[fabsroman]

You need to look for areas that have cut corn, cut wheat, or cut sunflowers. The doves love those crops. Standing corn isn't a terrible field to hunt, but it isn't the best either. As it gets closer to the end of November, I look for fields with long grass where the grass is producing seeds.

Essentially, what I always look for is a food source, a water source (e.g., small pond, cattle prints with water pooled in them), some gravel for their gizzards, and then a perching place (e.g., wires). If you can find where they are roosting for the night, you will be in great shape. The best roosting place I ever found was a grove of pine trees at the end of a big grass field where there was a pond right next to the pine trees. The doves would come into those pine trees 5 and 10 at a time. There was also a set of telephone wires going across the grass field right before the pond. I really miss that farm.

Try to figure out how the birds are flying. They usually tend to come into fields in a particular manner, and if you can figure that out you can put yourself in the right spot.

We are only allowed to hunt them here in Maryland from noon to sundown. So, I have no idea what you can expect in the morning. What I have found is that the action really starts to get going around 3:30 to 4:00 if you are around food/water. During the heat of the day they tend to stay still or roost in the trees in the shade. If you can find where they are roosting, that starts to heat up around 6:30.