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[outdoors]
Set Your Sights for Hunting Fowl Signs of bird season surface as summer dwindles BY DENNIS SMITH
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It’s mid-morning in late July but oddly cool at 60 degrees. The sky is the color of muted pewter, and the air is so heavy with moisture you could almost drink from it. Downy woodpeckers, blue jays, orioles and an army of finches and sparrows jockey for space at the feeders, interrupted by the frantic, snatch-and-go flights of chickadees and nuthatches. A trio of robins is fussing at the birdbath, splashing and preening. Flocks of grackles and red-winged blackbirds carpet the dew-soaked lawn, and goldfinches are hammering away at the ripening seed heads in the sunflowers behind the tomato patch. Two mourning doves peck nervously at the spilled grain beneath the feeders, flushing wildly on whistling wings at the least disturbance. A group of Canada geese flew over so low and slow I could see their blinking black eyes. The calendar says summer, but the day feels and smells like September. Autumn is on the wind today, and the birds sense it. Their telltale anxious feeding stirs up visions of September dove fields, clots of tiny teal in secluded cattail sloughs and dusky grouse chasing grasshoppers in aspen-flanked mountain meadows. If you’re an upland game hunter and you weren’t already thinking about the smallgame hunting seasons, this is precisely the sort of day that will have you rummaging through your gear for your gunning vest, taking inventory of your shot shells and wiping down the old smoothbore in dreamy anticipation. Opening day for many upland game birds — mourning doves, band-tailed pigeons, dusky (or blue) grouse, chukar partridge and others — traditionally falls on the first of September. Colorado’s fall turkey season opens the same day, but pheasant and quail hunters will have to wait until November.
Of all our upland game birds, doves get the most attention from hunters. They’re extremely prolific, sporty and a culinary delight. They are found just about everywhere, including your own backyard. But the best hunting will be near harvested crop fields and random patches of wild prairie sunflowers. Find a grain field with water nearby and you’ve found a dove hunter’s paradise. Finding doves is the easy part; bringing them to bag is another matter entirely. They are small, deceptively fast acrobatic fliers, and hunters miss far more than they hit. Doves can easily zip through a dense cloud of shotgun pellets traveling at 1,300 feet per second and never get so much as a ruffled feather. I’ve seen them do it hundreds of times. Cinnamon, blue-winged and greenwinged teal are notoriously difficult targets, too, and the first of our waterfowl to head south in autumn. The early September season is timed accordingly. These little ducks favor small ponds, backwater sloughs and hidden creeks, so focus your efforts there rather than on big rivers or lakes. Colorado’s early teal season is typically restricted to Lake and Chaffee counties and lands east of Interstate 25, but check the regulations for specifics. Dusky grouse are creatures of the mountain forests. You’ll find them near valley brooks and grassy meadows bordering aspen stands at around 7,000 or 8,000 feet in elevation, but they migrate uphill as the season progresses. By winter they’ll be in the conifers living on spruce and fir needles. Doves are easy to find and hard to hit; grouse are almost the exact opposite. They are not especially difficult targets, but locating them involves considerable hiking. No problem; September is a glorious time of year for a walk in the woods.
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