Sewell said there were a couple of dozen vehicles on the wildlife area Labor Day morning, still hunting doves and he was hearing flurries of shooting, especially early on.
The first half of the dove season continues through September 15, giving hunters three more weekend days to hunt. The second season is from November 10 through December 24.

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