Can you believe that some in our ranks already are talking about hunting?
It's hotter than the hinges of Hades -- as my grandmother used to say -- walking around in "air you can wear" -- as Alan Thomas says -- looking forward to standing in a scorching dove field waiting for birds that seem to be increasingly scarce in the Natural State.
That last line already has sent a few biologists to their keyboards to set me straight about doves being abundant and unthreatened by hunting. That's not what I mean. I mean that doves are always everywhere I am not.
A few weeks ago, Adam Ratcliff graciously invited me to his annual dove hunt at Sweet Home. I am honored and humbled, but I'm also really surprised. They have some epic dove hunts at Ratcliff's Farm, except when I am there.
Ratcliff scoffs at the notion that my nickname, "Dove Repellent," is accurate, as do the regular attendees, but my presence in a dove field usually means a great opportunity to converse, drink a lot of water and save money by not shooting ammo.
Speaking of doves, my wanderings have led me to a really nice, unpublicized dove field on a public area in north Arkansas. I'm going to keep it under my hat until I've had a chance to sample it under natural conditions, but the abundance of shotgun hulls around the field suggest a fair amount of shooting occurs there.
We visit this subject often, but friends, don't leave your trash in the fields, forests, lakes and streams of our fair state.
You'd be amazed at the stuff I learn about people from the stuff they leave behind. I know what brand and gauge shotshells you prefer, and also your preferred shot sizes.
I also know from receipts and stuff what you bought on a certain day, where you bought it and how much you paid for it. I know where you ate breakfast the day you visited certain places, what you ate and how much you paid for it. I know your favorite beer, sodas, snack crackers, candy bars and other elements of your personal lives that are best kept discreet.
Examining human "signs" is a hobby I learned from John Steinbeck's novel, Travels With Charley. Steinbeck often constructed sketches of people he never met from the clues they left in motel room trash cans, and he wrote entire stories about them. A traveling salesman's business card with a handwritten telephone number on the back, cigarette butts in an ashtray and a lipstick smeared tissue, for example, stitched together a titillating narrative.
Seriously, "Leave No Trace" respects the environment, and it respects those who follow, but it's for your own good, too. Share the most intimate details of your lives on Facebook if you must, but remove it from the outdoors, please.
Aside from the dove-hunting thing, early teal season runs Sept. 10-25 statewide. The daily limit is six blue-winged, green-winged and cinnamon teal combined, and the possession limit is 18.
You'll mostly see blue-wings, one of our most plentiful ducks in terms of overall numbers. If you're in the right place, you'll see a lot of them at sunrise and sunset. More to the point, you'll see a lot of them about 10 minutes before sunrise, which is legal shooting time, and you'll see a lot of them leave about two minutes before sunrise.
When teal are concentrated and flying, you can enjoy some spurts of furious shooting, and you can bag a limit pretty quickly.
A September teal hunt is unique. The weather is almost always hot, so you can hunt in shorts and short-sleeve T-shirts.
I always hunt at least once with Alan Thomas at Lake Dardanelle, and we've had some classics. We used to hunt in shorts and sit on milk crates, but we ceased after a hunt four years ago.
We were in a cattail marsh. I don't know what was in that water, but it itched worse than my worst chigger infestation. My legs looked like I'd fought with a bobcat for days. It happened to Al, too. Now we always hunt in light waders.
That's all still a way off though. Until then, there's a lot of great fishing to enjoy, especially on our trout streams.
When it's 100 degrees in the shade, a cool draft rising from the White or Little Red rivers feels mighty good.
Sports on 06/26/2016