It is amazing how views on gun ownership can be so different to those views held by the majority of Australians. Lou Ann and her husband share the views of most Australians and have difficulty finding their rifle and especially the cartridges that it uses in their home. They live on the land so this gun is used only when absolutely required to put down a rabid animal.
The article appears below!
People in West Texas observe the Labor Day holiday differently than most. Dove hunting season opened Monday and with it came hunters waiting for the day in anticipation.
Mark Edwards said Sept. 1 is absolutely like a holiday for him. But not in the way labor union leaders intended more than 100 years ago.
"I've never missed it out here," said Edwards, who has hunted at the same south-Abilene spot for almost 20 years. "I'm out here every Labor Day Weekend.
The familiar smells of mesquite, dirt, sweat and maybe water in a stock tank never change. After the first few shots, gunpowder mixes in with the other smells as hunting season officially arrives. As Edwards barely gets his shotgun out and loaded, he shoots his first dove. His 8-year-old son Cole takes target shots at a cactus flower with his Red Ryder BB gun. Mark says he's brought Cole hunting with him for a couple of years, and the camo-clad hunter is anxious to help.
With neighboring shots from fellow hunters, Cole keeps his eyes on the lookout for any doves.
"Bird!"
It's 300 yards away. A speck in the sky.
The "phfpt" of his Red Ryder comes between loud, sharp 12-gauges blasting.
Cole's cousin, Kyle, drives by and stops in the distance. Cole leaves his dad to see his 9-year-old cousin.
Left standing under a mesquite tree, Mark tries to watch for the doves flying around him. He hits some, misses others and doesn't see a few until too late.
After such a long break, Mark makes some good shots. But the easy misses frustrate him.
He receives some help when Maggie, a bird dog, joins him to help fetch fallen birds. The 14-year-old dog is wet from at least one trip into the tank and covered with burrs from another excursion into some brush. During dry spells, she pants and whimpers softly, ready for a new bird to retrieve.
After about an hour, Mark walks back to his white Chevy Tahoe and unloads his pouch, full of birds.
They're weighing his jeans down.
A little later, Mark gets another visitor.
"Havin' much luck?" said Larry Curnutt.
"Not bad," Mark said. "Missed a few."
Yells periodically come from closer to the tank after shots. Whether they went down or not, Kyle let his feelings show.
"Yeah it was me over there," said Kyle. "I was yelling at one. I hit its tail; it just didn't go down."
Kyle shot two doves with his single-shot 20-gauge Monday, but said it took probably 50 shells to do the job.
Just before 7 p.m., Mark reached his limit. Everyone else started calling it a day then, too.
Mark's daughter, Dallas, and Casey's daughter Mackenzie meet Mark as he walks toward the others. Dallas squirms away as her father jokingly reaches out to her with his blood and feather covered hands.
He meets David Coleman and his family as they drive out of the field.
"I got my limit after 20 straight misses," David Coleman said exaggerating. "But I finally figured it out."
When the day is over, the mosquitoes, cactus and heat aren't enough to deter a hunter.
"It's just an opportunity to come out with friends and family and get together and enjoy the outdoors and shoot some birds," said Edwards. "It's a good time."
This link will take you to a .pdf document with the details of the Opening Of The Dove season.http://web.reporternews.com/static/content/pdf/openseason.pdf
The document is about 800kb so may take a while to open if you have a dial up connection. .pdf documents usually open in Adobe Reader which most computers have installed on their computer. Adobe Reader is a bloated program and people usually prefer Foxit Reader which is free and much quicker at opening up than Adobe Reader.
Foxit Reader is free, only 2.3MB and can be downloaded from here:
http://downloads.foxitsoftware.com/foxitreader/FoxitReader23_setup.exe
You will need to zoom in on the document to read what has been written. The 'Zoom In' icon is usually a circle with + sign in the middle of it.
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