fate AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
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ROOSEVELT ROAD AND LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO 5, ILL. 
Number 115 September, 1960 
ANYONE FOR DOVES? 
By Mrs. MADELINE DOROSHEFF 
EVERYBODY LIKES DOVES. This much has been established through mild and 
uproarious sessions held in the Illinois Legislature to attempt dove protec- 
tion. Opinions vary as to who loves Mourning Doves most — and for what. 
One segment admires them estheticaily, another for sport. The latter 
group objects to their minor-key murmur as objectionable. The first finds 
their call plaintive, appealing, and the trusting nature of doves a charac- 
teristic of great charm. 
When fall comes, however, and doves flock for a bit of avian sociability, 
their natures change. Now, assert marksmen, doves show their true selves 
— wily, wary, and a downright menace to the sporting world. It is nothing 
to doves if earnest hunters, intent on stopping the birds’ unpredictable 
flight, pour blasts of pellets right into another party of gunners, likewise 
employed! 
This erratic “sporting flight,’ hunters say, stamps the dove as a game 
bird, not a songbird. Songbirds just don’t act that way. Game birds do. Of 
course, songbirds don’t have to fly for their lives every year, as in Illinois, 
come September 1. If they are still nesting, as some 10% of the doves are, 
the parent songbirds are allowed to finish their childrens’ nurture and 
education in the ways of birddom. If they wish to flock for a brief while, 
meantime cleaning the countryside of weed seeds, the law protects them. 
In Illinois, the law and hunters have blocked efforts to “let nature take 
its course.” We are of sturdy stuff. Rout the doves, send them scooting — 
then apply pesticides. This may be more trouble, but it certainly shows 
enterprise. 
Five times in ten years — the Conservation Department claims twenty 
years, but it may only seem longer to this harassed body — bird lovers 
have descended upon the Illinois legislature with measures to protect doves. 
Four times, legislative committees have killed the bills. In 1958, Senator 
Robert McClory introduced a bill which escaped the committee but met 
defeat in the Senate. At the same session, Representative G. William Horsley 
wrested his measure from the committee by a House vote, and debate was 
temporarily prolonged. Subsequent bills have died speedier deaths; none 
reached the voting stage. Doves will be shot again this year in Illinois. 
“Why,” asked former Senator Jackson Boughner of Assistant Conserva- 
tion Director Lew Martin, at the 1959 committee hearing, “does the Con- 
servation Department oppose dove protection?” 
Mr. Martin, flanked by a solid row of sportsmen, did not have to answer 
directly. He had already stated at the 1957 committee hearing: “Doves are 
not shot for food. They are fast-flying, sporting targets.” Close to Mr. 
Martin’s and the Conservation Department’s thinking, also, is the hunting 
license money which dove hunters contribute. If doves are protected, some 
of these fees may be lost. What comparable bird can the Department offer 
tale 
