Wardens follow the birds to catch poachers as dove season opens

The sun’s glow was just beginning to bleed through the smoke screen hiding the Sierra when the first gunshots popped in the distance to signal the start of dove season in California.

It was 6 a.m. Tuesday, the busiest hunting day in the state with more than 40,000 hunters expected to participate. And Lt. Doug Barnhart of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was ready. Before dawn, he prepared his team of seven game wardens for the opener.

Their target: poachers.

Barnhart and the other wardens set out for the old Lemoore Army Air Field, where they were investigating a possible baited field.

Tucked inside pistachio orchards was a decrepit asphalt parcel, roughly eight acres in size, strewn with weeds and dirt. The surface was dotted white with safflower seeds – which, Barnhart said, “is like crack cocaine to these birds.”

Hunters positioned themselves about 20 yards apart from one another, all ready to shoot down the next bird drawn by the free food.

Only 25 minutes of the hunting season had passed before the wardens brought shooting to a halt, citing 31 people for hunting over a baited area. In all, 38 hunters were contacted at the ranch, including one cited for hunting without a license.

The ranch owner also was questioned and admitted to using safflower to attract doves, Barnhart said.

“It’s poaching,” Barnhart said. “Any way you cut it, that’s what it is.”

Baited fields aren’t hard to spot. Game wardens get their tips by following the doves.

“The most noticeable is a particularly heavy increase in bird traffic,” Barnhart said.

Sometimes a power line can give away a baited field. It could have doves sitting from end to end, while surrounding lines along the same road are bare.

“That tells you something. They usually stay pretty close to their source of food or water,” Barnhart said.

It is the third year in a row that some Kings County hunters were caught illegally luring doves on the season opener.

Wardens also found a baited field Tuesday in Kern County and cited eight hunters there.

Because mourning doves are a migratory species, flying south in the winter, they are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, making it illegal to bait them.

Baiting is defined by the federal government as “the direct or indirect placing, exposing, depositing, distributing, or scattering of salt, grain, or other feed that could lure or attract migratory game birds to, on, or over any areas where hunters are attempting to take them.”

Game wardens will check fields up to four weeks before the dove season and again a few days before the opener to have an idea of where baiting is happening. By law, hunters can’t hunt on a baited or manipulated area until 10 days after the bait is removed.

Wardens were busy Tuesday across a seven-county area that also includes Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Inyo and Mono counties, Barnhart said, contacting 1,294 hunters and issuing 66 citations. More than half were at the two baited fields, but there were also hunters who got in trouble for trespassing, not having a license and using an unplugged (holds more than three shells) shotgun.

Though dove hunting falls off considerably after the opener, Barnhart advised hunters to be aware of where you are hunting and state regulations that govern dove season.

This dove season ends Sept. 15. with the second season Nov. 14 to Dec. 28.

This story was originally published September 2, 2015 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Wardens follow the birds to catch poachers as dove season opens."