Our grandsons have been coming out to the farm dove hunting for the past few weeks. They killed a few to my granddaughter’s dismay as she always pouts and says, “Poor little bird.” I’m with her. I love to go deer hunting with binoculars, not a twelve-gauge shot gun with a “souped-up” scope so that you can see the number of feathers on the bird or hair on the deer. The deer are beautiful creatures with their majestic crowns to their bobbing white tails and I could never of good conscience bring one down. Our boys, no little inner voice speaks to them when they have one in the clear scope of their rifle centered on the prey other than to say “shootem”. They bring them down!
This has reminded me of the bird hunt my husband took me on when we first married. You can remember how you wanted to do and share everything with your new spouse at the beginning? Well, I did too. He was an avid bird hunter back then and had a pointer bird-dog, Barney, that loved to retrieve the prey. It was early September and we rose early on a cool morning, and I dressed in my “bird clothes”, shorts, sleeveless shirt, and sandals. When he was dressed all in camo and boots, he asked me if I was going in those clothes and I said, “Yes, it’s hot today.” He just gave me that weird little smile and said OKAY. Maybe there’s one other thing, probably important, is that he had not invited me to go. I just invited myself as I thought that would be another thing we could do TOGETHER.
The grasses were tall and thick as we walked the pasture grasses, my legs begin to itch. Then we came upon a ditch full of muddy water and he just jumped right in, in his boots and I fell in with my brown sandals and of course one of them stuck to the bottom and he had to help me retrieve it. Just as he reached me a covey of doves took to the sky and he other than helping me, thanked me for scaring the birds away before he could get a shot off. He sat me down on a stump near the edge of the grasses and told me to “sit!”As I sit there, quiet as a church mousse, something started moving through the tall grasses and I started to holler once again. As my husband came back again, it was only the dog coming back to where I was sitting, no wild creature in the pasture at all.
Did he kill any doves that day? No. Did I ever invite myself to go hunting again? Yes, but I never got the opportunity to enjoy that “everything.”
BAKED DOVE BREASTS
12 deboned dove breasts, 1 cup cream of mushroom soup, 1 diced onion, sauteed in butter, ½ cup of white wine, ½ cup of sour cream*, 1 t. oregano, 1 t. rosemary. Wrap in foil and bake 325* for one hour. Uncover and add sour cream and stir. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes.
*Save sour cream until after first baking
