In Mississippi, we celebrate September and the onset of the harvest season in a special way: with action-packed dove shoots. While Labor Day and weekend football games may get us in the mood, nothing says, "fall" in the Magnolia State quite like the opening day of dove season.

A hay bale for cover and plenty of shotgun shells make for a great afternoon on the dove field. Photo by Cliff Covington.

Dove hunting is a game in which fast flying doves test our wingshooting skills. But a Mississippi dove shoot is actually much more than just a hunt -- it's a social event we enjoy with our family, friends, and neighbors.

Many of the most fanatical dove-field shooters are guys that may not hunt any other time during the year. Yet they show up for this annual social event that is as much a tradition as fireworks on the 4th of July.

Landowners take great pride in preparing and managing dove fields for these social gatherings. Oftentimes, local bragging rights for the entire year are on the line. And while few remember the final score of last year's Super Bowl, every dove hunter in the county can tell you who had the hottest field the previous season -- whether fortunate enough to get an invitation to hunt there or not.

KNOW THE GAME
In order to gain a thorough understanding of what makes up a successful dove field, it may be helpful to know a little more about this celebrated quarry.

The mourning dove is the single most popular game bird in the country. In Mississippi, the annual dove harvest is also greater than that of any other game bird species. Only the squirrel outranks it as the most hunted small game species. The dove's popularity among hunters is due primarily to its quick flight, its erratic movements, and its quality as table fare.

According to Scott Baker, wildlife biologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, just over 65,000 hunters took part in the dove season in the Magnolia State last year. During the three separate seasons that ran from September through mid-January, hunters harvested more than 1.4 million birds. Spending just three to four days afield on average, dove hunters in Mississippi experienced a 90 percent success rate and bagged an average of 6.5 birds per day.

Though mourning doves are migratory birds whose range extends from Alaska to South America, some stay in Mississippi year 'round. Whether or not they migrate depends heavily on their habitat and food needs being met, and on the severity of the weather in early winter.

Mourning doves have a very short lifespan -- not much longer than a year on average. The mortality rate for first-year doves is around 70 percent, while adults have an average mortality rate of around 55 percent. Because of high mortality, most doves not harvested by hunters die over the course of the winter from predation or other causes.

"Hunters can annually harvest more than 15 percent of the mourning doves in the fall hunting seasons without impacting the population as a whole," the MDWFP's Baker explained.