Dove season opener is one of those days circled on the calendar down here, right up there with Thanksgiving and the first frost. And tell you what, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has been doing its part to make sure folks actually have somewhere to hunt it. Over on Arkansas Online, Flip Putthoff writes about the extra prep work biologists and crews have been putting in on wildlife management areas, grooming fields just to pull doves in for the season.

The idea is simple enough. Doves want sunflower, millet, wheat stubble, bare ground to land on and water close by. So the crews at these management areas plant the fields back in spring, let them mature through the summer, then mow, disc and burn strips through them right before the season to scatter seed on the ground. A standing sunflower field full of seed heads sounds like dove heaven, but a dove would rather walk around on clean ground picking up loose seed than fight through thick stalks. That scattered seed on bare dirt is what brings them in low and steady, and the fellows doing the prep work know it.

I've hunted public fields my whole life, and I'll say this for state agencies: when they put real effort into a dove field, it shows. Some of my best openers have been on ground I didn't own, didn't lease, didn't pay a nickel for beyond a license and a duck stamp habit I can't shake. I have a feeling Missouri and the other states around us do their own versions of this kind of work, but I couldn't swear to the particulars so I'll just speak for what Arkansas is doing here. Public dove fields are one of the last real bargains in hunting.

Putthoff's piece gets into which management areas are getting the attention, and if you're within a tank of gas of northwest Arkansas it's worth a read before the opener. Arkansas runs its dove season opener in early September, and you'll want to check the Commission's own regulations for this year's exact date and rules rather than taking my word or anybody else's for it. It's an early-September tradition in that part of the country, warm as a stove top, everybody in a t-shirt with a bucket to sit on and a box of shells that won't last till noon if the birds are flying right. It's social hunting too, which I've always liked. Deer hunting is quiet and solitary. Dove hunting is a parking lot of tailgates, kids getting their first shots, somebody's bird dog working the field for no reason other than it loves the work.

One thing I'll pass along, and I learned it the hard way one September around Houston, Missouri, sweating through a shirt by eight in the morning: scout before the opener. A field that was covered in doves last weekend can go dead if the mowing pattern changed or the birds shifted to a fresh water hole a half mile over. Get out there a few evenings before, park where you're not in the way, and watch where the birds come in. Doves are creatures of habit right up until they aren't.

And mind the posted rules on those public fields. Check the signage and the Commission's regulations before you unload, because rules on access and setup can vary from one management area to the next. Nothing ruins an opener faster than finding out you set up somewhere you shouldn't have.

If you get on one of those groomed Arkansas fields this year, appreciate what went into it. Somebody planted that sunflower in May, fought the weeds and the weather all summer and knocked it down at just the right time so you'd have birds in range come opening morning. That's land management done for the regular hunter, and I reckon we ought to use it. Take a kid, bring extra shells and clean your birds while the day's still warm. September comes but once.