Our mourning dove population is solid and expected to provide excellent hunting opportunities this fall. Hunters can look forward to a season structure similar to the three-season split of recent years.

Bag limits will be at least as liberal as in years past, with a possible increase on the horizon.

"Unlike the trend nationally," said Bill Palmer, a Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife biologist, "the dove population in Pennsylvania is steadily on the increase.

"I expect things to be as good as or better than they were last season. There are about 8 million doves in Pennsylvania, and about 40 million nationally."

Banding studies conducted in recent years indicate that most of the doves harvested in Pennsylvania are from the Quaker State.

You shouldn't interpret this to mean that doves aren't migratory. Rather, it's just a matter of when the majority of doves are bagged.

"We've banded about 8,000 doves since 2003," says Palmer. "About 93 percent of the banded birds recovered by hunters were banded in Pennsylvania. I think that the numbers have been confused with migration -- or an absence of migration.

"Some birds do stick around all year. I have banded doves at my bird feeder that stay year 'round. But by and large, doves are migratory.

"In all of the states that are banding doves, the majority of the harvest takes place early in the season, before the fall migration begins. So it appears that hunters are shooting their own doves at that time of year."

Hunters can expect to enjoy a liberal 70-plus-day dove season similar to recent years, though most of the hunter attention takes place during early September.

"For years," Palmer explained, "we've had a three-segment split season, with the traditional early-season opener on Sept. 1. And then there's a middle portion in November and a short late hunt after Christmas. I don't expect that to change."

While the three-split season isn't a departure from the norm, Palmer did report that hunters could soon be entitled to a higher bag limit.

"One change that might take place, -- perhaps not this season but likely next year (in 2009) -- is an increase in the bag limit from 12 to 15 birds," he said. "From surveys such as we've done in Pennsylvania, biologists are finding that raising the bag limit will have little effect on dove populations.

"Research has shown that doves don't live a long time anyway, but that's not because of hunting. Hunting accounts for only about 5 percent of dove mortality.

"Doves are very productive, and we don't have to worry about them as much as we do some other birds. And fewer folks are hunting doves while the birds' numbers are on the increase. So we can increase recreational opportunities without impacting dove numbers."

The prospect of increasing the bag limit was being considered at the federal level, where such changes must be approved prior to going to the states. Final migratory-bird seasons and limits are announced in late summer.

Though pockets of decent dove hunting are sprinkled across the state, Pennsylvania's southeastern, south-central and western portions harbor the greatest numbers of doves.

Not coincidentally, these regions also contain vast agricultural areas, containing the habitat doves prefer.

"If you look at the dove harvest per square mile, which I think indicates how good the dove hunting is, you'll see the highest harvest rates in wildlife management units 5A, 5B, 5C and 5D, which are in extreme southeastern and south-central Pennsylvania," noted Palmer.