(Radio Iowa) – The mourning dove season in Iowa opens today (Monday). D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenschutz says the participation by hunters and number of birds have been steady. “Basically 14 to 15-thousand hunters, pretty stable there, and our harvest has bounced around between, 150 and 200-thousand doves over the last couple of years,” Bogenschutz says.
Bogenschutz says there are no changes in regulations for doves, and the D-N-R has plenty of information about where to find them.

“If you go to our website and and just search for morning doves, a lot of folks are asking about, you know we do do some managed food plots for doves and we have that listing on our website,” he says. Bogenschutz says dove are found across the state, but cooler weather recently may make the hunting better in southern Iowa. “Part of that might just be due to migrations probably already started. And so we’ve got those that probably left northern Iowa. But I mean we, you know, our hunters have good hunts from north to south. So definitely, I think southern Iowa does carry a little bit higher densities than northern Iowa at this time of the year,” he says.

Bogenschutz says dove hunting has a lot of positives that make it good for beginning hunters. “Obviously a very early season here, starting one of our earliest in September, so it’s relatively warm. Doves are very abundant, you don’t need a lot of gear to to dove hunt, basically a bucket to sit on and a shotgun and some shells and an area the doves are using, and you’re good to go,” be says. “So from that perspective it’s a it’s a great way for beginning folks into the the hunting realm.”

Bogenschutz says there’s a lot of opportunities to hunt on private land if you get permission, and there are also the public wildlife areas.