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Dentry: Dove hunters earn break with late-arriving front

Published September 5, 2006 at midnight

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The call from a wing-shooting pal came Thursday, a few hours before dove hunting season opened Friday morning. He was peeved with that infamous grumpy-weather gremlin, the Dove Chaser, which periodically plagues Colorado in late August or early September.

He rang me up to flog the messenger. I said the Dove Chaser might be coming.

The weather shamans said the wet cold front would come Friday, just in time to kick mourning doves from northeastern Colorado and leave opening-day hunters sulking in their slickers.

Fortunately, as so often happens with unpleasant weather episodes, this one took longer to get here than the seers anticipated.

Sunshine greeted opening-day hunters. Shooters shelved their anxiety and relaxed in seas of wild sunflowers, sipping iced tea and sharing gourmet dove breast recipes.

The dismal weather arrived the next day, but rain and cold didn't seem to interfere with what generally was a welcoming opening weekend.

Peak shooting for many came during the evening hours, when the flocks returned to roosting sites. And more than ever, plump game bags included some Eurasian collared doves (unlimited daily bag, when identifiable) along with limits of 15 mourning doves.

Colorado's notoriously shifty late- summer weather never fails to chase doves to balmier southern climes, eventually. But the Dove Chaser is highly overrated as a preseason disturbance.

Meanwhile, those Eurasian doves offer more opportunity as their numbers increase. Flocks of the nonnative doves, which are larger than mourning doves, sometimes don't migrate south at all.

WALK-IN ADVANCES: It won't happen this year, but dove hunting could be in the works for Colorado's Walk-In Access Program in 2007.

Upland bird biologists and volunteers still will be signing up Walk-In properties for the 2006-07 hunting seasons Thursday, when state wildlife commissioners are scheduled to vote on expanding Walk-In rules for this season.

Advances currently proposed include more Walk-In properties for scaled quail hunting in the southeast, for waterfowl hunting on the Western Slope and for spring turkey hunting on select properties.

Walk-In Access lands primarily have been managed for pheasant and quail hunting in southeastern Colorado.

Dove hunting might be a possibility for the Walk-In lands in 2007 – assuming game managers can overcome hurdles presented by assessing habitat quality and signing up agricultural land much earlier, before crops are harvested.

Informal discussions are under way. But before any dove season hunting opens Sept. 1 on Walk-In properties, expect several months of public input.

SHOOTING TAKES HIT: Public shooting opportunities in national forests are disappearing, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter proposes to do something about it.

Ritter says several previously isolated forest shooting ranges have been shut down because of homebuilding nearby, and shooters have been forced into dispersed shooting activities. Now the Forest Service is considering closing down some dispersed-shooting areas because of development and increased non-shooting recreational use.

Ritter says he would make recreational shooting improvements a priority if he is elected governor. He wants Colorado to take the lead in establishing more shooting ranges, beginning with a pilot program he proposes for the Arapaho-Roosevelt forests.

Ritter said the Division of Wildlife also is in peril of losing funding for a proposed Front Range shooting range and outdoor education center. For two years, the agency has been sitting on an $800,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado for the facility. The grant expires in one year.

BACKCOUNTRY POWER: The Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers has named David A. Lien, of Colorado Springs, its first Front Range director.

Lien is a military veteran, hunter, angler and a world-class mountaineer. He has bagged all 54 of Colorado's peaks taller than 14,000 feet and five of the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent.

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is a new and growing sportsmen's conservation group with members in 30 states. It is dedicated to ethical hunting and fishing and aggressive protection of wilderness and roadless backcountry habitat.

Information: www.BackCountryHunters.org, or e-mail David Lien at dlien2@yahoo.com.