Outdoor Notes : Large Number of Doves on Hand for Opening of Season

Prospects are bright for a banner opening day of California’s dove season in the Palo Verde Valley region of the Lower Colorado River.

Ron Powell, Blythe-based biologist for the Department of Fish and Game, described the numbers of mourning and white-winged doves in grain fields in the Palo Verde and Cibola Wildlife Refuge areas as “unbelievable . . . the best I’ve seen in 14 years . . . I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The season will open Monday, Sept. 1. The Lower Colorado River, Imperial Valley and Coachella Valley in southeast California are annually among the state’s most productive areas for dove hunters.

Powell said he has seen “wads” of doves flying across the Colorado River at sunset. “With any luck at all, we can be looking at a super year,” he said.

Luck in dove hunting means an absence of thunderstorms just before opening day. Thunderstorms spook doves from their roosting areas and drive them further south, into Mexico. Bruce Eliason, another DFG biologist, reported large populations of doves along the Colorado from Needles to Winterhaven.

Jack Page of Palo Verde, longtime official of the Palo Verde Rod and Gun Club, concurred.

“Feed conditions are good, there are lots of doves in the area--as many as I’ve seen in many years this close to the opener--and there are more coming in every day,” Page said. “We’ve got a lot of white-wings hanging around corn fields here.”

The first part of the dove season will continue through Oct. 15, with the second, shorter season running Nov. 16-30.

Hunter success was down and pressure up during the opening weekend of the Zone A deer season in Santa Barbara and southern Ventura counties, where hunters found deer widely dispersed because of last year’s wildfires.

Game wardens working the opening weekend could account for only 16 deer tags, compared to 49 bucks taken on the previous opener. Heavy hunter pressure was reported in the Nordhoff Ridge and Sisar Canyon area north of Ojai.

Some hunting areas in Los Padres National Forest were opened to hunters for the first time, and the result was large numbers of hunters looking for too few deer.

One warden said that most deer appeared to be within the 118,000-acre Wheeler Gorge burn area in rugged, steep terrain rich in new growth, prime-feed areas.

California has two fewer mountain lions this week. Well, make it 1 1/2.

A lioness and her cub, captured July 6 in Orange County, were airlifted this week to the Salt Lake City zoo, where they will probably live for the rest of their lives. They will remain California property, however, having been sent to the zoo on loan.

The animals were live-trapped at Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park in Orange County after they had been seen several times wandering near the park’s parking lot.

Briefly

Two saltwater sportfishing presentations will be sponsored by Mike’s Tackle Box in Seal Beach soon, a talk Tuesday on marlin fishing by veteran ocean fisherman Charlie Davis and a program next Thursday on long range fishing by Tommy Rothery, skipper of the Polaris Supreme . . . . Butch Wilson of Balboa was the outstanding angler of the Tycoon/Fin-Nor Billfish Tournament recently, catching and releasing a striped marlin on 20-pound test line in 1 minute 20 seconds.