Mourning doves tend to like bodies of water with clean, open banks that have small rocks, gravel or grit nearby. They use the material in their craws to grind up the food they have consumed. Doves have specific routes of travel into and out of a feeding or watering area, and hunters would do well to trade a few minutes of hunting time before marching into a field or setting up around a water hole.
Mourning doves are primarily seed eaters but will also feed on some insects. Corn, sunflower, millet, wheat, ragweed, pokeweed, panic grass, and white pine are just some of the seeds that comprise their diets. One of the single best things to plant to attract doves is sunflowers. The Perdovick variety (60 day maturity) of sunflowers has been found to work best. A field somewhere between 2-5 acres is sufficient. An excellent place to create a dove field is in a power line right-of-way. The power lines will provide natural perches; however, shooting at power lines is illegal. The sunflowers can either be drilled using a corn planter or broadcasted and lightly disced. For optimum use, the sunflowers should be drilled in rows. Doves like bare ground. You should get the seed in the ground somewhere around the first week in June so that it matures by mid-August to early September.
About 3-4 weeks before dove season opens, disc down or mow a couple of strips of sunflowers. This will attract the doves into your field rather than your neighbors'. Throughout the season, disc down several more strips so as to always supply seed which is easily found. Mourning doves prefer to feed in the open where there are few visual obstructions.
You should plant Perdovick sunflowers at 6-10 lbs./ac Baiting a field is illegal! However,an agricultural crop may be mowed, bush hogged or knocked down and made more available to doves so long as it is not harvested and then redistributed on the field. For further assistance, contact a Wildlife Biologist. |