Saturday, the opening of the dove season, begins an almost unbroken months-long chain of hunting opportunities in Louisiana.
If you’re looking for places to hunt, then Wildlife and Fisheries has announced leases on fields near DeRidder and Colfax for Saturday’s opening day.
If those fields are too far away, then there are 12 wildlife management areas and one U.S. Forest Service area open for hunts.
Access to the leased field will open at 5 a.m. Like the rest of the state, hunting hours are one-half hour before sunrise to sunset, although the leased fields likely will be limited to morning hours.
Here’s what you’ll need to hunt the two fields near DeRidder and the one near Colfax.
A permit: you can find one on the agency’s website: la.accessgov.com/dove-hunts/Forms/Page/dove-hunts/registration/.
Nontoxic shot No. 6 or smaller (7½ , 8 & 9 are good if you can find it), because you cannot use lead shot.
You can bring a dog.
ATVs are OK but might be restricted to field roads if the fields are wet.
A $10 registration fee helps pay for the lease, but hunters 17 and younger do not pay a fee.
Don’t forget if you’re 18 and older, you must have a basic hunting license, and a no-fee Harvest Information Program (HIP) certificate, which can be attached to your hunting license. The HIP certification asks for basic information about what migratory birds and/or waterfowl you hunted last season — 17 and younger hunters do not need HIP.
You can buy a hunting license on the agency’s website, too: wlf.louisiana.gov/page/hunting-licenses-permits-tags
If you’re on private land, then it’s important to know our state is divided into south and north zones for dove hunting, and these first days are part of a three-split season.
Know, too, our state Wildlife Division has identified “at least seven species of doves in Louisiana, four of which — mourning, white-winged, Eurasian collared, and ringed-turtle doves — may be legally hunted.”
The legal daily limit is 15, but hunters are allowed up to 45 doves in possession after the first two hunting days in each split.
There’s more. Hunters can take all the Eurasian collared doves and ringed-turtle doves they want, but have to keep these birds with a fully feathered wing and head attached to avoid counting these two species in the daily and possession limits.
If you fully dress all your doves, then these two species must be included in your daily and possession limits.
With more and more white-winged doves showing up across south Louisiana — two of them have set up a nest in Broadmoor in Baton Rouge — note that taking one or more of them must be included in your daily limit along with mourning doves.
Bonus time
The latest red snapper landing numbers reached 849,993 pounds through Wildlife and Fisheries’ LA Creel data collection method through Aug. 18.
That’s nearly 91% of our state’s annual private recreational red snapper allotment of 934,587 pounds, and leaves 84,594 pounds left leading into this Labor Day weekend, which, historically, is the last big summertime fishing period.
This weekend’s bonus is the ability to keep greater amberjack and gray triggerfish. The amberjack season opened Sunday and affords offshore reef fishermen the rare opportunity since the end of May to take all three species on a single trip.
As a reminder, the daily creel on red snapper is four with a minimum size of 16 inches. The daily limit on amberjack is one per day with a minimum size of 34 inches fork length (not to the tip of the tail fin), and, for gray triggerfish, the limit if one per day with a minimum size 15 inches fork length.
Thanks all
Hunters for the Hungry collected nearly 19,000 pounds of frozen game, meats and fish in the Clean Out Your Freezer campaign. The next move is the group’s deer and hog program, wherein hunters can take freshly taken deer and hogs to processors across the state to be distributed to food banks and local soup kitchens.
Unbelievable
Taryn J. Varnell, an 18-year-old from Grayson, is in big trouble.
He faces charges of aggravated cruelty to animals after Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division agents checked out a video of Varnell choking a spotted fawn to death. When confronted, Varnell admitted he was the man in the video.
Agents booked him into the Caldwell Parish Correctional Center, and he faces fines up to $25,750, jail time up to 10 years and a civil restitution of $1,624 for the replacement value of the illegally taken deer.