ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609090099
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
Maybe Robert Johnson was doing it wrong.
He was starting his grandson, 12-year-old Tommy Pitts, on hunting, an honorable act. But on doves?
``I figured it was time to get this boy out and get it started,'' said Johnson, a lifelong hunter who lives in Roanoke.
But doves are tough. They could ruin a first-time hunter. Why not begin on something easy - a wily old buck, a sly old spring gobbler, a cunning old fox squirrel?
Doves are master aviators, combining speed and agility to sprint, weave, twist and dart across the September sky. Even seasoned hunters can brag when - and if - they average dropping one bird with every three shells. A survey compiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated eight shots for each dove taken home.
But Pitts was ready for the challenge. He was carrying a 20-gauge, single-shot that his granddad had borrowed from fellow hunter Bill Breeding.
``I bought it for my grandson, and he kind of outgrew it,'' said Breeding. ``About one shot at a time is all a boy needs.''
A few days before the season opened Sept.5, Pitts took some practice shots - at rocks. Then, on opening day, he and Johnson joined eight other camouflage-clad hunters at a Bedford County farm.
While it is called dove hunting, most of the hunting involves finding a cut cornfield, a weed patch or farm field where doves are feeding. Once that's accomplished, the hunting is over. It is a matter of shooting.
Most years it is too hot or too dry or too something for the corn harvest to mesh with the opening day of the dove season exactly as game officials hope it will. This season is no exception. The early September corn crop is July green, thanks to a cool, damp summer. Few cornfields had been cut by opening day, and rains have seen to it that not many have been harvested since.
Breeding, the unofficial hunt master, was about to settle his charges in a patch of foxtail and ragweed growing on a Botetourt County farm. One more scouting trip uncovered the cut cornfield in Bedford County, but it came with no guarantee.
``I don't know if there is a single dove in it,'' Breeding said.
That didn't dampen the spirit of the hunters who arrived at the gate an hour before the noon opening gun, with plenty of time for chatter.
Someone asked Pitts how old he was.
``Thirteen on Oct. 1.''
``I bet he would make an excellent deer-camp dishwasher,'' said Bill Breeding Jr.
At noon, the hunters uncased their guns, grabbed their drink coolers and sacks of shells and headed into the field.
``You guys be careful. Don't shoot nothing low,'' Breeding said.
``Me and you will go down yonder where that walnut tree is,'' Johnson told Pitts.
The field was crescent-shaped, bearing systematic rows of corn stubble that stretched into the distance like the stitching in a giant comforter. One side was bordered by a row of hardwoods, the other by fescue that squeaked under your boots. Sharptop and Flat Top, better known as the Peaks of Otter, rose above the landscape in the hazy distance.
Early on, a couple of doves were spotted fluttering in the treetops bordering the field, as if moving lazily to adjust their perch away from the sun. None flew over the field.
``They will begin flying when it cools down,'' someone said in a voice expressing more hope than promise.
At 12:20, a shot was heard in the distance, a muffled sound, as if it were a starting gun, or maybe a cork coming out of a champagne bottle to celebrate the beginning of the autumn gunning seasons.
By 1:30, several of the hunters were moving along the edge of the field, taking up new positions, or gathering to chat with their buddies, a sure sign things are going slowly in a dove field.
Then came the shout, ``Bird!''
A shotgun boomed and spent pellets rained harmlessly into the fescue. A dove streaked to the treeline with no sign of a ruffled feather.
The brief action was followed by another lull, broken by a shout from Pitts.
``There's one!'' he said.
``That's a woodpecker,'' Johnson said. ``See how its wings fit back into its body when it flies.''
The same darting, flaring flight that can make doves difficult to hit also can make them easy to identify. Such skills come with experience, when fathers, grandfathers and uncles, who know how to hunt, take youngsters into the fields and teach a new generation of hunters who someday will pass the torch. It was happening, there under the walnut tree.
But Pitts was more interested in action than tradition. Finally, it came. About 4:15 p.m. a flock of 20 or so doves sped over the hardwoods, their tails sharp as a spear, their wings long and shaped like a scimitar.
Two shotguns took a crack at them from the treeline, sending them sizzling across the field, where they attracted another load of shot. With their whistling wings deepening the sense of speed, they circled behind the walnut tree and came dashing over Pitts like missiles off a launching pad. His shot was way too late.
Afterward, Pitts dropped a bird that fell into a thicket, and the youngster learned still another reality of dove hunting: If you take your eye off a bird, he will disappear, even if he falls on a golf green.
``Remember, I told you to follow it all the way to the ground,'' Johnson told Pitts, as they waded into the thick cover.
The search lasted five minutes, then Johnson sent Pitts back to his shooting spot to realign the angle of the shot, and the downed bird was located.
``That's cool! That's neat-o!'' said Pitts, who had entered the thicket as a youngster and emerged as a hunter.
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BILL COCHRAN STAFF. 1. Robert Johnson introduces hisby CNB12-year-old grandson, Tommy Pitts, to hunting under a Bedford County
walnut tree where shotgun shells (below) 2. were more plentiful than
doves. color.