THE OUTDOORS : IT’S FOR THE BIRDS : Untimely Rains Put a Damper on Opening Day for Dove Hunters

Before dawn last Thursday, the spirits of the camouflaged men on the Phillips Cattle Co. grounds were high.

Sure, the thunderstorm that loomed 30 miles south, over the Mexican border, looked villainous. In fact, it looked just like the dozens that had riddled the Imperial Valley the previous week, each one washing away more mourning doves until the Dept. of Fish and Game was predicting a “grim” opener for dove hunting.

Put a shotgun in the hands and a dog at the side of a dove hunter, though, and everything looks bright--except the sky--at 5:30 a.m. on opening day in the Imperial Valley, where the dove hunting is just short of legendary.

And spirits stayed high for about fifteen minutes after dawn. That was about as long it took for the heat to become unbearable in El Centro, and the hundreds of dove hunters in the Imperial Valley to realize that they probably outnumbered the birds.

That’s how bad the 1988 dove hunting opener was.

It was so bad that Ross Jenkins, the foreman at the Phillips Cattle Co., normally a dove hunters’ hot spot, warned hunters with a smile, “Don’t shoot the horses.”

Two hours later, Jenkins took a ride through the private property, seriously checking his stock.

By 9 a.m., most the hunters who had reserved every hotel room in El Centro and nearby Brawley had wisely returned to air-conditioned confines, and those who hadn’t were eyeing the thousands of yellow butterflies hovering above the crop fields with bad intent.

In many places, livestock outnumbered the migratory birds, which in the past had come by the tens of thousands to the grain-rich fields outside El Centro, providing outdoorsmen with one of the finest dove shoots in the United States. Only Mexico, the birds’ eventual destination, has yielded better dove hunting in Western North America.

This year, things are different. And ironically, in this year of the drought, precipitation is the culprit. Rain has washed the doves out of the Imperial Valley with remarkable dispatch. Three weeks ago, the Dept. of Fish and Game had predicted a “good to excellent” dove opener. But on opening day, there seemed to be as many DFG agents checking hunting licenses as there were doves bagged.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Lt. Joe Brana of the DFG’s Wister unit said. “These thunderstorms have chased the birds, and what’s there is isolated.

“The few that have done well have found groups of birds in isolated spots and hunted them out.”

Wherever those isolated spots were, Gary Spencer of Irvine wasn’t. Spencer, an attorney, is an accomplished shot who can take 10 birds with 10 shots. In other years, a corner of the Phillips property--open only to hunters with permission--has produced quick 10-bird limits of mourning doves. This year, it provided only a good view of a whole bunch of cattle.

This is not what hunters got up at 4:45 a.m. to see. In past years, mourning doves and coveted white wing doves pocked the sky between El Centro and Blythe--90 miles north--on opening day. Daily limits--10 of each type--were often filled within the first half hour of daylight, and tickets issued by DFG agents for over-limits were commonplace.

But this, as Brawley resident and hunt-watcher Janet Carl said, has been a very strange year.

Spencer arose at 4:45, grabbed breakfast at a local coffee shop, and was on the Phillips property with permission slip in hand by 5:45. The shooting--what there was of it--began shortly thereafter.

Spencer positioned himself on the edge of a hayfield, about 50 yards from a natural wash. Ten minutes later, a pair of mourning doves flew diagonally across the field about 50 feet high and Spencer dropped them with two quick shots. He didn’t see any more doves within reach of his field load No. 9 shot for two more hours.

In the distance, the unmistakable hollow boom of shotguns could be heard, but the artillery effect of past years was absent.

“I remember a few years ago, we didn’t see a bird fly until about 9 a.m., and then they really started moving,” Spencer said, optimistically, at 8:30. “Maybe that’s what’s going to happen today.”

And indeed, in this strange year, there was a minor movement of mourning doves around 9. Spencer, dressed in beige to blend with the terrain, dropped four doves while leaning against a white four-wheel drive vehicle. “This seems to draw them in,” Spencer said, grinning.

By 9:30, though, there were no shots to be heard. Spencer gathered his gear and headed for the North Shore of the Salton Sea, where, word had it, the birds were flying.

At Wister, along California 111 on the eastern shore of the sea, Brana and the DFG had set up a checkpoint along with the border patrol, checking for both illegal aliens and over-limit hunters.

“I’d say it’s about a four-five bird-per-hunter average in the better places,” Brana said. “Overall, it’s been really poor, and I heard it’s been worse towards El Centro and Winterhaven.”

Remarkably, though, Brana reported issuing about two dozen tickets for over-limits on mourning doves by 12:30 p.m. “They probably figured they wouldn’t be checked since (the hunting) hasn’t been good,” he said.

At Poor Richard’s hardware and bait shop in North Shore, Jerry Netzley reported “a pretty good shoot on white wings right down by the sea. I sent a few of my buddies down there this morning, and they did well on white wings.”

Spencer headed for Netzley’s spot--an open desert area backed against a private orchard--for the afternoon shoot, when doves go looking for grain and water. The spot revealed the carcasses of about 30 cleaned birds--all mourning doves--and by 4:30 a dozen hunters filed along the orchard. Spencer waited for an hour, and the only thing that came by was DFG agent Larry Harris of the Indio unit, checking licenses.

“This has been a terrible year,” Harris said. “The numbers just aren’t here. Maybe it’s the development (around the area).”

Spencer gave up at 5:30 p.m., having picked up one bird after moving from El Centro. His day’s total: Seven mourning doves killed, maybe a hundred birds sighted. Of those hundred, perhaps two were white wings.

“I think I almost went through a box of shells today,” Spencer said. “But I was taking a lot of crazy shots. Shots 60 yards away out of sheer frustration.”