Hope to be doing some late season dove hunting N of you, Mel before the late season ends. More up in the panhandle.
Not recently, but some years back met a feller in Snyder who had a place outside Roby and used to shoot on him w/some regularity in both regular and late seasons. Wasn't anything on his place to speak of, aside from some sparsely scattered croton that was better some years than others. The attraction was that he was in the middle of a flyway and the pass shooting there was great sport over his irregular land! Never large numbers of birds but usually enough where I could bag ten or so w/o a dog. Most of his place was hard pan and he had no production. Just lived there and had a day job to make ends meet and tried to farm a few aces leased from others. I always picked & cleaned the birds I took and gave them to him and once gave him a box of cartridges for the old SS .410 shotgun that lived behind his kitchen door. I was an invited guest at their table more than once. Great memories of some fun afternoons and like you said no one else within hearing range of making a shot, ever.
Glad that you are out there having some fun and getting some good sport. And as far as I'm concerned, it's just as well that those birds don't get much late season pressure. I'm of the opinion that many of them stick around in the general area year 'round but I could be wrong. And I know how quickly they can seemingly disappear with cold fronts and weather system changes. Late season birds always seem mature and healthier to me, but I don't know if that's just my impression or a fact.
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