Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden: A Memoir

Dove Fields and Cracked Corn

Dove Fields and Cracked Corn dove shoot in South Carolina is as much a social event as it is a hunt. It usually involves a good number of people—usually men but sometimes women and children—and a wide variety of retrieving dogs. Dove-hunting clubs are common throughout the state. Some of the dove shoots occur on lands leased by dove clubs that pay a farmer to plant and maintain the fields. Others are invitational hunts, where the landowner invites friends over for a morning or an afternoon shoot. I have been present on dove shoots, either officially or as a guest, where there were a hundred or more hunters scattered around large cultivated fields. Occasionally dove shoots are the centerpieces for large political events with socializing going on before and after the hunt, often accompanied by a meal of barbeque, fried fish, or Frogmore stew. Former governor Robert McNair’s annual fall dove shoot is a famous political gathering, nearly rivaling the crowd at the Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting. At many of the larger events, hosts announce that the game wardens have been invited and will be checking hunters in the field. The host cautions his guests to abide by the laws and observe the courtesies: no shooting at low birds and vacating your stand once you have gotten your limit. When I first started with the department in 1978, a dove shoot was traditionally an afternoon affair. At some point the small-game biologists determined that morning shooting was also allowable. I was once in conversation with a perfectly law-abiding person who said he had been to a terrific shoot that morning, taking a limit of birds in fewer than thirty minutes, and A Dove Fields and Cracked Corn 111 that he was looking forward to a good afternoon shoot at a friend’s farm on one of the nearby islands. I asked him if he realized what he had just admitted. He seemed a little disturbed when I told him that the law allowed only twelve birds per day, not twelve birds at each shoot. Several people I know have had the misfortune to be checked on two separate dove shoots by the same game warden, who remembered how many birds they had when he checked them earlier. I am glad to say that most dove hunters observe the courtesies and obey the laws, but there are enough who don’t to keep the game wardens busy. One November our District Nine unit received information that people on Edisto Island were shooting over several baited dove fields, a practice prohibited in state and federal laws. Observing the usual formalities, we passed on that information to the District Five headquarters in Bonneau, whose chief responsibility was enforcing the inland game and fish laws. Their district included Charleston County. A week later, the interested party informed one of the officers in our unit that the baited field he had reported had been hunted again on Saturday, that many birds had been shot, and that there was not a game warden to be seen anywhere. Further, he said, the field had just been rebaited and there was to be another shoot on the forthcoming Saturday, just three days away. He was concerned about the situation and was, according to the officer who took the call, frustrated that nothing had been done to act on his previous information. Doubting that the District Five officers could be pried away from the Francis Marion deer hunters, our unit leader dispatched two of us to investigate the field and to document it, which involved getting samples and photographs of the bait and the general layout of the area. After documenting that a section of the field was baited with cracked corn, a unit meeting was called to devise a game plan. We went in three separate patrol cars early Saturday morning and met in a patch of woods near an old tenant house well behind, and at a discreet remove from, the baited field. The plan was to wait until some shooting had gone on and then quickly drive around the field to where the hunter’s vehicles were parked, dropping off officers along the way. It was a crisp and frosty morning. After all the officers were assembled at the meeting place in the hidden glade, we warmed ourselves with thermoses of hot coffee and munched on doughnuts and Nabs until well past noon...