Sep 8, 2024 By Ben Moyer 4 min read

If you need more than football and school buses to affirm that fall has arrived, consider this. The 2024 hunting seasons have begun.

The season on mourning doves opened Sept. 2 and continues through Nov. 29. A second dove season runs Dec. 21 to Jan. 4 but is far less popular than the early hunt. Most hunters cluster their dove hunts in the first two weeks of September.

The mourning dove, named for its plaintive call, is the most abundant gamebird in North America. Biologists estimate the U.S. population at 350 million, of which hunters take 20 million annually. In Pennsylvania about 16,000 hunters go after doves each year, downing 100,000 birds. Doves are migratory but a large proportion of those hatched within Pennsylvania remain here throughout the winter.

In the typical method of hunting doves, hunters station themselves along a known dove flight-path, especially in early morning or evening, and attempt to center a shotgun pattern on the fast-flying birds as they pass. Most hunters expend a lot of shells for each bird bagged.

Mourning doves are not fond of forest. They prefer open areas such as grain fields or recently cut corn or soybeans where they can glean the seeds of various weeds, sunflowers, or waste grain. Ideal dove habitat features a diversity of weed seeds, open ground, nearby water, and scattered trees for resting and night roosts. Also important to doves is a source of gravel or “grit,” which the birds swallow in small quantities to aid digestion by grinding ingested seeds.

These conditions are often found on private farmland where hunters find it increasingly difficult to gain permission to hunt. As an alternative, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, in recent years, began managing some portions of state game lands as prime dove habitat to provide public dove hunting opportunity. The commission calls these areas “managed dove fields,” where its land management staff encourages native seed-bearing plants through periodic soil-discing and prescribed burns. Managers may also plant preferred dove foods like brown millet, sunflower, or winter wheat.

Managed dove fields are deliberately fashioned into long rectangular shapes, so that hunters can station themselves along the borders to promote safe shooting. In our area, the commission manages dove fields for hunters on State Game Land 223 near Kirby in Greene County, and on State Game Land 111 near Confluence in Somerset County. The Greene County fields cover 25 acres, one of the largest such complexes in the region. Managed fields in Somerset County cover 9 acres.

Hunters may take 15 doves per day throughout the seasons. To hunt doves legally, hunters must possess both a general hunting license and a Pennsylvania migratory bird license. Fluorescent orange clothing is not required.

Doves make excellent eating, and wild game chefs are crafting diverse recipes to enjoy them after a hunt. The dark moist meat of the breast is preferred for these preparations.

A much larger bird also became legal game on Sept. 2. The Canada goose season runs through Sept. 25 in the Resident Population Zone, which covers all of Pennsylvania except the southeastern corner near Philadelphia, Reading, and Allentown. The September season encourages harvest of Canada geese that have become “resident” in Pennsylvania. These flocks have traded the species’ former migratory habits for year-round residence here. Often, resident geese are considered “nuisance geese” because of their tendency to flock on golf courses, in parks, and on farms.

Hunters may take a maximum of 8 geese per day during this season, except in a small area near Pymatuning in Crawford County where the season ends on Sept. 16 and the limit is one goose per day. Waterfowl biologists impose this exception because geese there may be part of the migratory Hudson Bay population, distinct from resident geese though the birds appear identical.

To take resident Canada geese, hunters typically deploy decoys in fields where the birds are known to feed, or on a pond or river where they return at evening to roost for the night.

Goose hunters must use shot made of steel, bismuth, or some other non-toxic material. No shotshells containing lead are permitted to hunt geese or other waterfowl. Conservation officers take this regulation seriously, as it is intended to prevent lead poisoning of wildlife that may ingest pellets that fall in wetland habitats.

Pennsylvania goose hunters must possess a general state hunting license, a state migratory bird license, and a federal migratory bird permit (duck stamp). Duck stamps are available at many U.S. post offices, or online at the Game Commission’s license sales page www.pgc.pa.gov.

The next hunting seasons to open in our southwestern region are the squirrel season on Sept. 14 and the archery deer season Oct. 5.

Remember that the most important objective in hunting is to hunt safely.