Dove jewelry - lightning strikes twice.

[Steelsearchin]

I had a lot of fun in Indiana this weekend harassing some doves with my dad and brother. I sure wish Michigan would get with the program and get a dove season, but I can't hold my breath on that ever happening. Anyway, my son and his cousins got a workout retrieving birds on Saturday and we wound up with a three-man limit. Two of the birds were banded, which was really cool. This was the third year in a row one of us has managed to get lucky and collect jewelry, so who knows if we'll ever see another one.

The numbers had different formats, and one appeared a little older, so on Sunday I took the bands in to show the DNR property manager. He checked his records and said one of them had been banded the year prior as a juvie. It was the first time he'd ever seen a dove band come back that was over a year old. With a super high mortality rate, that little bugger's luck took a while to run out.

We got checked in the field each day (and once in the parking lot!), and the Indiana DNR officers were great with the kids. Hopefully next year the boys will be big enough to upgrade their status from "bird boys" to "bird hunters" and maybe they can start their own jewelry collections.

 

[JDH]

Glad you guys found some birds. Birds were a little scarce down where I hunt. IIRC, the USFWS survey last year said that over 3 juveniles get killed for every one adult.

 

[Steelsearchin]

Yeah, pre-season scouting showed our "normal" spot to be mostly a bust this year. They had 12-14 fields planted, but only two had decent flowers in them. The rest were weed-choked or snuffed out by the deer.

After seeing that, we burned a little extra gasoline/windshield time and found some more productive grounds to hunt. More birds were taken this year on opening day than the entire season last year.

Of course there were 5-6 on my roof when we got home each day- sure wish we could have some hunts closer to home.

 

[5 Point]

Pretty cool harvests. I band doves in Montana and actually get quite a few returns from previous years. Actually this year, almost as many recaps as new birds. I did my 5th year this year and am still recapturing birds from my first year in 2014. And they were adults when I first banded them!

As far as your band difference, the older one with the phone number is a band prior to this year. This year, the bands were switched to the website only, as you can see in the other band.

This is an adult that was banded in 2014 and recaptured this year here. Old Male!


And of course my son has to help too! He loves it!

 

[Steelsearchin]

Sweet!! Do you guys just use wire pigeon traps or do you use a different method to capture them?

The farm I worked on part-time in high school used to have a few random pigeons show up from time to time with racing bands on their legs. My brother's friend's family owned the farm and the banded ones were sought after when the boys got their pellet guns out.

 

[Nick87]

Slow year for us, of course the weather didn't help. I shot one with a band when I was maybe 13 or 14. I thought I was in Some sort of trouble had no idea. I threw it in the weeds, What an idiot! Haha

 

[icebreaker12]

On the web address only band... was it a juvenile?

 

[icebreaker12]

Sweet!! Do you guys just use wire pigeon traps or do you use a different method to capture them?

The farm I worked on part-time in high school used to have a few random pigeons show up from time to time with racing bands on their legs. My brother's friend's family owned the farm and the banded ones were sought after when the boys got their pellet guns out.

Most places use a modified kniffin trap. Which is similar to a pigeon trap with funnels for doors. Doves don’t really like pushing through the swinging doors like pigeons. Some places also use a whoosh net, which is a small net propelled by large bungees. You can catch more with that method, but it tends to burn them out for a while.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Looks like a great time was had by all!

We also banded doves for a number of years. We recaptured a couple of males nearly every year for five years....the site fidelity is pretty remarkable. Neat to see returns from the north. Virtually all of ours were from Texas/Mexico.

 

[dirtclod Az.]

I've never seen a banded bird in Az.(Dove)Hunted here 45yrs.Dove count was down this year from 30mil flying doves to 20mil flying doves.Couldn't tell the difference.Only 1 Whitewing this year.

 

[Steelsearchin]

On the web address only band... was it a juvenile?

Not sure, by the time the knives were flying we had poppers on the brain (not that I'd be able to tell the difference unless it was obviously a juvie). The band data has not been updated yet for that number on the USGS site, so it may be a while before we know.

My kid now thinks every fall you get a bird with a band on it. I've managed to get bands from a few geese, a wood duck, a woodcock, and a few doves over the last 26 years. The craziest was the woodcock as it was in my pre-birddog days. After getting a dog, my woodcock harvest sky-rocketed for the last 14 years and I've yet to see a second one. 15-20 years ago we had a doe running around the cedar swamp with a dog collar on her neck. She was the spookiest deer in the herd, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around putting a doe tag on her. Didn't want to explain to my grandma why I shot the one w/ a collar! We saw her two years in a row as an adult, then she disappeared.

 

[icebreaker12]

Not sure, by the time the knives were flying we had poppers on the brain (not that I'd be able to tell the difference unless it was obviously a juvie). The band data has not been updated yet for that number on the USGS site, so it may be a while before we know.

My kid now thinks every fall you get a bird with a band on it. I've managed to get bands from a few geese, a wood duck, a woodcock, and a few doves over the last 26 years. The craziest was the woodcock as it was in my pre-birddog days. After getting a dog, my woodcock harvest sky-rocketed for the last 14 years and I've yet to see a second one. 15-20 years ago we had a doe running around the cedar swamp with a dog collar on her neck. She was the spookiest deer in the herd, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around putting a doe tag on her. Didn't want to explain to my grandma why I shot the one w/ a collar! We saw her two years in a row as an adult, then she disappeared.

They are actually pretty easy to tell apart. And the banded should get their data in soon. We like to have it in before hunting season, but it’s not always realistic.

The woodcock is pretty crazy, although I would wager they banded more then than they do now.

As for collared big game vs banded birds. I always find the dichotomy of them interesting. Often times folks don’t want to shoot a big game animal for some reason, but most would go out of their way for a band!

 

[Hummer]

Congratulations on hitting the jewelry lottery. Always be sure to report the band number to the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory in addition to any local entity. The BBL will send you a certificate of appreciation. Game birds are normally only banded by .gov agency personnel. Songbirds, raptors, shorebirds and hummingbirds are banded by a host of other researchers. The data points are gold.

Last weekend I recaptured three birds in Sedona, AZ, that I banded in previous years. Old friends coming back to visit.

 

[Sask hunter]

Lucky guy!

 

[walking buffalo]

They are actually pretty easy to tell apart. And the banded should get their data in soon. We like to have it in before hunting season, but it’s not always realistic.

The woodcock is pretty crazy, although I would wager they banded more then than they do now.

As for collared big game vs banded birds. I always find the dichotomy of them interesting. Often times folks don’t want to shoot a big game animal for some reason, but most would go out of their way for a band!

I have two reasons for avoiding shooting collared/tagged big game.

First is awareness that the animal is possibly part of a study, which usually have very limited funds. While it's typically legal to shoot tagged animals here (Alberta) and there is data that can be obtained from harvested animals, I prefer to let the animal live to hopefully produce more data for the buck.


Second and most importantly is that a hunter is unlikely to know HOW and when the animal was captured. The concern is if tranquilizers were used. This is not a concern with captured birds.
Most drugs used to capture animal are not considered safe for human consumption, with typical recommendations being to not consume any animal tranquilized in the last 12 months. Reality is that just simply are no studies on how these drugs effect people, not enough human guinea pigs these days....


I have shot two tagged animals, both had tiny ear buttons that were not visible. After making contact with F&W, the sad fact was that both of these animals had to be disposed of due to the drugs used to capture them. I never want to go through that again.

 

[Addicting]

Congrats on a awesome trip. I was actually thinking about emailing you to see how your fishing had went this summer.

 

[Steelsearchin]

Fishing- ha! Unfortunately, I haven't touched a walleye since spring jigging down in Motown. We had one killer day out of South Haven in mid-May when we put ten kings, a coho, and a steely in the boat in three hours. Three fish were over 19# that day and we ran out of cooler space so we called it early. Two trips to Ludville in August yielded a few fish, but we just couldn't get the big uglies to cooperate.

This summer was a real blur- my wife's folks celebrated their 50th this year and were super generous in taking the whole shooting match on a trip to AK. While on that trip we took a trip out of Seward with ProFish-N-Sea and had a day of all days. We brought back 5 coolers full of halibut, lingcod, and rockfish fillets along with some sockeyes I caught in the Russian.





As a result of that trip, a lot of Michigan fish got free passes this summer. We've been trying like hell to make room for a deer or two in the freezer…first world problems- too much halibut!