Aug 30, 2015 By Ben Moyer for The 4 min read

If there is one bird that’s a fitting symbol of early autumn, it’s the mourning dove. These graceful birds are especially conspicuous at this time of year. Seed-eaters, they assemble in large flocks around weedy fields where the seeds of foxtail and other grasses ripen and fall, or in harvested crop fields where they glean leftover grain from the dusty soil. Around here, birds from farther north are already beginning to arrive on their fall migration. Combined with local birds, the migrants swell dove numbers to their highest point in the year.

Mourning doves are named for their call, familiar to anyone who has passed a quiet moment along the border of fields and woods, or even in suburban neighborhoods. The soft “coo, coo, coo,” often heard at evening, sounds to the human ear like a sad lament.

Mourning dove population trends reflect the shift in North American land use over past centuries. Hundreds of years ago, mourning doves were far less abundant than their close cousin, the passenger pigeon. The larger, but similarly plumed, passenger pigeon was a bird of the ancient forest, where it fed on beechnuts and other hard mast. As the old-growth forests were felled and converted to farmland, primarily in the 19th century, the passenger pigeon — which was also heavily hunted before the existence of modern wildlife management regulations — disappeared forever. But the mourning dove took advantage of the spreading fields and open country that it preferred. With a continental population now estimated at around a half-billion, the mourning dove is one of the most abundant birds in North America. The passenger pigeon became extinct in 1914.

Pennsylvania is among the majority of states where the mourning dove is considered a game bird, and may be hunted. That’s the case throughout most of the country. Interestingly, it’s only in all of New England, New Jersey, New York and Michigan that mourning doves are classed strictly as songbirds with no legal hunting season.

Each year, always starting around the first of September, hunters across the far west, Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, the Deep South and Midwest kill between 20 and 40 million doves, a number that vigilant biologists know has no impact on the total population.

Dove hunters typically stake out a spot along the birds’ daily flight routes–along field edges where they feed, around water holes, or near evergreen stands where the birds perch before their evening meal.

Their meat is rich, dark and delicious. The breasts especially are well suited to grilling or broiling. Wrapped in a strip of bacon before going on the fire, they will make you glad you live in a state where doves may be hunted.

When I lived in the Harrisburg area some friends and I often hunted doves on the gravel bars in the broad Susquehanna River. We’d wear drab clothes or camo and hunker down in the gravel and hard-coal silt as the sun dropped below the crest of Blue Mountain. As evening approached, far off specks in the sky turned into waves of mourning doves, headed fast for the gravel bars to pick up grit that aided their gizzards in grinding seeds gleaned from fields flanking the river. One of my friends had a well-trained Labrador retriever. The dog would quiver at the doves’ approach, then dive into the Susquehanna and pick up all the birds we dropped, sometimes retrieving two or three in one trip, then return for the rest.

Because mourning doves are a migratory bird, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has oversight on the individual states’ hunting regulations.

Pennsylvania’s dove season opens on Sept. 1.

The season runs through Oct. 10, closes and reopens on Oct. 17. That segment closes on Nov. 28. There is also a late dove season from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1.

The daily limit on mourning doves is 15, three more than when friends and I hunted doves in the Susquehanna years ago.

Doves may not be hunted before noon through Sept. 25. After that legal shooting time is one-half hour before sunrise. The close of legal shooting is at sunset. Hunters should check their Digest of Hunting Regulations for the exact time of sunset at their longitude across the state.

A state migratory bird license, in addition to the general hunting license is required.

On the grill or through the binoculars, mourning doves are an abundant and resilient wildlife resource that can be appreciated in many ways.