by John Jefferson

A hot-barrel hunt usually means there are so many birds flying that participants shoot rapidly and their shotgun barrels become too hot to touch. People talking about Argentine dove hunting relate hot barreled hunt tales.

RAPID FIRE SHOTS from a shotgun or rifle can heat up your barrel in a hurry. When the sky is full of birds, a hot barrel hunt is under way. (Photo by John Jefferson)

Rapid fire shots from a shotgun or rifle can heat up your barrel in a hurry. Just leaving your favorite sporting piece in the sun or in a closed-up car can heat it up as fast as if you were in a field near Cordoba, Argentina with a thousand birds in the air at once.

Before going to Argentina, our wingshooting benchmark had been the Rio Grande Valley the first two weekends in September. That’s the Texas Special White-winged Dove Zone and season. It was restricted to the Valley. That’s where the whitewings were, THEN, roosting in citrus and mesquite trees. Thousands, going on millions. Those two weekends became an amalgamation of a Chinese Fire Drill and a Circus Parade – complete with armed clowns. There were also almost as many Louisiana license plates on vehicles as there were Texas plates.

I worked South Texas and along the Rio Grande then and realized the Restricted Area near the river was going to be open for the first time that year. Through work, I met a man who owned land in the Restricted Area, and he gave us permission to hunt it. John Bell and his wife, Erin, came with us.

It took us longer to get into the area than expected. The two-lane dirt road into it was impenetrably dusty and two drivers going too fast in opposite directions — already in a jubilant fog of their own — hit head-on. The roadway was blocked for an hour.

That at least spared us time sweltering in the South Texas noonday sun. We finally set up along a fence line spaced between other hunters.

Then a man began stalking toward us along the fence, running people off from it. As he approached, I propped my shotgun against a tree and walked toward him with a smile and an outstretched hand. He ignored me, saying emphatically that we had to leave.

I told him we had the landowner’s permission. He rudely said that didn’t matter; his company’s lease gave them all surface rights, including hunting. We briefly discussed it and I asked to see the lease. Flustered, he decided we could hunt out in the middle of the onion field by a big pecan tree, although we wouldn’t see many birds.

As sundown neared, we had only shot a few doves. Then, I noticed a large flock of something coming up the field. I thought they were grackles. As they neared, hunters along the fence futilely shot at them. The birds were WHITEWINGS! Then they came into range.
We shot all our ammo. I even hit one with a dirt clod. It was wild. But the guns along the fence were silent. Out of range.

It was a hot barreled hunt … until we ran out of shells.

JJ