With dove season right around the corner, don't forget to get your new licenses
There are a few cleanup items that we should be aware of before September.
The first thing we all need to do is buy new hunting and fishing licenses. The old ones expire Thursday, and dove season opens the very next day. I buy the old folks' combination license, but whatever you buy, be sure you pick up the HIP certification. You will need it if you hunt any kind of migratory bird this year. Just answer the questions about how many ducks or doves and ducks you killed last year.
I talked with Bobby Schmidt, who invites me out to his dove hunting site at Niederwald every year, and he has some concerns about dove numbers. Doves are totally ruled by food supplies, and the drought has wrought havoc with food plots this summer.
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Schmidt plants sunflowers at his spot each summer, and a drive down there in August usually turns up hundreds of birds flying there each morning. But he said a recent trip to the field had resulted in very few doves spotted and that he was worried that the birds might have taken off already.
They could have gone on an early migration flight to Mexico and the Lower Rio Grande Valley searching for a steady food supply. Maybe we’ll be lucky, but we will head out either way. It’s opening day, after all.
Be sure to take extra water for any dogs you have hunting with you and keep enough for yourself on hand.
Down at Camp Verde Ranch, we are going through our annual driving census counts and trying to determine what that means in view of the weather. The deer are hard to see right now because of the heat, and it looks as if fawns are mostly nonexistent.
We’ve been working toward a ratio of one adult deer for every 6 to 7 acres, and it looks as if we’ve achieved that, but it’s still kind of a guess right now.
This will be a good year to concentrate on harvesting feral hogs to keeo as much food out there as possible for your deer herds. You’ll also want to watch your upper-end bucks to make sure that some of your best deer haven’t dropped back a little in the drought.
Management bucks will be important this year to keep your harvest in correct ratio and to protect any trophy bucks that might have lost ground due to the drought and lack of food.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: When does dove season start in Texas? Here's what to know
