Jump to recipe: TJ’s Dove Ramen
December, two hours of light left, and I have a whole field to myself. I never get this kind of peace back in September. Closer to the dove opener, this ground was a carnival.
Trucks nose to tail down the turn rows. A gun going off every four seconds. Coolers and chairs and some kid on a four-wheeler. Don't get me wrong, I love the excitement that comes with the opener. But tonight I throw open a gate nobody’s touched in months and stand there staring at cut milo stubble gone stiff with cold.
Me, my black Lab and my truck — that’s the whole roster. My winter evening dove hunts are short. I carry a bucket to the edge of the rows. I drop a box and a half of 7½s into my coat and wait for the light to go long, then pull the birds off the roost. Rowdy's already spent and is flat on his side in the truck bed, snoring.
He earned the tired. We’d rolled out of the hills before daylight and met friends on a flooded rice field near El Campo, a couple hours and change south, where the shooting started at first legal light and hardly let up. Pintails and gadwall and teal working the spread in bunches, four or five of my good friends, all of them excellent shots, and Rowdy in the thick of all of it. He had a morning full of retrieves. He’d swim a bird back, mark the next one down before he’d finished shaking off, and go again, everybody’s ducks and not just mine. When the flight finally slacked and he sat down against my leg for the first time all morning, the cold caught up with him. All that running had kept it off. Now, sitting still and soaked to the skin, he shivered hard enough to rattle his tags, and I was prouder of him than I had words for. That’s when I called it quits.
It was a good morning, and I had nowhere better to be. We’d done our part and then some, and I had no earthly reason to want more day than that. December gives you days like this. Ducks at first light. Doves at last. A long cold drive up the middle of the state to get from the one to the other, heater roaring, dog asleep in a kennel in the back seat.
The doves that show up this late are a different bird. One comes off the tree line high and downwind, flying like it’s been thrown. I miss it clean twice and never come close. Good. It’s run three months of gun barrels and a thousand miles of bad weather to get to my field. A bird like that has earned the right to make a fool of me. This is the kind of hunt I wait on all year; multi-species days are by far my favorite. The old hands call it the Second Christmas. Many Texas hunters go their whole lives and never find out it’s on the calendar.
There’s a reason the second season exists, and it’s worth knowing. Doves are migratory, so the season was never Texas’ alone to set. The federal government allots the state a fixed number of days each year, and Texas spends them with some care. It holds a share back and reopens the season around Christmas, timed to the cold fronts that push northern birds down onto our grain and our water. That’s the design of it. September belongs to our resident doves. The second season belongs to everyone else’s.
They don’t flood in the way they do in fall. They come in ones and twos, a straggler, then four at once cutting the corner of the tank on the back fence, and you work for every bird that ends up in the bucket. A high dove on a hard north wind is one of the harder shots in the state, and I miss my share of them without complaint. Mostly you stand in the cold and watch. The light goes the color of good bourbon and then it’s gone. Rowdy’s ears come up a half second before mine find the wings, every time, and I’ve never tired of him being right. Now and then a truck passes out on the farm road and the driver lifts two fingers off the wheel. That’s about as much company as the evening keeps.
And that’s the pull of it. Nobody’s out here. The heat quit in October and the crowds quit with it, sure the season had died on the first cold front. What’s left is a picked field and a low sun and gray birds sliding across it while I stand there in a canvas coat that’s been in a closet since March. The birds are wilder and smarter and just plain better. Nobody to share them with but a wore-out dog. That suits me fine. Slower than the opener. Colder. I'd take it nine nights out of 10 and never think twice.
The sun burns down to embers and I’ve got my limit. Fifteen doves earned one hard shot at a time. I clean them right there on the tailgate. Breath fogging. Rowdy warm against my shin. The field goes blue and then flat black around us. Forecast says tomorrow comes in gray and mean. A stay-inside day. I already know what these doves are getting. Ramen. Dashi on the back of the stove by mid-morning. A jammy egg. A spoon of chili crisp. Green onion cut on the bias. Cold day. Hot bowl. I’ll be back in this same field tomorrow evening if the wind cooperates. First there’s a pot to start, a dog to feed and a gun to clean.
