Photo by Mark Romanack

Knocking down 15 mourning doves on opening day, or any day, isn't all that easy. Perhaps that's why many enjoy the sport so much -- the challenge of meeting a preset quota and feeling good about yourself if you do.

Maybe.

And maybe, it's simply because you just get to shoot a lot.

Even though there are several factors that bear on whether a good season or poor season occurs each September, Kentucky hunters have been pretty fortunate to have a good supply of birds for the last several seasons.

Those who have learned the art of growing a good dove field, and have hunted it on a rotation, are usually the ones whose friends all say they had a great season at least from the "having birds to shoot at" standpoint. Sometimes whether they actually harvested very many doves is another story altogether.

Early in the season, most of the birds taken in Kentucky are homegrown adults and juveniles. Doves are great breeders, getting an early jump-start in April. Many will nest again during the summer. Later, the migratory doves show up and become a larger percentage of the harvest. This usually occurs after the first good cold snap in early fall. Birds from other states are pushed down, and Kentucky birds are sometimes pushed out. Regardless, one thing is for sure. Whether migrants or natives, they all are attracted, often in mass, to sites with food, water and roosting areas. Find those ingredients and you will usually find plenty of gunning action.

If you want to be in on the action on opening day, there are several good possibilities that await you. While private land shoots are good, and in some instances beyond belief, there are also many choices provided by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) on public lands. It is sort of a give-and-get situation, though.

What you get is a spot to hunt doves with no fees or worries about invitations or being granted permission. What you give is that on most areas, only the first day or two offers very much shooting opportunity. You will almost always have a large number of other hunters around. On public lands, birds get wary quickly, and with other food sites in the vicinity, doves can change their patterns after just a few days of loud noises

In addition to public wildlife management areas (WMAs), we'll note that lots of Kentucky dove hunters are now benefiting from a relatively new program the agency has created, which takes dove permit money to lease dove hunting fields from private landowners. It has opened up additional acreage in about every region for public dove hunting, and many of these fields offer fair to excellent shooting at the onset of the season.

In a nutshell, landowners willing to contract with the KDFWR to raise sunflowers, millet and other grain foods for doves, and then allow the public to hunt can enter the dove lease program and receive cash payments for their trouble. The agency tries to spread out the available money throughout the state to provide as much equal opportunity in each wildlife region as possible.

"It has worked pretty well," said Rocky Pritchert, KDFWR migratory bird program coordinator.

"But in addition, we are still providing and creating food plots for doves on nearly 20 wildlife management areas with our own staff, to give those who don't have private lands a place to hunt where they can with luck take a few birds.