Photo by Mark Romanack

Pennsylvania is noted for its deep-rooted hunting traditions including post-Thanksgiving trips up to the Northern Tier counties for the deer season opener, early spring scouting sessions aimed at locating spring gobblers, and Labor Day weekend shoots targeting the plentiful, hard-to-hit mourning dove.

According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, dove hunting continues to enjoy significant levels of hunter participation, and the 2005 season holds a good deal of promise for dove hunters. Here's a look at the most recent management information on the state's mourning dove situation, as well as some suggestions on where to hunt these erratic flyers.

John Dunn, a migratory game bird biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said the outlook for the 2005 dove season is a bright one. Though the agency's spring calling count had not been conducted at the time of this writing, Dunn was upbeat.

"I'm optimistic that we will have a good dove population this season," he said. "There was good nesting success in 2004. Recruitment of young birds was good. Our dove populations are stable, perhaps even increasing slightly in some areas. We are definitely not seeing a decline. If nesting conditions are half as good this year, we can expect the same."

Mourning dove populations fluctuate with the environmental conditions. Favorable weather during nesting periods means higher populations the following fall. Dunn said that dove nesting success is affected by wet weather. A stormy spring can have a negative impact on the numbers of young doves produced in a given year. Springtime weather has a direct bearing on how many birds Keystone State hunters will see in the fall because most of the doves harvested are native birds, not migrants.

While dove numbers should be adequate for keeping 2005 hunters happy, the picture is not quite as rosy when it comes to quality places to hunt. A slow-but-sure trend of shrinking habitat is occurring statewide, particularly in the southeast region of the state, where suburban sprawl is swallowing up traditional dove fields.

"We are losing habitat," Dunn noted. "But that may be impacting hunting opportunities more than nesting cover. Doves are what we call 'habitat generalists.' They are adaptive and successfully nest in conifers and even around homes."

Recently there has been a focus on hunting and its impact on the mourning dove on a wider basis. Pennsylvania is one of 27 states involved in a three-year study aimed at providing game managers with a better handle on not only how hunting affects dove populations but also on the migration patterns of birds that are being harvested.

The study, which is based on banded birds, involves states that have dove hunts as well as states that do not. The study is now in its final year and, according to Dunn, during 2004 (the second year of the study), 1,634 birds were banded in the state. The birds were collected during July and August from 50 capture sites in 20 counties. During the prior year, 1,569 birds were banding.

Biologists attempt to age doves before they are released. During last year's efforts, 901 of the doves banded were juveniles, 660 were adults and 73 were of an unknown age. In the 27-state study area, approximately 60,000 doves were banded last year.

So far, study results indicate hunting has a very minimal effect on dove populations. The harvest rate has been about 4 percent. Dunn said similar numbers have been tabulated in the other eastern states. Of particular interest is the aspect of where harvested birds come from.

"Hunters appear to be bagging locally produced doves," Dunn said. "Over 90 percent of the banded birds recovered in Pennsylvania were banded here. We are not seeing a big influx of doves from other states."

Other states that have recovered Pennsylvania-banded birds include Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.