Outdoor Odyssey

In 1972, before the TPC and before the area really exploded, there was a big dove roost in the washes on the east side of Scottsdale Road south of the airport, not two miles north of its intersection with Shea Road.  This wasn’t far from our house so late one Friday afternoon my family and I decided to go out and visit this spot, shoot some doves, then after the sun went down have a “dove fry” in the desert.  For this feast we’d fix doves along with green chilies and onions.  

We called the Schroder’s, our local friends also from Texas, to come out with us but they had other plans, so loading up everyone in our “luxurious” camper, atop our Dodge Power Wagon, we arrived at our hunting spot just before the doves started pouring in. Brad, my ex wife and I were shooting and Randy and Suzanne were retrieving.

We had a ball and within thirty minutes, by the end of shooting time, we had three limits of mourning dove. We cleaned, breasted and washed off the birds and built our fire.  For the fire, we gathered rocks and made a fire pit with them, then broke up the mesquite and soon had a nice fire going, making coals for the cooking.  Putting our expanded metal “grill” on the rocks we were ready to “fry”!

We fried the doves and started our green chilies and onions.  The recipe follows:

Two sweet onions, medium size,
One small can of chopped green chilies,
One stick of butter, don’t use margarine.
Peel and slice the onions and put them and the butter in a skillet, cover, place on the fire.  Stir occasionally and cook the onions until they turn white then add the green chilies.  Cook for five more minutes and then serve.

This recipe fed our family.  For larger groups keep the ratio of two onions for one small can of green chilies.  This dish goes good with steak, chicken, wild game and fish.

By the time we finished eating, it was completely dark and our fire was flickering and almost down to coals, we heard a horse coming up on us.  It was Jake Schroder, mounted on a fine steed that he’d borrowed from one of his neighbors.  Dismounting and tying his horse to the Power Wagon he inquired, “Got any grub left?”  We did and he finished off the food, stretched out on the desert and told us that they had gotten home early and he decided he would ride out to see if we’d done any good with the birds.

We were enjoying the desert when Jake said he had to get the horse back, so he mounted up, turned the horse in two tight circles and in one motion, pulled back on the reins and hit the horse on its rump with his hat and up came the horse’s front legs, the hooves pawing at the air.  Laughing we told him, “Jake, that looked like Roy Rogers and Trigger!  Ride ‘em cowboy!”  And, off he went into the darkness back towards Scottsdale Road.

Having just signed up on a new hunting lease near Millersview, the opening of dove season found me standing by myself, with my twenty gauge pump, in the shade of a mesquite tree, the sun on my right and a half acre stock tank to my front.  The banks of the tank were sandy/gravelly, just right for doves to use.

Arriving at the tank around 4:00 PM, too early for the birds to water, I sat real still and watched the song birds and, of all things, the deer, eight or ten does came into the water.  There was a lot of shooting that I guessed was about a mile away on a bordering ranch and I was hoping that the birds would come into my tank.

One hour later, here came the doves!  Beginning with just a trickle, I knocked down the first two and they both fell right on the tank damn, just in front of me.  Picking my shots, being careful not to splash one into the tank, the doves kept falling and I stopped for a minute and counted up.  Eleven birds, then I counted my shots, eleven shots.  Never having gone straight on a limit of doves, thinking back, I had run over a hundred and fifty straight on clay birds in trap and downed fifteen straight Mearns quail, but not the diving, twisting and turning doves.

Here came number twelve, right at me, and easy head on shot.  Covering the bird, for some reason, I raised my head and missed!  The dove veered to the right and, pow, down it dropped into the tank.  Chunking rocks and cow chips at the bird, the "waves" brought it to the bank and  then it was in my bag.

Twelve for thirteen, still not bad and the new lease only got better.

It could be said that the weather in Phoenix is always hot, bright and dry.  Even if it is cool, the sun is out most of the time and Jake Schroder and I, both of us being good Texas boys, remembered our State's rain and clouds, and would joke around with each other and say "Ho hum, another beautiful day in paradise."  One day, for me, paradise turned real ugly!

In 1972, Bill Randall and I were both managers with a large computer company and both of us shared the same love for hunting.  One afternoon during the middle of dove season we left work early, had to make sales calls you know, and I picked him up in my Bronco and we sped off to a spot that he had found north of Gilbert, Arizona.

It was a large grain field that had just been harvested.  Arizona is strange.  It is hot and dry, but if you can get water to a crop, it will grow and, along the east side of this field, a large irrigation ditch supplied the water. Thankfully, as we upped and downed through the canal, it was dry and we scrambled out of the truck and began our hunt paying no attention to a large thunderhead southeast of us.

Bill and I were the only hunters and were literally covered up with doves.  We held off the mourners and concentrated on the bigger, white wings.  Nearing our limits, we noticed that the thunderhead was moving toward us and was kicking up a small sand storm.  No problem, when it gets closer, we'll load up and go.

It got real close real quick and the next thing we knew there was a wall of sand coming closer and closer, until it engulfed us!  Hurrying back to the truck, it started getting darker and darker and by the time we closed the truck doors, it was like night had fallen four hours early.  As the wind picked up, large drops of rain we're smacking into the truck and Bill said, "Jon, we're in trouble.  I bet this is a tornado and we got no place for a shelter."  Replying, "We could lie down in the canal and hope for the best."  Then he added, "Why don't you just drive the truck into the canal?"

We pulled over one of the berms and turned left into the canal and stopped, lightning popping all around, the wind and rain buffeting us and then we heard it.  A train bearing down on us, but no tracks around here and we looked at each other and exclaimed, "Tornado!"

The force of the wind shook the Bronco and tried to lift us up into the swirling vortex, but for some reason, the wind kept setting us back down into the canal!  In the darkness, terrifying minutes passed until the big wind and roaring moved on.  It remained cloudy but the sky brightened and the big drops of rain were replaced by a normal shower and soon, the big storm broke up before it reached a populated area.

No mention of the tornado on the 10:00 O'clock news so I guess Bill and I were the only witnesses.  Also, the Chamber Of Commerce thinks it's bad for business if there is talk of tornados in Arizona!

Trying to find some relief from the hot, September, Texas sun the afternoon of opening day of dove season, we were stationed under shadeless, it seemed, mesquite trees around a stock tank.  The tank was on the edge of a just cut milo field, on our new hunting lease in McCulloch County, Texas.

The afternoon flight was just beginning as a pair of mourners zipped in and bam, bam; they tumbled down into the field. Rooster, one of my two Brittany Spaniels, raced out and picked up one bird, brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. Rooster, right, was a great retriever.

Gus, his son, enjoying his first hunting season, looked kinda silly standing over the downed dove that he went to retrieve. Finally he picked it up, started trotting to me and dropped the bird half way, spitting out feathers and sitting down.

His first dove retrieve proved difficult and for the rest of his hunting career, he never liked to retrieve them. When a retriever picks up a dove, and rolls it into the proper carrying position in its mouth, out come the bird’s feathers resulting in a difficult retrieve. Quail, ducks or geese don’t shed their feathers and are much easier to retrieve.

We continued hammering the doves and both the shooting and temperature was hot! Several birds, when shot, fell into the water and Rooster splashed in and retrieved them. Gus continued fumbling around trying to retrieve birds that fell into the field

Finally, I had just splashed another one, and Gus, pictured left, bounced into the water to bring it back. He picked up the bird, tried to position it in his mouth, and for some reason, began swallowing it. Into the waist deep, muddy bottom, water I sloshed and grabbed Gus. The dove’s tail feathers were sticking out of his mouth as I reached in, before he could swallow it, and pulled it out of his throat .

Gus hunted with me for eight more years and he never tried that trick again!

After the past Saturday's spectacular dove hunt just outside of George West, my Dad and I decided to accept the rancher’s invitation and made arrangements with him to be there the coming Saturday.  

We would be taking one more shooter with us, my ex-wife.  It was almost a problem because she was eight months pregnant with our second child, soon to be Randy. But in those days the sex of the child couldn’t be determined until birth.  My Dad and I thought, “Why not, one more license would let us get another limit of birds.”  Come Saturday morning we packed Brad off to my Mom, and set sail for George West.

Arriving there around 2:30 PM, we met the rancher and paid him a whopping $15.00 for the three of us.  An added benefit was that he was going to hunt with us again this week and he was going to take us to three new places.  He said the birds were still eating him out of house and home and they were starting to cost him money.  

A little after 3:30 we arrived at out first stop, a fifty-acre milo field that had just been cut, and as we walked to our hunting areas, birds were coming and going, flocking, to the field.  Pop, pop, pop, pop, four guns barked and two doves fell.  More shooting, more birds going down.  The shooting was fun, but the retrieving was hot work. Soon, my ex-wife got too hot and took the first of her several breaks.  So three of us were shooting, pop, pop, pop, and more birds falling.

We checked and we had our bag limit, forty-eight birds, in about forty-five minutes.  Our bag and possession limit was ninety-six, but after last weeks hunt we still had plenty of doves!

Hot shooting, in more ways than one.  Shotgun barrels were too hot to touch, the heat was staggering, and thankfully we had our limits and could go on home.  But the rancher said, “We need to go try to this new stock tank and see what’s there.”  “But we have our limits,” my Dad and I exclaimed!  “Limits?  Let’s go shoot”, grinned the rancher.

I guess we thought that this guy really wanted to shoot some doves and we sure were the right guys to help him, so, off the four of us went to this new stock tank complete with several dead mesquite trees standing around the bank.  The tank was about one acre and its banks were gravelly and smooth right down to the waters edge.  A perfect set up for doves.  

Taking our stations behind some buck brush, pop, pop, pop, pop, and one dove fell - a little different shooting than an open field.  Soon we were in the groove and the doves started falling in the water and around the tank and we had four more limits.  

No afternoon swim this week so handing my wallet and watch to my Dad, I unceremoniously waded out and picked up the birds and told the rancher, “We have our bag and possession limits and really should stop shooting and head on home.”  He replied, “I have one more spot, a roost, that we need to try.”  Drying of as best I could, the rancher and I left for the roost.  My two hunting partners decided they had had enough and would sit this one out in the shade around the rancher’s house.

Arriving at the roosting area with about thirty minutes left to shoot, birds were already coming in. The roost was a large chunk of South Texas brush country with a clearing surrounding a small rise, a miniature hill.  The birds were guiding on the clearing.  Mourning doves will guide on a tree, telephone pole, house or any outstanding feature in the landscape to assist them in flying the most direct route to food, water and a safe place to roost.  

We were in their direct flight line, and pop, pop, pop, pop, we unloaded on them and birds started falling.  By end of shooting time we had well over two more limits.  A quick tally told me that we faced cleaning over one hundred and thirty doves, then driving home.  We faced a terrible fine if a Game Warden caught us!

Back at the ranch house, behind his patio, the rancher turned on every outside light he had.  I thought, “We may as well go to the local high school stadium, turn on those lights and clean our birds.”   The four of us start cleaning them and saw headlights coming down his drive.  Maybe it’s his wife?  Fat chance.  We could tell it was a truck, a green truck with a grayish seal on the side – A STATE GAME WARDEN!

We were in a heap of trouble. Fifty birds over the limit at $5.00 per bird is $250.00 and probably loss of our licenses and our guns.  Ouch!  Maybe this was all a scam, a set up to get an easy collar for the Game Warden?  He walked up slowly, nodding to the rancher.  The rancher stood and shook his hand.  We died!  The rancher said, “This is Warden so-in-so.”  The Warden smiled and said, “Hidee.  It looks like you folks,” we died again, “need some help cleaning these birds.”  He added, “I know you all shot a lot of ‘em, but we just have too many on this place and they need thinning out.”

Alive again, before the Warden changed his mind, we hurriedly finished up on the birds, piled into the car and headed home (with all of the birds).

There were so many birds the answer was more hunters not over limit shooting!  After that “near miss”, we adhered strictly to game laws.  Randy was born three weeks later and remains a dedicated hunter.

In September 1964, the hot spot for mourning doves in Texas was George West, a small town southeast of San Antonio.  Grain fields abounded and there were miles and miles of the famed south Texas brush country for roosting.  

To sample some of this reportedly outstanding shooting, my Dad and I had decided to go ahead and pay for a “day hunt”.  We called the local C of C and they gave us the name of a rancher booking hunts.  We called him and set up a hunt for the coming Saturday.

Arriving in George West, after the three and a half hour drive from my home in southwest Houston, we greeted the rancher and paid him a whopping $10.00 for the two of us.  An added benefit was that he wanted to hunt with us, three limits now, and then he took us a to a special place to shoot.  He said the birds were eating him out of house and home and were a nuisance.  We said, “Fine with us. Lead on!”

This particular late September in South Texas was unusually hot and by 3:30 PM, no daylight savings time, everything was either wilted or too hot to touch.   The only wind was hot and every footstep would stir up tiny dust devils.  Some may say, “Too hot to hunt”, but both of us, being tight, had paid our money and would take our chances.

We crammed into the ranchers pick up, this was before king cabs, and he drove us to a half acre stock tank.  The tank was surrounded by light brush, just enough for some cover with smooth banks down to the waters edge.  At one end was a dead mesquite tree and the tank was right beside a fresh cut milo field. Perfect!  

Taking our stations in the brush, and this brush didn’t provide much shade at all, we didn’t have to wait long for the doves to come to the water - pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and three birds fell, two into the brush and were quickly retrieved, the third fell into the water.  The rancher said, “Don’t worry about that one, there will be a lot more fall in and we’ll get ‘em later!”

The birds continued to pile in on us and the shooting was fun, but the retrieving was hot, hot work.  We quickly learned to shoot a bird, mark him in the brush and go pick him up before taking the next shot.  Those that fell into the water, we just let them float.

As the doves continued zipping in, we took a quick count and had forty-two birds in hand and twenty-one in the water.  Bag and possession limit was seventy-two for the three of us.  We picked our next shots carefully and made sure the retrieve was an easy one.   Soon we had our limit, with twenty-three still in the water.

Unloading my gun, I started looking around for loose rocks or cow chips to chunk at the birds in the water.  The rancher stopped me with, “Jon, how about a swim” as he kicked off his boots and peeled down to his shorts?  My Dad and I followed his lead and soon there were three grown men splashing around in the cool water and chunking the doves back on to the bank!  Not a bad ending to a great hunt!

As we dressed the rancher said, “This sure beats working up a big sweat chunkin’ those birds out!”  As we were driving back to our car he said, ”Why don’t you two come back next week?”

Dove season in Texas' central and north zones opens this morning and I thought it appropriate to post this dove hunting story from the past that took place "South Of The Border, Down Mexico Way" near Lake Guerro.  Our excessive shooting can't be condoned, but for excuses, there were so many birds, so few hunters and a "waiver" or "pay off" had been delivered to the local Game Warden, that my friend's and I reluctantly went ahead fed a lot of poor Mexicans. 

Mid-September found us, Tommy Walker, Norman Shelter and our wives, driving in northern Mexico, south of Brownsville, on the way to a fishing camp on Lake Guerro.  We were hoping to sample the white wing dove hunting and some fantastic bass fishing!  Our destination was almost a hundred miles south of the border towns on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and it was plenty hot, but that didn't stop us!

Arriving at our destination, we were told that the white wing hunting bordered on stupendous, but the bass fishing had reached rock bottom since commercial netting was rampant and "dynamiting" was on the upswing.  After the second morning of trying to catch some bass, we gave up and began concentrating on the birds.

That afternoon we piled into an old school bus with the windows down, for the twenty minute, hot, dusty drive and arrived, sweating, at our hunting spot at 3:00 PM.  We were hunting on a five hundred, acre, uncut, milo field.  White wings land on the stalks and feed directly from them, while mourning doves land and feed on the ground.  The field, bordered by a plateau on its north side that was used as a roosting area by the white wings, had dense brush and trees, or jungle, on the other three sides.  Our guide told us the the roost held between 250,000 and 350,000 birds and local crop depradation was high, but for us not to worry about the limits, that it had been taken care of.

Based on the guide's input, Tommy and Norman decided to try for one thousand birds each and I set my goal to see how many shots it would take me to bag a hundred.  The birds that we didn't eat at the camp, or take home, were given to poor families, of which there were many, so there would be no waste of the game.  Tommy and Norman were assigned three "bird boys" each and since my goal was low I was only authorized one.

Our spot was between the roost and the field in a hundred yard, wide opening in the trees.  The guide told us that the doves would come funneling throught this opening in droves right at 3:30 PM.  Funnel in they did!  The birds were everywhere and our guns kept up a constant banging and the bird boys were scrambling to pick up the kills. You always hear "them" say, "We shot until our barrels were too hot to touch."  We did and we even had to be careful loading our pump guns and not touching the receivers because they were steaming hot also!

Our guns, since we brought them in  from the U.S, were plugged, three shots each and "triples" were common.  It took Tommy and Norman two and a half days of steady shooting, A.M. and P.M. to get their thousand.  Horribly bruised shoulders kept them from shooting for over three weeks!  In less than two hours, my one hundred and twenty-nine shots accounted for my hundred.

As "they" say, "When you're hot, you're hot!"

My years of Quail hunting in Arizona, Georgia and Texas have been wonderful and even better is a dish that I accidentally, through trial and error, invented, “Jalapeno Quail”.  

As the name implies, the ingredients are Quail legs, however, Dove, Bull Frog, Teal or Woodcock legs can be substituted.  However, I do find large Duck, Goose or Pheasant, legs too tough.

Depending on how many legs, one or two jalapenos, sectioned into 1/8 inch slices, sliced garlic pods or a copious amount of Garlic powder, ½ to one full stick of butter (no margarine!).  You can’t use too much garlic or jalapenos!

Clean and wash the legs and prepare your ingredients.  Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after slicing the jalapenos!  Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet, and when melted, add all of the ingredients at once and simmer, covering the skillet with a lid, for 10 minutes, then stir and turn the mixture, recover and cook until done.  

Feeds as many as you have legs for.  Small legs are very good served as an appetizer.  Frog legs can be a main course.  

Best if served hot, but be sure and eat all of the ingredients, peppers, garlic and all!  

Wash your hands thoroughly before the meal to remove any jalapeno residue because it really burns when you get it in your eyes!