By Angus Phillips
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Bob Poole calls Culpeper "Dullpepper," but it was anything but dull on Labor Day, particularly if you were a dove.
It was opening day of hunting season in Virginia, where thousands of doves have been feasting unmolested on wheat and sunflowers on a pretty patch of meadow leased by the Cedar Mountain Hunt Club. Those birds were in for a long afternoon.
"They've been coming in here like locusts," said Chris Cobb of Alexandria, a club member who tills the fields on weekends all summer. "This is what I do for fun," he explained, waving an arm at 75 acres of grain and weed strips he voluntarily oversees in the midst of a sprawling corn farm. "This is my big day."
Cobb, a transplanted Texan, was rambling around in Bermuda shorts and hiking boots on a little green tractor, greeting guests and club members arriving for this annual rite of the season. Across much of the South, dove hunting is as much a social event as a sporting or food-gathering one, particularly on opening day as old friends come together to celebrate a cultural marker that's connected them over decades and generations.
Since we were first-timers, he handed us a sheet of paper outlining the rules, which are the same wherever doves are hunted. It comes down to common sense: Don't shoot at low birds, mind where the muzzle of your shotgun points and don't set up too close to somebody else.
Dick Cheney was not coming, but with a big crowd of 65 or 70 expected on a postcard-perfect, sunny day, Cobb took the extra precaution of driving tall stakes in the ground at likely outposts to keep folks separated. A few were reserved in advance by club members; otherwise we were free to set up next to any stake.
Recommendations? "To be honest, any place is good as the next when the birds start flying," said our host. "If I were you, I'd look for a spot with some shade."
By law, dove hunting starts at noon, which can make for a sweaty affair on a hot September day. As for quitting time, Cobb pointed to a wooded glen where a barbecue was lined up for about 5 p.m., by which hour he expected most people would have had their fill.
Poole and I set off across the fields with Nellie the Wonder Dog leading the way. It was half an hour to shooting time. Here and there, clusters of camo-clad gunners gathered in shady spots, puffing cigars or sipping cool drinks and reliving past exploits while waiting for noon bells to chime.
Where to go? Every place looked promising, with strips of bush-hogged sunflowers and wheat interspersed with plowed ground, plus plenty of tree lines where birds could go to roost.
I asked Poole, a Virginian, which way he reckoned the sun was heading, so we could pick a spot where shade wouldn't abandon us. "How would I know?" deadpanned the former executive editor of National Geographic. He's a funny man.
But neither of us was laughing three hours later as we surveyed our dwindling supplies of ammunition and a pathetic bag of two birds, one for each of us. It's like this every year: You leave the shotgun moldering in the gun cabinet for eight months, then haul it out on Labor Day and expect to shoot like Daniel Boone.
Nellie, meantime, was having a great old time. She's had a long layoff, too, and when the guns started popping she was all ears. If you turned your back she was off like black lightning, highballing after some bird she'd seen downed 200 yards away. Her marks were unerring. She never failed to find the bird, then trot proudly back to me and deliver it to hand.
The wrong hand, obviously, which meant I needed to retrace her steps across the sunburned fields and turn the stolen goods over to the rightful owners. The chief beneficiary of Nellie's largesse was the party of David Haydak of Potomac, a club member who brought sons James and Jake along. They were closest to us and having a lot better success, which is always unnerving.
Haydak at one point beckoned me over, "and bring your dog," he said. She spent five minutes nosing around in deep cover for a bird he'd downed, but she came up empty. Meantime, I got to admire Haydak's impressive shotgun collection of matched, English-style double barrels and over-and-unders, which he had handsomely arrayed on a portable gun stand. "I bring two for each of us, just in case any don't work," he said.
With folding chairs, plenty of fat cigars and an ice chest stocked with cold drinks, Haydak was the picture of a civilized dove hunter on opening day.
And if the birds proved scarce in the early going, they didn't disappoint in the long run. About 4 p.m. the swarms began and the fields lit with the pop-pop-pops of shotgun fusillades. Doves started flying lower, as Cobb promised they would as the day wore on, and even Poole and I eventually managed to find our mojos.
Not that we were in any danger of exceeding the limit, which this year was raised to 15 birds a day in Virginia (Maryland held fast at 12, which seems like plenty to me). By 5, I had eight birds in the bag, Nellie was panting from sprinting all over the place, we were fresh out of water and the sweet scent of barbecued chicken wafted downwind from the nearby, shady glen, where clusters of old friends gathered.
"So," Cobb said as I trudged up the hill with my modest bag of birds, "how did Mr. Phillips do?"
"Mr. Phillips has drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs," I responded, and saw more than a few heads nod in solidarity.
"And where is Mr. Poole?" Cobb wondered.
"Mr. Poole is cleaning up his spent cartridges, which may take all night."
"Oh, that's not necessary," Cobb said. "I like to leave them out there, so when archeologists dig this site up 1,000 years from now, it'll give them something to think about."
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Virginia dove season runs through Sept. 27, then reopens Oct. 4-31 and Dec. 27-Jan. 10.
In Maryland, dove season runs through Oct. 11, then reopens Nov. 15-28 and Dec. 20-Jan. 3. Maryland has 14 public hunting areas with sections managed for dove hunting; for the list and directions, go to the website http://www.DNR.state.md.us.
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