Incredible White-Wing Hunting in Mexico

INCREDIBLE WHITE-WING HUNTING IN MEXICO

Dedicated to Herman Hitzfeld
I quietly entered the room to watch my old friend, Herman Hitzfeld, gaze out the window from his wheelchair in a nursing home in Austin, Texas.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
He didn’t turn. “They said you’d be here today. What took you so long?”
“Delayed flights at the airport.”
“There’s a pair of ’em in the tree.”
“Dove?”
“Yes, white-wings.” He turned and shook my hand. We smiled at each other with grips firm for a minute. He pointed out the window.
“They have a nest. I’ve been watching them all spring.”
“It’s amazing they’re this far north. They used to stay south of the border.”
“A drought in Mexico during the 1990s pushed them into Texas, and they’ve been here ever since. They’re even in cities now, tame as pigeons.”
“I wish white-wings had been in Texas when I was growing up,” I said. “We had mourning doves, but not white-wings.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time we went to Mexico to hunt white-wings?”
I had heard the story many times before, but I patiently said, “No, tell me.”
“I believe it was September 1962 …”

***

For weeks I had anxiously awaited our expedition from San Antonio to McAllen, Texas, with Oley Rooker and ten other salesmen from Mayfair Industries. We had won a sales contest and were rewarded with a white-winged dove hunting trip into Old Mexico. When the crew eagerly gathered for an early breakfast at a truck stop on the south side of San Antonio, we exchanged tales of legendary swarms of dove along the border.
“You were down there last year. Was the shooting as good as they say?” I asked Oley.
“Even better. Doves came in continuous swarms of hundreds. Words can’t begin to describe the action. No matter how many shells you bring, you’ll run out. Did you bring your over-under or the pump action?”
“I brought both of them.”
“You’ll need both.”
I smiled. “I’m ready. Let’s get going.”
Soon we were on the road, already spotting scattered doves along the highway. Four hours later, we checked into a rustic hunting lodge near the Mexican border. In those days before air conditioning, we cooled off in hundred-degree heat by drinking plenty of cold beverages. Fortunately, we had the foresight to bring a plentiful supply of ice and beer. Soon our guide arrived with numerous pickup trucks and drivers.
“Howdy, boys,” he said. “I’m Bob Ramslan, and I’ll be taking care of you this weekend. Are you ready to do a lot of shooting?”
“We’re ready,” I responded. “How’s the hunting been?”
“The birds moved in last week and smothered my hunters. I hope you brought lots of shotguns and shells.”
“We each have two shotguns and two cases of birdshot. Think that’ll be enough?”
“There’s never enough ammo. If you rotate your guns to keep ’em cool, they’ll last longer. An over-under lasts better than pump actions because you only shoot twice between reloads. I had a guy last week pull the plug out of his pump so he could put five shells in between reloads instead of three. The gun lasted two hours, then froze up. If I were you, I’d put butt pads on those shotguns, too. Your shoulders will thank you later.”
Oley looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
I grinned. “I told you butt pads were needed. When do we start?”
“I hear Herman is so good that all he needs is a fishnet,” Oley joked.
“You won’t even need a net,” Bob replied. “A baseball bat works just fine. The first hunt is from 2:00 to 5:00 this afternoon. We’ll need $60 cash in envelopes each day for the Policia. Each hunter will have his own truck and driver with two boys to fetch and clean birds. The boys will cost two dollars a day. You guys get some lunch, and then we’ll head out. There’s beer in the back of the truck with lots of ice. It gets mighty hot down here on the border. Remember, you can shoot all you want, but we can’t bring the game back to Texas. What you don’t eat, we give to the locals.”

***

In the mid-1960s, thousands of acres of sunflower, sorghum, and cornfields were planted along the Rio Grande River and irrigated during a period of farming expansion. The abundance of food caused a tremendous migration change of 16,000,000 white-winged doves from Central America to northern Mexico. The birds stripped grain fields bare, so farmers encouraged hunters to kill as many as they could in hopes of saving some of their crops. Farmers put waterholes and roosting trees close to their fields to lure birds to hiding hunters. In those days, game laws didn’t exist in Mexico, so a staggering number of birds were shot each year. Farming practices changed as water became scarce, driving white-wings out of Mexico. Argentina is the only place left in the world where vast numbers of these birds still exist and are hunted.
White-winged doves are slightly larger than mourning doves and are known for flying in large flocks. Mourning doves are fast flyers and very spooky, requiring hunters to wear camouflage and hide behind cover. White-wings, however, fly slower and are rarely spooked at all, making them easy targets.
The primary hunting strategy is to sit under a shady mesquite tree on a flightpath where birds fly into a grain field. When the birds start flying, you shoot until your shoulder or gun gave out.

***

Herman continued his story…
After a couple of quick tacos and beer, I put both shotguns and a case of twelve-gauge shells in the bed of Bob’s dilapidated Ford truck. He led our caravan across the Rio Grande River bridge. We stopped at a gated guardhouse where four Policia casually walked out to simulate a serious inspection.
Bob climbed out of his vehicle and told us, “Stay in your trucks, boys. I’ll take care of this.”
With a big smile, he walked up to the guards. “Buenos Dias, amigos.”
When he handed four envelopes of fifteen U.S. dollars to each officer, they broke into smiles.
Their Captain said, “We been waiting for you, Señor Bob.”
They chatted briefly and made a cursory inspection of the vehicles before waving us past the gate.
I could feel Mexico again. A familiar step back into another world that filled me with a sense of adventure on a journey into a primitive land, abundant with wildlife and totally lacking game wardens or rules. Nothing had changed here in hundreds of years. I wondered if Mexico would ever change. Probably not.
We drove five miles along a rough, one-lane, dirt road to Bob’s lease. After passing through a gate, we entered a village of adobe huts with women cleaning laundry in tubs over wood fires. The ladies waved and giggled as the trucks passed.
“The senoritas will cook fresh dove for you tonight,” our guide said.
“I can’t wait. Where are the birds?”
“We’re almost there, señor.”
Bob stopped the trucks at the edge of town, where a group of young boys gathered. He assigned two boys to each hunter to be retrievers. My boys were named Juan and Miguel.
I looked down the road to see a sandy pasture of low-lying mesquite trees and thin grass adjacent to a maize field. A few white-wings already flew through the mesquite toward that field.
“Look at those birds!” I yelled at Oley in another truck.
The caravan drove to the mesquite tree line where we excitedly unloaded our gear and organized the boys.
“Put your chair and gear under a tree,” Bob told us. “Stay at least a hundred yards from the next guy, so we don’t have to pick BBs out of you tonight. Pace your shooting or your guns will burn up in the first hour. I’ll be back at 5:00 and expect to see lots of dead birds. There’s no excuse for missing around here.”
I walked rapidly through dry cactus and over rocks until I found a six-foot-tall mesquite tree separated from the other hunters. I set my stool under the limbs, emptied two boxes of shells into my shooting vest, and loaded two rounds into my 12- gauge Marlin over-under. I scanned the sky for birds.
A few minutes later, Juan pointed over my shoulder, “Here they come, Señor.”
I turned as a dozen white-wings passed low through the mesquite and swerved right over my head. They were too close to shoot, so I jumped up and cursed them. In their single-minded quest for food, they blindly ignored me and flew through the brush to landed in the nearby grain field. Shooting broke out across the pasture as birds flew in all directions. A flock of dove approached me, so I stood up and shouldered my gun. The birds kept coming. With two quick shots, both birds tumbled. The boys ran to retrieve my doves while I reloaded. I shot two more from the next approaching flock.
Soon, wave after wave of flocks of ten to fifteen birds flew across our dry mesquite patch to feed at the grain field. Shotguns constantly boomed around me. Dead birds fell everywhere, keeping our boys running frantically through the brush to retrieve them. I shot straight today, knocking down birds and reloading several times a minute. Some of the other hunters couldn’t shoot as well as me, so their boys snuck into my assigned area to steal my birds.
“Don’t let Oley’s boys get my dove,” I yelled at Juan.
“Si señor. We get all your birds.”
A rhythm started, with twenty to thirty seconds between waves of doves flying to the maize field in their single-minded quest for food. I chose only close shots so my boys could retrieve the birds before other boys moved in. The fearless dove flew over me endlessly, oblivious to my boys or me.

I started a game to time my shots to see how close the birds would fall to me. When I spotted a bird coming at me from the left, I froze until it flew right over me. I spun and shot. The bird folded and glided into my ice chest, feathers drifting in the breeze. Juan and Miguel cheered their hotshot gringo. Within thirty minutes, I had twenty doves out of twenty shots with my sweet Marlin. I stopped and drank a cold beer while my barrel cooled off. Then I resumed shooting.
The doves flew relentlessly for hours. At any one time, hundreds swarmed around me. To keep the barrels cool, I switched shotguns after every box of twenty-five shells. I was hitting them today, rarely missing a bird. To save shells, I sometimes waited until two birds lined up just right, then kill both with one shot. At one point, I shot four times and knocked down seven birds!
After an hour of continuous shooting, I sat down for a beer and taco break while the boys retrieved my bounty. After getting my second wind, I stood up to shot two more birds.
When I took stock an hour later, I realized I had put a severe dent in my first case of ammo. Although the birds were still flying thick, I decided to quit for the day to ensure I had enough shells for two more days of fast-paced hunting. I cooled off with more beer and watched the cacophony of birds and shooters around me.
Bob returned at 5:00 to pick us up. The boys threw birds into a fifty-gallon barrel in the back of Bob’s truck, filling it halfway.
“How are you feeling?” he asked me.
“These birds are unbelievable. They just won’t stop. I finally quit a while ago to save my ammo.”
He laughed. “It’s been like this all month. There’s nothing else like white-wing hunting.” Bob took us back to the village where the dead doves were stacked into enormous piles for cleaning by the boys.
“Oley, my pile’s bigger than yours,” I said.
“That’s because your boys kept stealing my birds.”
Bob laughed. “I tipped them extra to do that.”

The hunters told stories and staggered around in shellshock. Village women cooked dove with fresh peppers and seasoning over an open fire wafting amazing aromas into the air. Fresh tortillas were heated with butter in cast-iron skillets. Villagers gathered around the Americans, waiting for a handout.
“Herman, have you ever had such good bar-b-queued dove?” Oley asked.
“No, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
“And we get to do it for two more days.”
“Yeah, I know. I hope we brought enough shells.”
“I think I melted one of my shotguns,” admitted Oley.
“That’ll teach you to buy cheap guns. If you had an over-under like mine, you’d shoot straighter too.”
“Yea, yea. Get me another beer.”
We ate to our heart’s content, but barely dented the platters of fresh game. The remainder of the birds went to villagers happy to eat fresh meat. My friends and I went back to the hotel, exhausted, but in high spirits. We slept soundly, anticipating more hunting the next day.
For the next two days, the action didn’t stop. Endless flights of dove and continuous shooting felt and sounded like a war zone. By the third day, fatigue set in and I only took the easiest of shots. I finished 1,000 shells halfway through the last day and called it quits. My black and blue shoulder ached, and my ears rang for a week. We counted a staggering 6,000 birds shot by our happy sales crew.

When we drove across the Rio Grande River to entered Texas that last day, I told Oley, “Each time I cross this border, I return with amazing stories. However, this hunt beat them all. Nobody will believe we shot so many birds. Nobody.”
Moving in a daze back at the hotel, we slowly loaded our car.
“Who’s gonna drive?” I asked.
“You gotta drive Herman because you shot the most birds,” Oley moaned, “Besides, my shoulder hurts so bad I can’t raise my arm to the wheel.”
“Okay, old man, I’ll drive. But next year, you have to drive if I shoot more birds than you.”
“Yeah, if you can win the sales contest again.”

*****

I smiled and told Herman, “That’s the best hunting story of all time. I’m glad you have pictures to go with it. Did you go back to Mexico for more hunts?”
“No. About that time, the drug trade started up along the border, and we couldn’t take shotguns into Mexico anymore. That was the end of an era.” He smiled, his eyelids drooping. “I’m getting tired thinking about all those doves. I gotta take a nap now. Thanks for coming by.”
“Good to see you again, buddy. Tell me another story next time.”
His head dropped, and breath slowed. I wheeled him to warm sunshine at the window.