The Perfect Dove Hunt

It has been years since I was on a good dove shoot. In fact I hardly get time to even go anymore do to my hectic schedule. But on September 2nd this year, I was invited to go dove hunting at one of our friend's house. Jarrett called us up and said that he had quite a few doves out at his farm. He invited myself and my daughters. His daughter Emma would go with him and I would have my two girls with me. I thought to myself, “What a great way to spend time with my girls in the outdoors.” Emily, my oldest was a little skeptical at first but eventually decided to give it a try. The thought of picking up a dead dove did not sound like too much fun to her but I convinced her otherwise. We loaded everything up and headed out to Jarrett’s house. We arrived and drove out to the sunflower field we would be hunting. I couldn’t believe all of the doves that were flying around. There had to be thousands. Jarrett assured me that it should not take more than an hour to fill our limit. It looked to me that it only would take fifteen minutes if I could shoot well. We grabbed our chairs and our guns and walked out to the field. The doves were everywhere! Hannah wanted to go with Emma and Jarrett and Emily wanted to stay with me. We were going to have a contest on who could kill our limit first. I was a little bit worried about how Emily would handle all of the shooting, but after the first few shots she was loving it. In fact she became my guide and retriever for me throughout the afternoon. I would shoot one and she would run out and get it. If the bird happened to still be alive, her trusty stick would take care of it. She handed me shells and watched the sky like a retriever for me. My shooting performance was getting worse after the first few I killed but Emily kept me motivated. “Dad, here come two more. Shoot em!! You only need seven more.” I was trying hard but not fast enough for her. Emma and Hannah were helping Jarrett keep his gun loaded by handing him shells and playing with the sunflowers. The doves did not seem to mind the commotion as hundreds flew all over us. It took ten shots to finally kill my last three doves. Emily ran down to tell everyone that we had gotten our limit. I was just happy that I limited out using less than two boxes of shells. It took both Jarrett and I around an hour to kill out. The girls had a blast chasing after doves and playing in the sunflowers. There is nothing more gratifying than spending time with your children in the outdoors. It was truly the perfect dove hunt.