DOVES offer extraordinarily fine sport – perhaps the finest of all our local gamebirds – and it amazes me how few wingshooters in this country actively pursue the available opportunities. Over the decades, several readers have asked me where they can find sandgrouse shooting, some being prepared even to travel to Namibia for this. Yet we have an abundance of doves right on our door-step which provide sport every bit as good, or better, year-round – there is no closed season on them. In both America and the UK, where dove seasons are in place, more shots are fired at doves each year than all other gamebirds combined – by a wide margin. It seems our locals just don’t know what they are missing out on.
Doves are astonishingly fast fliers – the red-eye can probably attain 100kph – and their flight is twisting and erratic, making them the most challenging of all gamebirds to hit. And if you miss your shot, they immediately dodge and dive to gain speed, jinking to change course several times. I learned
