INTRODUCTION 














Management of mourning doves in the United States is essentially 
the regulation of hunting to achieve proper harvest. The Call-Count 
Survey, conducted annually since 1953 by Federal, State, and independ- 
ent observers on more than 800 prescribed routes, provides population 
data on which wildlife administrators rely in setting annual regula- 
tions. This report describes the methods employed to obtain and 
analyze those data and presents the status of the breeding population 
f mourning doves in 1971. 
Two versions of the dove status report, one preliminary and one 
final, are prepared annually. In 1971 the preliminary version was 
mailed to members of the Dove Regulations Committee a week before the 
regulations meeting in June at Washington, D.C. This timely distri- 
bution was made possible by the promptness of cooperators who sent 
heir data directly to the Migratory Bird Populations Station imme- 
diately after completion of their surveys. The present report is the 
final version and contains additional survey data received too late 
for use in the preliminary version. As is customary, it will be 
distributed to all cooperators and will be available to interested 
organizations and individuals. 
Basic data gathering and analyzing procedures used in this report 
were the same as those used in 1970 (Ruos, 1971). 
PROCEDURE 
The Call-Count Survey 
Field studies have demonstrated the feasibility of the Call-Count 
Survey as a method for detecting annual changes in mourning dove breed- 
ing populations (Foote and Peters, 1952). Since 1953, these surveys 
have been conducted throughout the United States over a system of more 
than 800 established routes. Each call-count route has twenty 3-minute 
istening stations spaced at 1-mile intervals; the routes are usually 
on lightly traveled secondary roads. 
