To Kill A Mourning Dove

Memories of childhood have faded with the years; grade school friends have moved on with their lives or have passed away, homes I have lived in no longer stand      and the dreams that made life exciting vanished when they clashed with the realities of growing up many years ago.

But two of the most poignant memories of those early years have never faded - the gloomy moaning of the fog horns as I lay in bed in the morning in Ohio's Sandusky Bay and the haunting cooing of the mourning doves in trees as they sun went down at dusk. The foghorns were disquieting and ominous-sounding, but the shy, humble mourning dove's soothing murmurs spoke of peace and tranquility.

But now Michigan, the state in which I was born, has rescinded the merciful ban that let these beautiful birds sing and mate undisturbed for many years and has moved toward making them shooting targets for sport. How terrible! One may as easily make a case for declaring open seasons on meadow larks, bluebirds and cardinals. Like the mourning dove, these that been put here to brighten our lives. And like the dove, they are home birds who trustingly perch in the trees in our yards and perhaps receive back some of the feelings of well-being that they give us.

I have been a hunter all my life - pheasants, ducks, deer, rabbits, partridge - and perhaps, to some, my plea for mercy for the lowly mourning dove may ring hollow. But I have shot with little qualm because these are traditional game, equipped by nature to hide from the pursuer. Moreover, these denizens of the wild have been hunted for centuries for food; a full-grown mourning dove weighs a mere 3.5 ounces before being dressed and considerably less after that. There are nearly twenty varieties of small game that can be hunted in Michigan - almost all of them more challenging to hunt and more rewarding to eat than the mourning dove.

Many states and societies decided somewhere in time that the mourning dove was a game bird, eligible for death and hands of persons who shoot for sport. Civilized societies spare and protect our song birds; and yet a bird whose call is, to many of us, the most pleasant and soothing of all is not on this list. Those who marked the dove for violent death could never have heard this gentle bird sing or watched it as it sat with its mate on the tree limb or a power line as the sun went down. I feel that the Almighty had other plans than slaughter when He put this beautiful songster on Earth.

There is a passage in Harper Lee's book, "To Kill a Mocking Bird," in which a girl growing up in a small Southern town is told that it is a sin to kill a mocking bird because they "don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us."

And so does a mourning dove.

L. James B.
Mears, MI

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