Search the Community

The mourning dove is federally designated as a migratory game bird and hunted in 40 of the lower 48 states, but not in NY. The NY Department of Environmental Conservation cannot set a hunting season until the NY state legislature and the governor change the state’s classification of the mourning dove to be consistent with the federal designation. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 recognizes sport hunting as a legitimate use of a renewable migratory bird resource. The BIDE rates, population and harvest estimates certainly support harvesting doves: Current Population Estimate: 308 million doves in the United States Annual Mortality: 58% Juvenile Annual Mortality: 69% Sustainable harvest (which considers replacement–level birth rates; natural mortality; and stochastic factors): 60 to 75 percent 2012 annual harvest: 5.5 percent of population or about 17 Million birds, of which 7 million from the Eastern Management Unit, which includes NY. The 2012 harvest at 5.5% could be 69.5% higher without impacting the population, which would be equivalent to an additional 214 million birds harvested. This is not a suggestion that hunter satisfaction is low among those who hunt doves, as a matter of fact, surveys indicate the opposite is true. It does illustrate the mourning dove’s resilience to harvest and why it makes no sense whatsoever not to implement a dove hunting season in NY. It should also be pointed out that even if hunting occurred in all states, a harvest of 60 to 75 percent is possible only in theory, as hunter numbers, effort, and skill level preclude this, especially under contemporary regulations and the concept of fair chase. A high reproductive rate and short generation time makes this species resistant to stochaticity as well. A significant form of natural mortality is the mouth-dwelling parasite Trichomonas gallinae. Mourning doves will sometimes host this parasite without symptoms, but in other individuals it will often cause yellowish growth in the mouth and esophagus that will eventually starve the host to death. The manifesto of the Humane Society of the United States that mourning doves provide significant ecological services to the agriculture industry by consuming seeds of nuisance plants is not documented in the scientific literature or otherwise empirically demonstrated. To the contrary; birds are believed to have a role in seed dispersal; therefore it is possible that doves may actually facilitate the spread or abundance of nuisance plants, rather than reduce them. The HSUS, in addition to (unsuccessfully) opposing a dove season in Wisconsin, has made similar campaigns in that state to block the establishment of hunting seasons for woodchucks, sandhill cranes, gray wolves, and most remarkably, mute swans, a deleterious introduced species. Mourning Doves are one of the most abundant and widespread of all North American birds - ranked eleventh among 251 species in relative abundance throughout a geographic distribution range covering 6.8 million square miles. It is also thee leading game bird, and the third ranked game species overall, after deer and slightly behind turkeys, with an average of 20 million birds harvested and enjoyed as table fare annually in the U.S.