State Dove Hunters Will Have a Season : Outdoors: Department of Fish and Game forestalls opposition by taking dates, limits to federal government.

The California Department of Fish and Game apparently found a way to ensure a dove hunting season: by making a federal case of it.

Instead of asking the Fish and Game Commission to adopt its recommended regulations for the state’s most popular hunt, the DFG Wednesday asked the commission merely to recommend the department’s specific proposals on dates and bag limits to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which has ultimate jurisdiction over migratory birds and waterfowl.

The commission agreed.

The wildlife service, which is expected to cooperate, is part of the Department of the Interior.

The DFG feared that opponents would file for court action to stop the hunt as soon as it was formally adopted, as they have stopped bear, tule elk and mountain lion hunts. Now adoption won’t occur until the federal agency publishes its confirmation of the California proposals in the Federal Register, which takes seven days.

The commission planned to notify the wildlife service of its proposals Friday. That would place them in the Federal Register a week later (Aug. 31).

The hunt is scheduled to start half an hour before sunrise the next day--Sept. 1--leaving opponents little time for legal blockades.

The anti-hunting factions apparently will concede this round.

The Fund for Animals and the Animal Legal Defense fund had filed comments challenging the DFG’s environmental document justifying the hunt, claiming it failed to inform the public of impacts on wildlife, according to guidelines of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Attorney Bill Yeates, who represents the two groups, said: “Fund for Animals is opposed to hunting, but as far as CEQA is concerned, (Fish and Game has) complied with the law, (which) they have never done before . . . (and) responded to our comments.”

Yeates’ reference was to optimistic figures on dove populations for the Pacific Coast region given Tuesday by Red Hunt, DFG wildlife management division chief. Hunt said that although numbers have declined 3% over 25 years, they have increased 30% over the last two years.

Yeates seemed satisfied and said no legal action was planned to stop the dove hunt.

“Our recommendation to Fund for Animals is we don’t file suit,” Yeates said.

The dove hunt will run Sept. 1-15 and Nov. 10-Dec. 31, with a bag limit of 10 per day and 20 in possession.

The commission also packaged in its recommendation to the wildlife service seasons for band-tailed pigeons, Sept. 15-Oct. 1 and Dec. 8-23, with a two-bird limit and two in possession; and American crows, Sept. 29-Jan. 30, with a limit of 24 birds, 24 in possession.