News

Cheap Skeet or Delectable Treat

Published October 14, 2005. By Garrett Neese. The Daily Mining Gazette.
Cheap skeet or delectable treat?

HOUGHTON - A nearly century-long ban on hunting mourning doves in Michigan should be restored, say backers of a referendum to end the hunting season adopted in 2004.

"It's a little tiny bird. People don't hunt them for food. They aren't causing any problem for anybody ... it's just a tiny bird that people see at their bird feeders and want to maintain the (nearly) 100-year tradition of seeing them at the state," said Michael Markarian, executive director for the Humane Society of the United States.

The state designated mourning doves as a songbird in 1905, and named them Michigan's state bird of peace in 1998.

Last year, the state legislature lifted the ban in six downstate counties. The law made Michigan the 41st state to adopt a dove-hunting season.

Advocates of the dove-hunting season pointed to the high number of other states treating doves as a game bird, as well as the potential loss of revenue from hunters traveling to other states.

The Committee to Restore the Dove Shooting Ban turned in 275,000 signatures in March to put a referendum reversing the hunt onto the 2006 general election ballot, well over the 159,000 needed.

Three months later, the Board of State Canvassers approved the petitions, halting mourning dove hunting until after the November 2006 general election.

In last year's trial season, about 3,000 hunters shot approximately 28,000 doves. Populations have also dropped

While the doves aren't about to become endangered, Markarian said there's still no reason to hunt them. After the shot is cleaned out, there's little meat left over, he said, making them suitable mainly for target practice.

Photo courtesy of the Committee to Restore the Dove Shooting Ban

A family of mourning doves rests in its nest. The song birds are the subject of a ballot initiative to overturn legislation passed in 2003 allowing them to be hunted. The birds mate for life and are unable to raise their young on their own.

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