Another GA dove season opener yesterday. I don't think I've missed one since I was 14. I like to have missed yesterday due to the fact my telephone was ominously silent last week during the traditional invitation period for an opening day shoot. Without an invite, I went out to a grown up clear-cut on my deer lease with just a chair and a mojo teal spinner-wing and sat down under a shade tree. No doves, but I went.

I did hear a dove shoot going on somewhere in the distance and hope those boys had a good and safe outing. My own shoot was certainly safe because I fired no shots at all. I did however manage to fall asleep on my folding chair and turn it over into a brier patch, getting a good whack on the face in the fall. My lovely little Lindner Daly featherweight suffered no damage in the fall, I'm happy to say.

For many years my group of guys has made a tradition of gathering for the whole Labor Day weekend at a friend's plantation on the banks of the Ocmulgee river. We always had a good shoot there one day and the group would split up the other two days for other private or pay shoots near and far. Good food and good fishing between the dove hunts. We called it off last year due to the plague, and this year as well in view of the Delta bug.

There'll be other shoots before the season ends, but there is always something special about opening day. One day I'll quit going altogether and then I hope somebody will sing something pretty at my funeral...Geo