Photo by Mark Romanack

Scattergunners in Nebraska and Kansas who've been looking forward to Sept. 1 and the opening of the mourning dove season are praying for warm, mild weather. If those prayers are answered, those hunters should have an action-packed opener in both states.

Picking a good spot for opening the season is paramount for success. If it's public land, chances are good that the hunter will find company, so getting to a spot early will be one of the priorities of the hunt.

In Nebraska, scores of hunters are drawn to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's wildlife management areas because of the food plots. Scott Taylor, upland game program manager for the NGPC in Lincoln, says that while quite a few varieties of food are planted on the areas, some attract doves more effectively than do others.

"Doves begin to flock up and migrate in August and are attracted to feeding areas where food such as sunflowers, millet and wheat are readily available," he said. "It's hard to beat sunflowers simply because most fields have bare ground under the plants, and that is attractive to the ground-feeding doves searching for seeds that have fallen.

"Other food plots such as millet and wheat stubble are good, but it depends on where they are located and how much of this type of forage is available in the area. I wouldn't expect to be able to find a lot of doves in a wheat-stubble food plot if there are numerous large wheat fields in the vicinity."

Food plots are not the only areas attractive to the little feathered jets. Water is a big draw -- and Nebraska has hundreds of farm ponds. The ones that seem most alluring to doves are those with little or no cover along the shoreline. In the sprawling ranch country of the Sandhills, windmills and watering tanks draw birds. An added attraction to be found around many of the windmills is the Rocky Mountain bee plant. When its tiny black seeds either fall or are knocked loose by cattle, the doves chow down.

Doves feed as well on other varieties of native grass and weed seeds. Ragweed, pigweed, thistle, wild hemp (marijuana by any other name), and grasses such as foxtail are but a few that produce seeds the doves relish. Years ago, some hunting partners and I searched well-grazed cow pastures for stands of wild hemp and, standing chin-deep in loose clumps of it, filled out a limit of doves coming in to feed.

Quite a few of my dove-hunting pals and I have found some of our best hunting in the grasslands of the Sandhills. Again, scouting and experience pay off. Find a windmill whose tank runs over, leaving puddles of water in the sand, and that's hemmed in by a good bit of bee plant, and you can enjoy rewarding shooting both morning and afternoon. If the day is warm to hot, there will be birds coming to the water at almost any hour, but the big push is early and late in the day.

Nebraska WMAs that hunters should be checking out now: