doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Somewhat OT Eurasian collared doves

They've expanded rapidly across Montana in the past 5-6 years. I believe they can produce a couple of broods per annum. Along with house sparrows, starlings and rock pigeons they are not protected by federal law.

Watch out and don't shoot the Incas !

The ones I have been shooting in Arizona are almost the same color as mourning doves, but without the rosy breast. After observing them a few times, along with White Wings and Mourning Doves, it is pretty easy to pick them out. Slower wing beat, about twice the size of Mourning doves, a very light gray color from below. Something else we don't quite understand yet, they seem to be late sleepers where we hunt as they don't seem to show up until we have already limited out on the other doves. Taste the same as the other two. They are now starting to build up in my neighborhood and soon there will be enough to use my bedroom door blind and a very quite pellet gun to collect a few for the table year round. I use the same blind to hold down the pigeon population in the neighborhood. Haven't heard how they interact with White Wings and Mourning Dove populations but they eat the same food and the game biologist told us in AZ 6 clutches per year will be pretty normal. The grain farmers that think the White Wings are a plague will certainly think these are an epidemic eventually. Their flight is not as erratic as Mourning Doves so my average on them is actually pretty darned good.

I miss them often when they show up on a dove field because they are so much slower fliers that I over lead them. Same thing happens to my buddies and I in October when we start shooting crows in the pecan orchards as the nuts begin to open and fall. Crows fly so much slower than mourning doves that, after a month of dove shooting, we'll start out ahead of them and have to forcibly cut back on lead.

Have shot them in LA and AR, no limits
bill

They do seem successful at colonising new territory. I can remember seeing my first one here in England when I was a kid in the mid sixties. I couldn't find them in my bird book and wondered what it was at first. By the early 70's they were everywhere having spread over from continental Europe. They soon went on the shooting lists as a pest species. I have them in the garden and nesting regularly but of late the numbers seem to have stabilised and they are not as common as only a few years ago. They seem to found strong pair bonds and if you shoot one its mate will come looking for it. I dislike shooting them unless I can get both. Lagopus.....

We used to have lots of them in Seal Beach (northern Orange County, CA). But since I've actually lived here (as opposed to visiting in the '90s), I've only seen one. LOTS of mourning doves, but the ringed ones seem to be scarce. We do have lots of Cooper's Hawks, too; wonder if they had something to do with the thinning out of the ringed doves? Or maybe they just moved downtown to Long Beach....

Weak Ejector, you can take solace in the fact that "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" (or is it "short leads"?)!

The last several years I see them all year around here in Nor-Cal. They don't seem to have the same problem with cold, wet weather as the Mourning Doves do and don't bail for warmer climates, but hang around all year.
I even saw quite a few of them over at Tulelake this March, at 4500' elevation, with snow on the ground and temperatures getting down into the teens at night.

Its nice bird, but I saw them and shot down one just once at North-West of Russia. There are a lot of them at South of Russia and in Ukraine.

Are these the ones you are talking about?



JC