The Cordoba dove hunting tradition is much different than what we in the US are accustomed. You've likely heard about it, or seen it on TV, but it's far more easily experienced than accurately described. Experience is the only way you'll every really understand it. The hillsides are covered with relatively low brush, ten or so feet tall. Thorny, gnarled acacias were all I recognized. Dove take flight from nearly every bush as your drive along the dusty, winding senderos. Openings planted to milo or sunflowers. The eared dove. At a glance the look similar to our mourning dove, but are maybe about 25% or so smaller. Adult males have mainly olive-brown upper plumage, with black spots on the wings. The head has a grey crown, black line behind the eye, and the blue-black on the lower ear coverts. These black markings give the species its English and specific name. The female is duller than the male, and immatures are grayish-brown, very dull, and have pale barring. Eared doves feed mainly on seed. They can be agricultural pests. This is a gregarious bird when not feeding, and forms flocks especially at migrations time or at communal roosts. We're talking millions of doves, not mere thousands.
Eared doves provide the last big-bag shooting experience in the world. There are reckoned to be more than 23 million of these doves in the fields around Cordoba in northern Argentina and it is common for a single hunter to shoot 1000+ birds in a day, if so inclined. Many hunters are. It is a tradition that has existed for the nearly 30 years that folks have dove hunted the fabled Cordoba region of Argentina.
The scale of this wing-shooting recalls the numbers of Passenger Pigeons taken by North American gunners in the 1800s. Hunting pressure combined with the removal of critical habitat, American beech forest stands, brought the Passenger Pigeon to rapid extinction, but the Eared dove is proving to be far more resilient -- populations in Argentina are holding their own, with the birds breeding four times a year and thriving on the vast acreages of grain. Several large, international, grain-producing conglomerates have located to the fertile Cordoba region and replaced brush with vast, commercial plantings of sunflower, wheat, milo, and corn. Some of these crops are grown specifically to benefit doves, most of it on estancias that are happy to support - and enhance - the dove shooting.
Cordoba dove hunts are fun, to say the least, but it's not really about the numbers either; it's about the experience: that zone where it's just clicking along and, mildly intoxicated by the profusion of gunpowder, you find yourself instinctively, finding first in the incoming flight, that 2- or maybe even 3-for-1 shot where one or two birds start sliding past a slower one, and then moving through the remaining birds and methodically taking it to the plug, handing off the unloaded for the loaded gun, and picking up that arc of swing where you last ended. Going through the motions slow and deliberately.
Immersed in a blend of rhythmic motions and almost utter concentration you soon lose count of shots fired and birds felled. That's why your glad the bird boy has a clicker. Or not. The best thing about volume opportunity is shooting your heart's content. Numbers and shooting ability may vary among hunters, but the great memories remain a constant.
More info: Cordoba Dove Hunting
Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com
The scale of this wing-shooting recalls the numbers of Passenger Pigeons taken by North American gunners in the 1800s. Hunting pressure combined with the removal of critical habitat, American beech forest stands, brought the Passenger Pigeon to rapid extinction, but the Eared dove is proving to be far more resilient -- populations in Argentina are holding their own, with the birds breeding four times a year and thriving on the vast acreages of grain. Several large, international, grain-producing conglomerates have located to the fertile Cordoba region and replaced brush with vast, commercial plantings of sunflower, wheat, milo, and corn. Some of these crops are grown specifically to benefit doves, most of it on estancias that are happy to support - and enhance - the dove shooting.
Cordoba dove hunts are fun, to say the least, but it's not really about the numbers either; it's about the experience: that zone where it's just clicking along and, mildly intoxicated by the profusion of gunpowder, you find yourself instinctively, finding first in the incoming flight, that 2- or maybe even 3-for-1 shot where one or two birds start sliding past a slower one, and then moving through the remaining birds and methodically taking it to the plug, handing off the unloaded for the loaded gun, and picking up that arc of swing where you last ended. Going through the motions slow and deliberately.
Immersed in a blend of rhythmic motions and almost utter concentration you soon lose count of shots fired and birds felled. That's why your glad the bird boy has a clicker. Or not. The best thing about volume opportunity is shooting your heart's content. Numbers and shooting ability may vary among hunters, but the great memories remain a constant.
More info: Cordoba Dove Hunting
Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com
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