Dove season opens at noon today. That brings back many great memories of my youth, and a very bad one after I moved to Griffin.

Daddy was the shop and agriculture teacher at Dearing High School in the early 1950s and his degree in agriculture meant he had a lot of skills useful to local farmers. We often spent Saturdays “cutting” boar shoats for them, as well as other jobs. For these services he was invited to many dove shoots.

I started going to dove shoots with him when I was about five, acting as his retriever. We seldom missed a Saturday during season. I prided myself on finding even the most difficult doves, no matter how thick the briars and brush. And I loved the camaraderie of the men at the shoot. But I longed for the day I could actually shoot at doves.

I got a single shot .410 when I was ten, but daddy made me hunt for squirrels with it, learning safety skills, for a couple of years before I could join the men on a dove field. And even then, I went only to family shoots with just a few folks on the field for a couple of years.

I was not a good shot. Darting, diving doves are much harder to hit than a squirrel on a limb. In my first shoot I was sure I had hit one, but Uncle Adron had also shot at it. He was deadly with his “Sweet 16” but he graciously let me claim it.

My best day with that .410 was on a big field with many shooters that kept the birds flying. I killed five that day and shot only a box of shells doing it. But what stands out in my mind even more from that day was trying to cross a fence to get a bird. I did not notice the top strand of barbed wire was electric. But that is another story.

Daddy had two shotguns, both 12-gauge semiautomatics. The short barreled one was for quail and the long barreled one was for doves. And we shot quail with #9 shot and doves with #8 shot. I learned to shoot both by using them for squirrels, just like the .410, but they were overkill for tree rats.

I had real good luck using it, killing my limit most shoots when I could use the long barreled 12 gauge. It throws out a lot more shot than the .410 and has more powder for a better pattern. I went to many shoots with my uncles and used it when daddy could not go.

I still have both those shotguns, I just wish I could use them more!

My bad experience was in 1972, my first fall in Griffin. I wanted to shoot doves and found a pay shoot out near Senoia. A week before the shoot I went out to pay my fee and look at the field. I should have been suspicious since it looked like a hay field, but birds were on it.

That Saturday I got in a blind on a fence row. There were not many birds, but I killed two the first hour or so. Then two men in green uniforms drove up, got out and started going to shooters on the opposite side of the field. I thought about easing into the nearby woods but was sure I was doing nothing wrong, I had my license and my gun was plugged.

As they walked up to me I saw they were federal game wardens. When asked, I gave them my license and they put it in a stack of others one of them was carrying. They then told me to come to the farmer’s house.

There they told us the field was baited and showed us photos taken from an airplane, plainly showing strips of wheat put out on the field. They informed us we would all have to go to court. After they left with our licenses the farmer assured us there was no problem, he knew the judge, and we would not be fined. He also provided cases of beer to ease our minds and calms us down.

A few weeks later I got a federal court summons and my license. It said come to court in Atlanta or pay a $75 fine. I paid it rather than go to court since I knew I was guilty. That was a lot of money back then, three times what I had paid for a day of shooting. I also heard the farmer was fined $1000!

That is the only time in my life I have ever gotten a fine for breaking game and fish laws. I am always careful to follow the law but that was a costly mistake. And I never went to another pay shoot.

It is now legal to shoot deer over bait in our area, in north Georgia. This change from last season came because of pressure from people wanting to kill deer easier. In meetings around the state, a fairly high majority of those attending wanted the change. The legislature sets hunting laws but could not come to a decision, so the governor passed the decision on to the DNR.

To make shooting deer over bait legal, the DNR changed the rules, not the law. They simply shrank the Northern Zone, where baiting is still illegal, to include only some federal lands in the area, where baiting was always illegal. Almost all of Georgia is now considered the “Southern” Zone, where baiting has been legal for several years.

I very intentionally said it is legal to shoot deer, not hunt them, over bait. Drawing animals and birds to you to shoot them is not hunting. That is why we go quail hunting but to a dove shoot. You look for quail in their habitat. You draw doves to a field to shoot them.

There are good and bad things about shooting over bait. For young hunters, especially those seeking their first deer, they are much more likely to be successful over bait. That is also true of some of us older folks as well as those with other handicaps that keep us from really hunting. But it does not teach hunting skills and the pride in working to take your quarry.

Deer tend to browse while feeding, moving a lot as they seek natural food sources. Even with food plots they will walk through them, pausing to eat but not staying in the same place for very long. But a pile of corn makes them come to the exact same place every day and spent more time in a very small area.

This concentration tends to make diseases spread among the deer. And it also makes it easier to predators other than us to pastern and kill them. There are many pictures from trail cameras set up around feeders showing coyotes and bobcats hanging around feeders, waiting on an easy meal to come to them.

To me there is no difference between putting out a corn feeder to attract deer to you and planting a food plot to do the same, except for the amount of work involved. Food plots have always been legal, and they do have the benefit of providing food for deer year-round, not just during hunting season.

I try to stay legal although I do not consider myself a deer hunter. I simply want to harvest two or three deer, preferably does, each year for the freezer. I’m a meat harvester. When younger I did thrill in looking for bucks in their natural habitat, figuring out their movements and patterns, and placing a stand in exactly the right place to get a shot at a buck.

I am proud of the first buck I killed 50 years ago this fall, a small eight pointer. I went out on public land, found signs and figured out where to put my stand, all on my own. It was tougher back then with fewer deer and fewer open days to hunt. I have killed much bigger bucks since then around my food plots but there is no pride in taking them.

I found out a few years ago how effective baiting is. I have 75 acres I hunt on in Spalding County. I plant a small field with wheat, clover and winter peas each year hoping to make it easier for me to get my meat. I have also planted crab apple trees and fertilized persimmon trees. For years I was successful.

About four years ago I stopped seeing deer in my food plots. They had changed their movement patterns. I was told a neighbor withless than ten acres of land had put a corn feeder and I found it. His stand was on his side of a gulley between his land and mine, but his feeder was actually on my property.

Deer had changed their routes, going by the corn in preference to coming by my field. I found lots of signs around the corn and trails that led to it from bedding areas, then to other areas that bypassed my field. That was frustrating.

Since baiting is now legal, I will put out a couple of corn feeders. I will continue to plant food plots if for no other reason than to have food available year-round for them and keep them healthier. And I will move my feeders every few months, so the deer will not stay in one small area all the time and help spread disease. And moving them will confuse other predators, at least a little.

Baiting is not a bad thing for some animals. Wild hogs are not game animals, they are a serious problem for farmers and the environment. So, putting out bait and shooting or trapping as many of them as you can is a good thing.

Baiting bears in some states has been legal a long time, but not in north Georgia. Bait gets bears to come to where the waiting person can shoot them. In some areas it is almost impossible to actually hunt bears due to their inconsistent movement and impenetrable habitat. Still, it is bear shooting, not hunting.

Are you a hunter or a harvester? You can be both, but not on the same property unless it is huge. Putting out food for deer and shooting deer over it but hunting for a quality buck is possible, but if your bait changes the bucks habits you are not really going after him on his own natural habitat. Since bait will attract deer for an area covering at least a square mile, you really need two different places to separate the two.

What will you be this year?

From three weeks ago:

Deer hunters statewide are buzzing. Some have been hunting with bows for a few weeks now and others will hit the woods with muzzleloaders in a couple of weeks, but the big event is in three weeks. Gun season opens statewide on October 21.

Some hunters are prepared for gun season. They have zeroed in their guns, checked their stands for safety and placed them in key areas they have carefully scouted. Others will wander into the woods opening day totally unprepared, with guns that are not accurate and stands they may fail and cause injury or death.

The worst of the unprepared will simply drive dirt roads until they find woods without “posted” signs on them and look for deer. These folks are breaking the law since they do not have permission to hunt on private land. It does not matter if the land is posted, the law requires you to have permission from the land owner to hunt.

Some people have put out corn or other bait and will sit near it opening day. That is legal in south Georgia but those in north Georgia, including this area, risk a hefty fine if caught. It seems unfair that half the state can do something legally that the other half can not, but that is the law.

If you are trying to kill a deer over bait, or in my opinion even over a food plot legally planted to attract deer, you are not hunting. You may harvest a deer but it is more like farming than hunting.

I have no problem with killing deer in food plots, I do it. But I do not consider what I do hunting. I am interested in harvesting venison to eat so I do what the law allows to help, but hunting involves much more effort to locate a deer in natural habitat, figure out the way it moves during the day and set up to shoot them.

I respect hunters that put out the effort to kill a trophy buck. It takes a lot of work to truly hunt a wise trophy buck and kill him. But it is not for everyone. Choose what you want to do, harvest or hunt, and act within the law to accomplish your goals.

The rains came just in time. About three weeks ago the weather guessers said it would rain several days in row. I knew the soil in my food plot still had good moisture a couple of inches down from the rains from the hurricane in early September. A little more rain would make wheat sprout and give it a good start, so I sowed wheat.

I should have known better. There was not a drop of rain for over two weeks. The wheat sprouted and got about three inches high, but started to die from the hot sun and lack of rain.

Just before the last hurricane rains hit, I put out winter peas, clover and turnips just as it started sprinkling. The surviving wheat and the new seeds responded to the new moisture and should have a good chance of growing well this fall, providing an attraction so I can harvest my venison for the next year.

A week later, everything looks good – wheat about five inches high, peas three inches high and good leaves on turnips. Clover has sprouted and growing thick.

Hunting Rituals are important

If you have hunted much you probably have rituals you go through. Some, like sighting in your rifle, are critical for success. Others, like carrying a buckeye in your pocket, are more mental that critical. But even those mental ones can be important since confidence breeds success.

Being member of a deer club that has a camp each year will introduce you to many more rituals. For years at Big Horn Hunting Club a big iron pot hung over the fire. Not only was a fire burning constantly from camp opening until the time we all left, water was added constantly all week to keep it full for washing dishes or other hot-water needs.
Then we got a gas fired water heater that produced all we needed. Guess what? The kettle stayed over the fire and we still kept if full of water.

Don’t dare shoot at a deer and miss during camp. You have to admit missing when you come back to camp since others have surely heard you shoot. And the ritual at many camps and even in non-camp groups is to cut out your shirt tail if you miss. I’m pretty sure some guys carried an old shirt they didn’t like in their truck just so they could change if they missed a deer.
Blooding is another common ritual. When a youth kills their first deer some blood from it is smeared on their face, usually just a finger mark down one cheek. And the youth will not wash it off for days, it is a mark to wear proudly!

In many clubs it is a ritual to eat the liver of a deer the day you kill one. There are some good reasons for this. It tastes good – if you like liver. It is easy to process in the woods. All you have to do is set it aside when gutting your deer then slice it up.

Showing respect for your kill is another ritual some of us stick with. Most of them come down from Native Americans who depended on killing game for their survival. From the time I shot my first bird with a BB gun I have always felt a tiny spark of regret for killing something. So when I read about ways to show respect to the animal for giving up its spirit for your needs I liked them.

Of course the most important way to show respect is to make a good shot, killing the animal with as little suffering as possible.

As soon as I confirm the deer is dead, as the Native Americans would do, I pause for a minute looking at the beauty of the deer and thank it for its sacrifice, remembering what it took to outsmart it in its natural habitat, or just the luck I had that day.

That makes me even more determined to use every bit of the deer I can and waste nothing. That is another way of honoring a deer or any other animal you kill.

In Europe a similar practice developed. A successful hunter would place a sprig of an evergreen into the deer’s mouth then put a spring of the plant into their cap, connecting the two. The sprig in the deer’s mouth also honored its last meal.

Some of my rituals bring back good memories. On my first dove shoot when I was about ten years old one of my uncles gave me an old army surplus gas mask bag for my hunting stuff. I killed my first dove that day and to this day I carry some necessities for the hunt in my bag. It has my skinning knife, bullets, a couple of plastic garbage bags, some rope and a spool of cord and toilet paper.

I mentioned a buckeye for success earlier. When I was a kid many of us had one we carried for luck. We would cherish it and polish it often, making I shiny and bright. It was as necessary as our pocket knives and we went nowhere without both.

Zeroing in your gun is critical, especially if you have a scope, which most of us do. Old iron sights didn’t change much but a scope can change a lot from year to year, causing you to miss your shot. A few shots fired at the range before season opens, and again if you drop your gun or hunt in widely changing temperatures, makes sure if you get your shirt tail cut off it is your fault, not your gun’s fault.

The Griffin Gun Club opens its range each year, usually the first Saturday in October, and members are there to help you make sure your gun hits where you aim it. They are experts at sighting in a rifle and can fine tune with just a few shots.

Get ready for hunting by going through all your pre-season rituals and zero in your gun. Then, as you hunt and experience your rituals, remember where they came from and why they are important.

Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation Sues Department of Interior
from The Fishing Wire

Editor’s Note: No Valentine’s notes passing between sportsmen and the Department of the Interior today. Sportsmen are angry over Interior Department actions they call a serious overreach into game management- an area that has largely been a state matter. Today, the Sportsmen’s Alliance explains the reasoning behind their lawsuit seeking to overturn a pair of Obama-era restrictions governing management of National Wildlife Refuge and National Preserve Lands in Alaska.

On February 10, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, the Alaska Professional Hunters Association and two rural Alaskans filed suit against the federal government seeking to overturn two Obama-era restrictions governing the management of National Wildlife Refuge and National Preserve lands within Alaska’s borders.

The Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and APHA believe the rules are an overreach of the federal government into the traditional state role of game management, and this action in Alaska sets a dangerous precedent that puts hunting at risk on hundreds of millions of acres of public land nationwide.

The 96 million acres of National Wildlife Refuge and Park Service lands at stake in this lawsuit cover an area slightly larger than Montana, the fourth-largest state in the union.

“Game management belongs in the hands of boots-on-the-ground state biologists who understand the traditions, goals, game animals and ecosystems better than anyone, certainly better than a federal bureaucrat simply reading a report in a Washington, D.C. office,” said Evan Heusinkveld, president and CEO of the Sportsmen’s Alliance and Foundation. “These two rules represent yet another act of the Obama Administration that sets a bad precedent for states across the country that, if not stopped, would allow federal bureaucrats or a future administration more in line with anti-hunting activists to continue seizing control of traditional state decisions.”

The enacted rule changes banned commonly accepted hunting methods, including the extension of wolf and coyote seasons to summer months suitable for hunting in the colder Alaska climate, and use of bait while hunting bears.

“These changes even go so far as to completely outlaw normal wildlife management practices involving seasons, bag limits, and methods and means, even when that is the only feasible way to restore other wildlife species such as moose, caribou or deer,” continued Heusinkveld.

Alaskans and sportsmen around the country have shown broad support for the position of the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and APHA. The State of Alaska has filed suit to overturn the rule changes, as has Safari Club International. All of Alaska’s senators and representatives oppose the changes, as does the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), along with numerous other national organizations. AFWA, which is a partnership made up of state wildlife management professionals across the country, has stated that the rules compromise state authority to manage fish and wildlife.

“This is nothing but blatant federal overreach that will destroy Alaska’s predator-prey balance, impact and set precedent for sportsmen and public-land users nationwide and, moreover, decimate residents both economically and in their ability to provide for their families from a subsistence perspective,” said Heusinkveld.

Alaska has specific protections that have been set out in law. On three occasions Congress has directed that the state–not the federal government–has the primary authority to set hunting and fishing rules in Alaska: 1959 in the Alaska Statehood Act, 1980 in the Alaska Lands Act (that created most of the Alaska refuges) and 1997 in Refuge Improvement Act (which also made hunting and fishing priority public uses on all refuge lands).

“It is clear that the federal government has overstepped its authority in this issue, and we’re confident that our lawsuit, coupled with Congressional action and the formal review promised by Interior Secretary-nominee Representative Zinke, will ultimately restore proper and commonsense authority to game management in Alaska,” said Heusinkveld.

About the Sportsmen’s Alliance: The Sportsmen’s Alliance protects and defends America’s wildlife conservation programs and the pursuits – hunting, fishing and trapping – that generate the money to pay for them. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation is responsible for public education, legal defense and research. Its mission is accomplished through several distinct programs coordinated to provide the most complete defense capability possible. Stay connected to Sportsmen’s Alliance: Online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The 2016/17 deer season is over and results are in. This past season successful deer hunters had to report their kill to the state electronically, either through a smart phone app or home computer, or call it in. This system seemed to work well and gave fast results.

You can go to https://gamecheckresults.gooutdoorsgeorgia.com/DeerByCounty.aspx and see the results. This site allows you to look at the number of deer killed statewide, by county and by region. It breaks it down by buck and does and firearm, muzzleloader and archery kills. It is interesting to see where and how deer were killed, and compare your results.

In Spalding County there were 694 deer killed, 401 bucks and 293 does. Not surprisingly, most were killed with firearms, with a total of 584, with only 17 killed with muzzleloaders and 93 with archery equipment. Compare that to more rural Pike County with 1187 total killed, 669 bucks and 293 does with 1033 killed by gun, 123 with archery equipment and 31 with muzzleloaders.

Those numbers make me think I should hunt with a muzzleloader. I know it is harder to kill a deer with one but the woods are much quieter and deer not nearly as spooky. I have one I bought at an outdoor writers meeting several years aqo but I have never shot it.

Turkey hunters this year have to report their kills the same way as deer hunters did. It will be interesting to see how turkey season goes for local and statewide hunters this year.