Hunting Doves in Argentina, Dove Hunter (Nov-Dec 2001)

Burning your fingers on your shotgun barrel is a pretty good indication that you are having a good shoot. I burned mine dove hunting in Argentina. My little Ruger 28-ga. wasn’t just warm; it was dangerous.  Hot oil was oozing from its seams.  As I looked down I found myself surrounded by little red hulls and a considerably smaller pile of little gray doves.  Overhead, the soft Argentine sky was littered with birds.  Dozens.  Hundreds.   Wave after wave of Palomas followed one upon the other out of the western grain fields, driving toward a woodland roost behind our line of shooters.  I set my steaming over/under aside and just watched one of the greatest avian spectacles on earth.

Eared doves in Cordoba Province, Argentina, are not game birds.  Or at least not to local farmers who compare them to the Biblical plagues of locusts.  The hungry little pigeons concentrate in such numbers that they literally clean outstanding grain crops.  Week after week they descend on choice millet, milo, corn, and wheat fields, diving low to glean weed and crop seeds from the fields.  Drive through such a foraging flock and the sky grows dark as tens of thousands of Palomas rise up to leapfrog ahead of their brethren to a fresh part of the field.  The roar of their tiny wings suggests a concentration of waterfowl, perhaps a whitewater rapid or a small hurricane tearing through palm leaves.  When farmers beg hunters from Europe and the U.S. to shoot the doves, it’s a matter of self-defense.  Don Terrell tries to come to the rescue of these farmers.

For years Terrell was a wolf in banker’s clothing.  When let out of his businessman’s cage from time to time, he rejuvenated his predatory spirit by hunting doves, quail and waterfowl in and around his South Carolina den.  Soon he began venturing farther afield for more, newer, and better bird hunting.  Eventually he discovered Argentina dove hunting and liked it so much that he bought a company there, Wings, Inc.  With local partners Manuel Lainez and Octavio Crespo, 20 year veterans of Argentine dove shoots, Terrell built the modern, comfortable Posta del Norte lodge on the site of a historic South American ranch.  They incorporated the original homestead log house into the spacious new lodge.  The stone fireplace and collection of antiques create the perfect ambiance for after-dinner drinks and relaxation.  After the seven-course meals they serve at Posta del Norte, you need to relax.  But eating, for me at least, was a mere sideshow compared to those incredible flights of doves.

“Here they come, “ hunt manager 29-year-old Guillermo Alejandro calmly announced as we stood by a cattle fence watching the eastern sky turn orange early one morning.

“Where?” I asked.

“See that line of smoke, low?” He pointed.

Yes, on the horizon I could see a smudge.

“Doves,” he said.  Even though I saw it, it was hard to believe.  Yet the smudge came closer and resolved into thousands of doves winging steadily toward picked cornfields behind us.  Many peeled off toward a copse of trees in the pasture beside us to preen before breakfast. The shooting began, steady bordering on furious.  “Cartouches. Cartouches.” I hissed after reaching into my belt pouch and finding it empty.  My assistant, an eager, young local teenager, apologized and quickly dumped two boxes of red Argentine 12 gauge shells into my pouch.  Each shooter on these hunts is assigned a “bird boy” to carry shells, keep the shooting bag full, maintain an accurate count of birds dropped and retrieve them at the end of each shoot.  They do this with remarkable efficiency, usually anticipating when one’s “fuel supply” is low and topping it off like a good waitress with a coffee pot.  Rarely, in the excitement of an especially busy flight, do they get so preoccupied totaling birds that they fall behind on munitions.  However, there are so many birds it hardly matters.

Freshly supplied, I dropped a shell into the action of my Beretta autoloader, slammed the bolt home and pushed two more cartouches into the magazine.  By that time, two more flocks of 30 to 50 doves each had passed overhead.  No matter.  More such squadrons were stacked toward the horizon like 737s over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.  I crouched behind my fencepost all of 15 seconds until the first flight flickered in range.  Then I stood up, picked out a bird, concentrated, swung through it and pressed the trigger.  A satisfying puff of feathers signaled me to find a second dove.  I swung, fired, “puff,” and looked for a third.  I missed that bird on one of  those tough, going-away but twisting-and-diving angles.  I reached into my shell bag, primed my gun with three fresh loads and raised the barrel toward the next flock already upon me.

Only after an hour did our shooting become sporadic.  The flight trickled to nothing.  Behind us, however, the gray smoke of doves rose over yellow fields when Guillermo drove a pickup through them.  This was our signal to find new flight paths, commonly near a patch of trees.  These provided more leisurely shooting, as singles and small bunches drifted between fields and day roosts.  Meanwhile, our hosts set up an el fresco dining hall in a nearby woods complete with tables, tablecloths, and chairs.  While we shot, they built a fire, grilled steaks, sausages and kabobs, tossed a salad, opened the wine, and presto – we had lunch.  We talked and joked before napping or cleaning our guns in preparation for the afternoon shoot.

One day, Manuel and Octavio drove our group of 12 hunters into the wooded hills.  “This should be a challenge,” Manuel promised.  “They come over the trees riding the wind.  Quite sporting.  This is where they breed earlier in the year.”  The landscape was reminiscent of the dry hills of Texas or the foothills of Arizona’s Mexican mountains, southeast of Tucson.  Acacias, agave, prickly pear cacti and oaks shaded an understory of dry grass, thistles, and cattle lined the hills.  There are always lots of cattle in Argentina.  Our group scattered, some taking positions in saddles between hills, others in open alleys bordering a dry creek bed, still others at the edges of meadows, just under the brows of oak-studded hills.

The birds kept Manuel’s promise.  Little flocks shot through the high saddles like squadrons of F-16 fighters, high and fast.  I shot a dismal three for 25 before giving up the 28 gauge and taking out my Beretta 390 12-bore.  The longer, heavier gun made a big difference, it's mass and 28-inch barrel contributing to momentum.  Still, I had to swing the big gun fast and well ahead of my targets.  Some angles took several tries to figure out, but there were plenty of opportunities.  This may be one of the best reasons for hunting in Argentina.  You get so many shooting opportunities and so many changes to “iron-in” what you have learned, that it’s the perfect venue for honing shooting skills.  Having trouble with left-right crossers?  Concentrate on them, extending your lead and increasing your swing speed, whatever the takes until you begin to score.  Then keep at it until you feel as if you’ve got it nailed.  I corrected so many shooting errors during our first evening’s shoot that I shudder to think how bad I was in the beginning.

I found that I was greedily eyeing the entire flock instead of concentrating on one bird.  With all those Palomas crisscrossing the sky, can you blame me?  Once I corrected that, I discovered I was lifting my head to watch the effect of my shots.  Cheek down, I reminded myself.  Then I started tilting the gun.  Or had I been all along?  Anyway, before long I was smacking doves with encouraging, confident regularity.  By the time I flew home, I felt as if I could hit anything, anytime, anyplace.  I’ve backslid slightly since, but I was a regular terror on pheasants, ducks, and quail back in the States.

Young Chance Dorn was having few shooting problems in Cordoba.  The 17-year-old was on a shooting vacation with his dad, Pete.  The two appeared to be putting a serious dent in the local rancher’s vermin population.  It was the third Argentina hunt for both, and it showed.  Chance would regularly take two or three birds from each passing flock, alternating between a Browning Gold autoloader and Weatherby over/under.  Pete shot a pair of Ruger over/unders in 28 and 20 ga.

Sixty-year-old Matt Howell from South Carolina was on his first tour of duty.  “Lord yes, I’m coming back!  And I’m bringing my son next time,” he crowed.  The father-son theme was continued by 35-year-old Randy Marvin, a South Carolina restaurateur, who had brought along his 63-year-old pop, Frank, for the second time.  Yet another father-son due was Fraser and Walt Almond, the former in the forest products industry, the latter a university student.  They were on their second trip and looked forward to more.

A pair of guns was the norm for all shooters, sheer volume promising some sort of malfunction eventually, despite nightly cleaning.  No brand showed itself superior.  Double guns and pumps gave fewer problems than autoloaders, although my Beretta 390 chugged along without a hitch, as did Frank Marvin’s.  Long barrels, replaceable choke tubes and heavy guns seemed best suited to the condition.  Some flights were high, others were low enough for improved cylinder chokes.  Experienced shooters wore gloves, earplugs, and strap-on recoil pads.

After several hundred rounds, even a 20-ga. can start pulverizing your shoulder.  Veteran shooter Nick Tucker, 66, wrapped his loading fingers with electrician’s tape to prevent pinching and friction during frequent reloading.  When both his 20-ga Remington 1100s were clean and working, he’d fire while his bird boy loaded the other.  The most popular gauge was 20, a good compromise between recoil and pattern density.

One morning we set up on a ranch that reportedly had good numbers of spot-winged pigeons, picazurro.  The report was accurate.  Compared to their tiny gray cousins, these pigeons looked like big game.  I eagerly watched for them as the morning sped by, eventually detecting flight paths, particularly the corner of two long rows of windbreak trees along an internal ranch fence.  I nonchalantly strolled down to that corner, where I subsequently enjoyed fast shooting at trophy birds.

As an American raised on the conservationist’s code of moderation and restraint, I felt like a game hog in Argentina.  I was concerned at the numbers of doves being taken.  Some shooters have shot as many as 3000 doves in one day, though several hundred is more usual.  Still…I was concerned.

Manuel assured me that this was not a problem since virtually no locals shoot the birds.  The small number of nonresidents like us, do not cut into the breeding numbers.  “It’s like this month after month, year after year,” he said, sweeping his arm toward a field covered with doves.  “I haven’t seen numbers change noticeably in more than 14 years.  Ranchers continue to beg us to come shoot doves.  We have been working three big roosts in the hills and three more in the plains.  All have been consistent for six years now.  Only the feeding areas change.”

This information assuaged my conscience, but I still did not overindulge, limiting myself to fewer than 200 birds a day.  And this is another of the pleasures inherent in Argentine dove hunting.  You feel free to participate any way you wish.  Instead of volume, you may opt for the most challenging shooting angles or try to set personal efficiency records.  Ever go 25 for 25 on doves?  Maybe you’d rather stop from time to time and smell the roses?  I enjoyed identifying many songbirds and raptors in the areas we hunted.  I was thrilled to watch big eagles swoop down and steal doves we’d hit.  You might want to capture action scenes of your friends on film or video, shoot a favorite old gun, maybe a muzzleloader or Grandpa’s old single-shot.  Perhaps you’d rather introduce a child, grandchild, sibling, or spouse to the complicated art of dove shooting.  With all the doves flying in Cordoba, Argentina, you have these options and more.  Maybe you’ll even burn your fingers.

CONNECTIONS

Reaching Argentina, clearing customs with shotguns, finding a place to stay, eat, and hunt are a snap when you book dove hunts through an American booking agency.  They handle the logistics, while you have the fun.  Costs are surprisingly reasonable.  Less than $3,000 buys a three-day hunt with airfare included.

For more information, contact Don Terrell at Wings, Inc. (803) 713-9900. E-mail [email protected] or check the web at www.wingsport.com

Ron Spomer is an avid hunter from Indiana who has traveled around the world in search of interesting and exciting hunting opportunities.

Hunting Doves in Argentina

Dove Hunter (Nov-Dec 2001)

By Ron Spomer