Stepping out of the truck for the afternoon hunt, it was obvious the wind had ratcheted things up several notches from this morning. What I call dirt devils (small cyclonic swirls of wind and dust) are dancing along the old farm road. For the most part, though, the wind blew strongly and consistently from only one direction. We stationed ourselves to take advantage of the wind and we were hoping to catch the doves flying into the wind. Jose constructed another blind (we had once ageing stopped to clear more roadside material) and I stepped inside hoping this afternoon’s shoot is as good as this morning’s was.
Once again, there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of birds in the air. The birds coming from in front seemed to almost float by, while the ones coming from behind reminded me of F15 Eagles flying by with full afterburners. After unsuccessfully trying to hit the birds from multiple directions, I settled on a sweet spot that was on my11:00 position. I soon found myself to be on automatic again and the birds started dropping. Shoot twice, reload two. Shoot and reload. And so it went for the afternoon. I actually had to force myself to take a break to “stop and smell the roses” so to speak. Unless I did so, there was no time to take a drink of water of pick up the camera. By the end of the afternoon, I had fired 350 shots, and 180 birds were on the ground. I was still over the 50% mark and was pleased with my shooting for the day. When the day was done, the five of us had taken 1672 birds.
Next installment on Monday. Have a great weekend
