Totally agree with tw about taking your own guns. If you let the outfitter (personally I can only speak for Luis' people) handle the permit(s) you will have no problems. Don't buy into the argument that a semi-auto is necessary to "tame" recoil. On both trips I have been either the only one of eight, or one of two in a group of sixteen, who shot a 20 gauge o/u, the rest shooting autoloaders. Many of them had horrible recoil problems because of poor gun fit and poor mounting. I had zero recoil issues, even shooting some 1 oz. loads the last morning at some very high doves.
tw, the roost that Luis owns near the old La Paloma lodge, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is an amazing place. He asked me and one other friend if we'd like to see it in '03. We jumped at the chance, and he took us in it one morning just after first light. It was a surreal experience. He explained that he protects the roost very diligently and never allows shooters in there. Doves were fluttering around us much like butterflies. He has a biologist spend several days inspecting it each year, checking for possible disease problems, etc., and trying to get some kind of a number on the population, and whether it is increasing or decreasing. The last "census" taken had put the APPROXIMATE number at 25 million, and had shown an increase of around a million per year for several years. The doves there hatch five broods a year.
Luis protects the roost with a vengeance, and refers to it as his "money in the bank". Even though most of the doves shot in that area are leaving or returning to the roost, you are shooting far enough away from it that he feels it is no threat to the roost itself. If must not be, with the numbers increasing as they are.
He told me he has now leased another roost some distance away that holds twice that number.
Stan
