Hunting with history

With your permission I went dove hunting, thank you.

To “take” mourning doves in this democracy you, the people, required that I passed a hunter safety course, bought a $22 small game license, funded the habitat program with $11.50, paid $15.00 for the Iowa Migratory Bird fee, and registered with the Feds to survey my success.

When I purchased my ammo, I tacked on an extra 11 percent to the Federal wildlife restoration program. All those monies, state and federal, must be spent on wildlife conservation. I paid them all with pleasure.

Since it was oh-so-dark, I walked deliberately, my red-light headlamp only provided enough light to keep me out of trouble. In the distance a white-light winked at me, a signal from another hunter. It was at me but not for me.

Since mine was the fourth vehicle in the parking area I knew I would be looking to settle in among the really early risers.

  Buy Photo

I started at the south end of the sunflower field and met my first confederate for the morning. He’d just walked back to his hide from setting out his decoy. He confirmed there were some men down the line. I didn’t look forward to walking past all the guys, but I needed to see if there was a spot for me and north was the only way to go.

The next group was a pair with a lab, their decoy already out, they said that so-and-so was just ahead. I said thanks.

I passed the next guy, he had flashed his light at me, he thought I was his late arriving buddy. I asked if there was anyone north of him, he replied no. His decoy was set, too.

I walked just far enough north to be safe and then plopped down, leaving enough space so another party could fit in north of me.

The French word for pigeon is dove. I was after the widespread mourning dove. In the 19h Century, the passenger pigeon was the most popular and populous bird. Its sun-clouding flocks were legion. John Jay Audubon recorded a flock near the Ohio River that took three days to pass. Scientists have since estimated there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons. Superlatives are insufficient.

The Iowa rules allowed for shooting to commence 30 minutes before sunrise. With atomic accuracy in our pockets, no hunter has the excuse of being a minute early. This morning the sunrise was 6:31. I waited, a barred owl called. Early and indiscernible birds fidgeted in the sunflower patch, some wood ducks raced overhead. Finally, the time arrived.

A mourning dove coursed past from the left to right. So caught up in the wonder of seeing one, I let it pass. All was still down the line, too. I was surprised no one else had taken a shot yet. More minutes went by, then a lone dove materialized from my right and slowed to flutter over the cut field. In dove hunting, moments are all you get. But moments are all you need.

I swung through with the moving bird and the 20 gauge spoke. One down. Not a moment later the line erupted with volleys, like a pack responding to a lone wolf. I surmised my fellow gunners had doves on the ground near their decoys and in hopes live doves would attract more doves, held their fire. I had no decoy so I had nothing to wait for. It was 6:14.

  Buy Photo

Eastern Iowa was on the edge of prime passenger pigeon nesting range. Normal seasonal range extended to central Nebraska. The last great U.S. nesting was in Wisconsin, in a region that included my boyhood haunts around Tomah. It was described as an L-shaped area of about 850 square miles. Linn County is about 713 square miles for comparison.

Passenger pigeons were taken by all means. They were netted, trapped, the squabs were plucked from nests and attending parents that didn’t flee were clubbed. During heavy flights people would hold up long poles into the feathered fury, birds would collide with the pole and fall, concussed or broken.

Shooting was the final method. Industrialization after the Civil War made shot and guns plentiful. At the great Wisconsin nesting of 1871, one merchant reported he alone sold 16 tons of shot, approximating 512,000 rounds. The pigeon historian A. W. Schorger calculated there were 136 million nesting pairs in the area, 1.2 million of which left in ice-packed barrels. The telegram and the expanding rail network quickly brought market hunters to the flocks, and then barrels of birds to the markets in the east.

The gunners down the line reported with regularity. Birds flew over the field, often in twos and threes. I added my own sonic booms, doing little other than ripping at the sky with errant shots — never stop swinging on the target, never take your face off the stock.

In a lull, someone made a move to retrieve, and the guns fell silent while men and dogs scrambled for fallen birds before returning to their hides. I joined in and fetched my bird and then picked for the spent wads of hunters past. Hunters have no obligation to police their plastic wads, but I can’t stand plastic waste. A sandhill crane bugled in the distance, they always seem like they are “at a distance.”

In the 19th Century wildlife management was in its infancy, the culture saw wild animals as free for the exploiting. Market-hunting, like market-fishing, was a way to meet the demands of a hungry nation. The logic of collecting animals for free and selling them for profit was clear.

At 6:43 my string of misses was broken and another bird joined the bag. The sun’s rays were upon the treetops, bathing their plain green leaves into something majestic, such is the magic of low angled sunshine.

A pair of hunters in the middle of the area packed up, the other pair became a solo and then we were three and a dog. Three men, alone but together, and clearly hunting for more than just table fare.

The last notable passenger pigeon congregations were in 1881 in Oklahoma, and in 1882 in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The birds that needed massive aggregations to survive succumbed to unrelenting market-hunting and deforestation. In 1893 about 20 birds were reported in Franklin County. Iowa’s last passenger pigeon was shot in September of 1896 near Keokuk. The last bird in Wisconsin fell in 1899.

The sun was now high enough in the sky that I was getting hot on my shoulders. The flight of doves had dwindled. The busiest birds in the sky were the goldfinches and sparrows pecking at the sunflower heads that surrounded me. The walk out was lighter and faster than the walk in. I traded more ounces in lead than I got back in birds. The trail in daylight was so much shorter than the same in the dark.

The Lacey Bird Act was too late for the passenger pigeon, but not the mourning dove. Iowa Congressman John F. Lacey tried his best. The modern regimes of scientific management, public ownership and mandatory fees have made a tripod on which the birds will carry on. As long as the American people carry on we will have robust wildlife for watching, and for hunting — with your permission.

Looking up, looking ahead, and keeping my pencil sharp.