By Mike Donahue
Moapa Valley Progress
The bangs, booms and blasts that started last week and continue to echo daily throughout Moapa Valley are not a local war, just the signal that another hunting year has begun in Nevada.
Dove hunting season began at about sunrise last Wednesday, Sept. 1, and hunters flooded local fields. The Overton Wildlife Management Area (OWMA) on south Moapa Valley Boulevard had a 60 person limit of shooters for the morning hunt but was relatively empty for the afternoon/evening hunt.
Dove numbers are off a little what they were last year, according to Doug Nielsen, Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) public information officer in the Southern Region, but most hunters were at least taking some birds.
Reservations were required to hunt the OWMA on Labor Day weekend and only 60 hunters were allowed on each day.
All hunters 12 and older who hunt any migratory birds in the state, including dove, are required to have a Harvest Information Program (HIP) number every year. The number is available toll free at 1-866-703-4605.
The HIP number is part of a federal program that uses random sampling to count migratory birds including doves, ducks and geese taken each season.
A new species of dove called the Eurasian Collared Dove is now in Moapa Valley and hunters have bagging quite a few.
“The Eurasian dove showed up in the Bahamas in the 1970s and they gradually made their way to the southern U.S.,” Nielsen said. “They have since spread across the country although we didn’t start seeing them here until 2006-07. They are an unprotected species in Nevada and hunters can shoot as many as they want. They don’t count in the bag limit.”
The Eurasians are a much larger species and they’re easier to shoot because they don’t fly the erratic flight pattern of mourning and white wing doves, Nielsen said.
Other seasons that started last week include blue and ruffed grouse statewide; the falconry season for upland game birds and rabbits statewide; snowcock in Elko and White Pine counties, and American crow statewide.