Showing posts with label Dove Season. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dove Season. Show all posts

Monday, September 5, 2016

Labor Day Dove Walk



Sometimes you have to take some time out from polishing your Felix Dzerzhinsky bust and get out in the field. My friend from New York agreed and tore himself away from the minutiae of Das Kapital and off we went, x in search of dove.


Felix Dzerzhinsky

In a normal season, one which hasn't been sabotaged by 5th Column Weather Activists, we'd have flushed a few birds from the treelines and adjacent fields. As it was, a couple of avian acrobats lifted off from the grass and a few shots were fired, but they were long and the birds got away to fight again another day.


Escape From New York

Still, the armed stroll was good in itself; there you are in the country under the big Texan sky, gun in hand. There's peace in that, for me, and excitement too, when you get that split second of explosive action.


A Typical Deadly Assault Rifle

Walkabout over, we fell back to the cow skull with a carbine and gave it the old red dot treatment. Take that, skull, and word to the wise. 

The Skull

If you're fixing to strap on a cow skull as some kind of magic protection against 5.56, don't. It won't work, trust me.


Look, Buddy, it's not Gonna Work

So that was that. A good day was had by all and who knows, maybe the dove will start flying at some point soon. Hill County hopes. 

Happy Labor Day,

LSP

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Opening Day



"Mornin', looks like Summer's back," I called out to my neighbor, through the humid miasma of a Texan September 1st. "Yeah, happens 'bout every 100 years," he growled. "Sure, it's like a war," I replied, hauling an empty trash can behind the compound's perimeter. And that was the start of Opening Day, but not the finish.




A few hours later we were in a dove field, somewhere in Texas, setting up. Rigs parked, decoys out, shooters positioned strategically and then wait, in the sweltering heat. No birds, just heat and steam rising up from the waterlogged ground.  Then things changed.





Clouds rolled in from the North, along with thunder, complementing the sound of distant shots. Somewhere, not too far away, birds were coming in and there was action. Would it come our way?




Cooler weather certainly did, a big relief, and with it, small groups of dove, in twos and threes, came barreling over the treeline at the decoys as lightning arced from the sky, and the guns blazed away like the flak towers of Old Berlin. All against the far-off barrage of thunder.




Pretty dramatic, and the shooters down the line got the best of it, downing 8 birds in fairly quick succession. Good work, boys. It was slower from my position but still, not bad. I shot enough to get the adrenaline up, as well as missing enough to guard against the sin of pride.




Then, as dusk set in, we fell back to HQ to grill up some poppers and sausages and I tell you, a good day was had by all.

Get out in the field,

LSP