Argentina Wingshooting

There are many things a shotgunner should do before he heads off to that perpetual covey rise in the sky. Owning a gun he has long dreamed about is one. Enjoying the love and companionship of a good dog is another. Shooting doves in Argentina should also be on the life list. Problem is, while you may be happy and content with owning only one good gun and one good dog, you will never be entirely satisfied with hunting Argentina a single time. It's far worse than stopping at just one peanut or potato chip.

A friend of mine who first hunted there during in the early 1980s has been back so many times since, I kid him about the Argentine postal service someday issuing a commemorative stamp in his honor. I've been there a few times too and one of the things I immediately do upon my return is start thinking about how soon I can go again.

The bird thousands of shooters travel to South America each year for is the eared dove, a name that comes from the dark coloration of feathers on its lower ear coverts. While the eared variety is a close relative of the mourning dove of North America, it flies to the beat of a different drummer in some ways. For starters, it seldom migrates and it breeds almost continuously. Nesting takes place five or more times in a year, often in colonies containing several million birds.

Add to this an abundance of cultivated crops along with practically no natural predation and it's no wonder that doves absolutely darken the sky in some areas. No one seems to know for certain how many doves are in all of Argentina but it is estimated that the Cordoba province alone contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 million birds with some farms home to as many as 1,000 per acre. To put this into perspective, the Cordoba province is less than one-third the size of the state of California.

Depending on where you are in the United States, the dove is either a bird of peace not to be shot or it is an important game bird to be shot on a limited basis. Farmers in Argentina disagree with both groups. To them, doves are pests that can devour a big chunk of an agricultural crop, one that often has to be controlled by government-sanctioned poisoning. In other words, a farmer has two choices--pay the government to thin out the numbers or get paid by outfitters who bring in shotgunners.

Quite often a farmer has no choice but to go with both options since despite the lack of game bag limitations, only a small percentage of the overall population of birds falls victim to No. 8 shot each year. In this regard the dove is to Argentine farmers what the prairie dog is to American ranchers. The big difference is the dead doves are donated to local villagers for consumption while defunct prairie dogs seldom end up on the table.

So when is the best time to go? Since Argentina lies in the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed from those here at home; as we enter spring they are beginning to feel the cold of winter. Everything including weather is taken into consideration, my favorite months for shooting doves are June, July and August when temperatures usually average around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.