The 2011 North Carolina Dove season opened this past Saturday at noon. I headed down to Goldsboro, NC to hunt with my long-time friend Derrick, who is deploying overseas with the Air Force this week. We headed out with another friend to the fields where we hunted last year and had a successful day.
We arrived to the field a bit after noon and we were all surprised to see that there was not another soul out hunting. I'm thinking it was due to the heat, it was close to 90! We stood in this watermelon patch that had given us a lot of action last year but nothing was flying! We gave it about two hours and then decided to check out another field that we saw some farmers out in picking their watermelon. Upon arriving we asked permission and they were more than happy to let us hunt their fields. We saw a few birds but only took a couple of shots, none of which yielded any birds. It was now close to 3pm and we were starting to ask ourselves what was wrong! It did not seem as though there was much shooting near us. We heard some shots off in the distance and decided to pack up and go look for the field with the action!
We drove around for about 10 minutes and found a field where there were about 4 or 5 other guys hunting and there were birds all over the place! In the 10 minutes it took us to talk to some of the guys to make sure it was ok to hunt the same field we saw them shoot at least a half dozen birds! We set up in the field and hunted it until dark. We had a great hunt even though the action started late in the day! With the three hunters the bird count was the following:
Paul: 13
Derrick: 7
Our other friend limited out! We then headed back to Derrick's place where I took a couple pictures of the 20 doves that he and I had shot. I'm sorry the quality is not better, but it was dark and all I had with me was the cell phone. We cleaned them up and called it a day.
I'm planning to cook the doves up in the next week or so. I have a couple of recipes that Derrick told me about.
1) Dove Rice - Boil the dove breasts in chicken broth and then add rice(s) and some seasoning to the mixture.
2) Dove Kabobs - Wrap each dove breast in bacon, place on Kabob sticks and grill until the bacon is done.
If anyone else has any suggestions I'd like to try them out, so let us know!
-Paul Nicolucci
We arrived to the field a bit after noon and we were all surprised to see that there was not another soul out hunting. I'm thinking it was due to the heat, it was close to 90! We stood in this watermelon patch that had given us a lot of action last year but nothing was flying! We gave it about two hours and then decided to check out another field that we saw some farmers out in picking their watermelon. Upon arriving we asked permission and they were more than happy to let us hunt their fields. We saw a few birds but only took a couple of shots, none of which yielded any birds. It was now close to 3pm and we were starting to ask ourselves what was wrong! It did not seem as though there was much shooting near us. We heard some shots off in the distance and decided to pack up and go look for the field with the action!
We drove around for about 10 minutes and found a field where there were about 4 or 5 other guys hunting and there were birds all over the place! In the 10 minutes it took us to talk to some of the guys to make sure it was ok to hunt the same field we saw them shoot at least a half dozen birds! We set up in the field and hunted it until dark. We had a great hunt even though the action started late in the day! With the three hunters the bird count was the following:
Paul: 13
Derrick: 7
Our other friend limited out! We then headed back to Derrick's place where I took a couple pictures of the 20 doves that he and I had shot. I'm sorry the quality is not better, but it was dark and all I had with me was the cell phone. We cleaned them up and called it a day.
I'm planning to cook the doves up in the next week or so. I have a couple of recipes that Derrick told me about.
1) Dove Rice - Boil the dove breasts in chicken broth and then add rice(s) and some seasoning to the mixture.
2) Dove Kabobs - Wrap each dove breast in bacon, place on Kabob sticks and grill until the bacon is done.
If anyone else has any suggestions I'd like to try them out, so let us know!
-Paul Nicolucci
RSS Feed
