Open Season!

Dove season opened last Monday. I had a pretty good haul.

18 Breasts and some friends over for dinner and a movie:


I boned the breasts:


Then I prepped up some Hatch chiles and onions for rajas; onion, jalapeno, and cilantro for guacamole; and cilantro for garnish:


I made some Oaxacan red mole earlier:


I cooked some of the breast meat for my son (he loved it!):


I cooked the rest with the mole and served it over rice:


Dang, it was good! I can't wait to get back out. My plan is to hunt all of my meat this year and I am off to a rip-roaring start.

rwj

Robert
I wonder if your Dove = our pigeon? Certainly the pigeon we eat isn't the sort that roams around city centres eating whatever is on the ground (or at least that's what we're told!).

Normally we'd tend not to use a strong flavour to cook with Pigeon, though do break that concept for Pigeon Satay which works surprisingly well.

regards

Ian

Dove is in the pigeon family. What I was shooting were white winged dove. Yes, I would normally do something lighter but the slight gaminess did stand up to the mole. The most common preparation in this neck of the woods is to stuff the breast with a jalapeno, wrap it in bacon, and then grill or fry. Seriously, EVERYBODY does it that way. This is why I wanted to do something a little different. Next week when I hunt and eat I am thinking of curry.

This is what I shoot:


We also got a few mourning dove:

Mourning-Dove.jpg

rwj

That's awesome Robert! I love that fact that you got the birds yourself. I would love to learn to hunt. The dish looks absolutely delicious!

Morning Doves are also a favorite of Red Tailed Hawks. When we lived in Maine we had a feeder just outside our dining room window. The doves liked to peck around the ground below it. One morning there was a perfectly round circle on the ground with dove feathers around the circumferance.

That's awesome Robert! I love that fact that you got the birds yourself. I would love to learn to hunt. The dish looks absolutely delicious!

Maria for VP! Maria for VP!

Great hunt, Cowboy! Now for the real question: How many boxes of shells did you go through? I was always lucky to get one every 3rd or 4th shot, it seems. The little buggers are fast and can turn on a dime.

Honestly I went through about 5 boxes of shells but I was also hunting with my brother (the limit here is 12). My brother is an EXCELLENT hunter. Richard got 3 doubles that day and he was using a pump. A double is when you see two birds flying by together and you shoot them both with consecutive shots. And he was using a PUMP! IIRC he bagged 10 and I bagged 8.

rwj

That's awesome Robert! I love that fact that you got the birds yourself. I would love to learn to hunt. The dish looks absolutely delicious!

Maria for VP! Maria for VP!

Howie, I never suspected you of being a humorist!

Robert
I wonder if your Dove = our pigeon? Certainly the pigeon we eat isn't the sort that roams around city centres eating whatever is on the ground (or at least that's what we're told!).

Normally we'd tend not to use a strong flavour to cook with Pigeon, though do break that concept for Pigeon Satay which works surprisingly well.

regards

Ian

Pigeons and doves are one and the same animal. One derivation is English. The other French. Picasso's daughter was a pigeon, too. Only in Spanish. They are descended from Rock Doves.

Robert J.,

That is very impressive and I like the mole idea and admire the fact that you made the entire meal yourself, literally, from start to finish. I would not have had the patience to even de-bone all of those birds.

Thanks for the photos and the report.

Damn. You shoot those sweet little birds? Lucky Noah didn't release one of those in Texas or he might still be in the ark.

My kid went to a magic show and watched a magician "create" two white doves from thin air. Are white doves the same species?

Damn. You shoot those sweet little birds? Lucky Noah didn't release one of those in Texas or he might still be in the ark.

My kid went to a magic show and watched a magician "create" two white doves from thin air. Are white doves the same species?

See above.

"Dove" is the common name for a whole family of birds, like "duck" or "finch".

The common pigeon also goes by the name European rock dove.

The most common native dove of Eastern North America is the mourning dove.

The European doves that I saw everywhere in France looked like close relatives of the American mourning dove, but a bit larger and stockier, and their call is different. The two are different species but closely related. I think the white doves that magicians use are domesticated European doves.

-Paul W.

I read a little book earlier this year.

Pigeons, by Andrew D. Blechman.

I promise you it has everything any of you would want to know about this animal. And, probably, more than 90% of you would care to know.

Damn. You shoot those sweet little birds? Lucky Noah didn't release one of those in Texas or he might still be in the ark.

My kid went to a magic show and watched a magician "create" two white doves from thin air. Are white doves the same species?

I think Noah actually released about 10,000,000 of them in Texas. I am sleeping fine.

rwj

Robert J.,

That is very impressive and I like the mole idea and admire the fact that you made the entire meal yourself, literally, from start to finish. I would not have had the patience to even de-bone all of those birds.

Thanks for the photos and the report.

Just wait until I post my pics when deer season rolls around.

rwj

Damn. You shoot those sweet little birds? Lucky Noah didn't release one of those in Texas or he might still be in the ark.

My kid went to a magic show and watched a magician "create" two white doves from thin air. Are white doves the same species?

I think Noah actually released about 10,000,000 of them in Texas. I am sleeping fine.

rwj

Mourning doves will nest 3-5 times in a year. They are very prolific breeders, along with the white-winged kin, and even though millions are harvested by hunters (and hawks) each year, it doesn't make a dent in the total population.

Just wait until I post my pics when deer season rolls around.

You live in the wrong place, deer season has been open since Aug 9th.

It's open here right now for bowhunters (like my brother). I'll have to wait until November.

rwj

Bow hunters get to hunt in July around here. Seems to be a bit early but that is how it is set up.

It's kind of the same down here. A lot of the bucks are still in velvet right now.

rwj

Robert that is an interesting comment. The bucks here shed their velvet right around the first of August. Bow hunters get bucks in the velvet and regular season hunters get bucks with hard horns.

Must be a climate/seasonal thing.

rwj