Sam Martin of Greenville with a dove he shot near Kinston during the 2006 hunting season. The North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission plants corn for dove hunts on many game lands, including Caswell Farm Game Land near Kinston. Photo by Mike Marsh.

The young hunter watched an incoming bird, his eyes wide with excitement. It would be hard to say whether it was the hammering of his heart or the pounding of both barrels of his 28 gauge that seemed louder to him -- just as it would be hard to tell of the millions of other young hunters who have been introduced to hunting on the dove field. However, for 11-year-old Caleb Martin, thoughts of becoming an important part of the continuation of hunting's future did not enter his mind. He was only here to have fun.

"I really like being out here with my dad on opening day," he said. "I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world on Labor Day weekend because it's so exciting to get to hunt when you get a break from school."

Caleb was hunting with his father, Sam Martin of Greenville, in a harvested corn field near Kinston in Lenoir County. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has one of its best dove-hunting game lands, Caswell Farm, in the same county near where the Martins were hunting. These vast farm acreages in the Coastal Plain attract the most doves, as well as the most dove hunters. But the commission plants dove fields statewide.

Scenes like the Martins' hunts are repeated as often as wing-shooters are created. It doesn't take a genius to tell anyone that dove hunting and hunter recruitment are inextricably tied together. Nothing recruits young hunters to the sport faster or retains them more steadfastly than the timeless tradition of an opening day dove shoot.

Agricultural crops planted on farms and small grain food plots planted solely for the purpose of attracting doves are the primary food sources that lure and concentrate these homegrown doves for a Carolina-style, barrel-melting dove shoot. This season, farms that were rapidly turning into subdivisions with the loss of income from the federal tobacco price support and quota programs are now planting more acreage in corn for ethanol production, as well as to capitalize on the skyrocketing prices of feed grain. This gives incentive to farmers to plant corn, which is better for doves than other tobacco alternatives, such as cotton, and is therefore good news for doves and dove hunters. On the other hand, dove-hunting leases are going up along with the prices for other agricultural commodities.

Many hunters either pay daily hunting fees or pay to lease entire farms with sums that can produce more cash from dove hunters than from the crops that are harvested.

However, fortunately, there is an option for hunters who want to get out in the field on opening day without paying an arm and a leg. With the exception of the far western region of the state, where finding a piece of level farmland can be more difficult than bagging a limit of 12 doves with a box of 25 shells, there are many public lands with fields specifically planted and managed for doves and dove hunters. But even Mountain Region hunters should not despair. Doves are also found in clearcuts and controlled burn areas on the many game lands open to the public, even if there are fewer special dove fields planted on these mountainous tracts.

Each August, the commission's management biologists and field biologists contact one another by telephone and e-mail. They compile all of the information on the fields their crews have been planting for dove hunting across the state and transfer the information to the commission's Web site at www.ncwildlife.org.

Hunters can easily access the data on the Web site because it includes maps and directions showing the locations of the planted fields, where they can park, what grain crops have been planted and how many acres have been planted. Sometimes there are other comments from the biologists as well, including how well the crops have done. Just as with any type of farming, the weather can help or hurt dove crops. The productivity and timing of that crop will obviously influence the number of doves using any particular game land or any particular field on a game land.

There are four regions of the state where the fieldwork crews are overseen by management biologists. These are the Northern and Southern Coast, Piedmont and Mountain regions.

Dale Davis is the commission's Northern Coastal management biologist and he supervises the work done by the commission's crews in Edenton and Williamston in District 1.

"We've got some excellent dove-hunting areas in the coastal region," he said. "In the northeast, the Edenton crew manages four fields at Lantern Acres Game Land in Tyrrell County. Lantern Acres has 50 acres of fields. We've been planting sunflowers at Lantern Acres, but the deer and bears have become accustomed to eating them, so now we are replacing sunflowers with millet. We used to plant half sunflowers and half millet, including browntop, German and proso millet. We plant several varieties because one may grow faster or slower depending on weather. Browntop matures first, with German shortly thereafter, then proso. The crews may mow the field and burn it to expose the seed. But burning is dependent on the weather. Some grain crops we don't burn at all, leaving strips of food for winter. Lantern Acres is a six-day-per-week game land open for dove hunting all season."