BANG BANG - Dead Doves

A repost from September 2014:

Yesterday, dove hunting season opened in Tehama County.  Throughout the day, we heard the blasts of shotguns coming from the surrounding fields, dry creek beds, and orchards.

I don’t know how much edible meat is left of these small birds after being killed by a blast of shotgun pellets.  Pretty lean pickings I would think. 

We have lots of mourning doves and California quail living on our five acre rural parcel.  I am not a hunter, so they are safe on our land. These doves feed at our bird feeders and eat weed seeds. 

Red Bluff has lots of hunters.  We have large numbers of "beer, guns, and church on Sunday" folks in our area.  Guns are sacred phallic fetishes hereabouts. You know, fashionable rural values:  killing creatures is fun. 

I much prefer listening to the cooing of living mourning doves over the blasting of shotguns.  

“Mourning doves are the traditional bird of peace and a beloved backyard songbird. But some people use mourning doves as live targets, sometimes calling them "cheap skeet." Hunters kill more doves each year—more than 20 million—than any other animal in the country.

Doves are not overpopulated, and hunting them doesn't feed anyone or help manage wildlife. Mourning doves—called the "farmer's friend" because they eat weed seeds—pose no threat to crops, homes or anything of value to people.

Many hunters don't bother to retrieve the dead or wounded birds.

American kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks, and other federally protected birds look like doves and can be shot by mistake.

Mourning doves nest during the fall hunting season, and hunting can orphan chicks, who starve in the nest without their parents' care.”

-  Dove Shooting, The Humane Society of the United States