Just some observation/opinion, but it seems to me that when we have lots of water everywhere and playas full as we've had the past couple of years that it tends to scatter the birds, dove and teal in particular, but it also can make duck & goose hunting more iffy because they are moving around more.
Changes in crops and timing of harvest both affect dove during season as do cold fronts and rains. Same water that has filled all the playas has been, IMHO, the single most important factor in the rebounding of 'bird' populations in W. TX.
I gave up a couple of leases a number of years back due to zero dove and not many more quail where they were once very plentiful on both places, both being close to two sections. Leases were SW of Chalk Mountain, w/one not far from Hico. Crops in that area went from grains to costal Bermuda and haymaker w/many fields turned/disked and left to go fallow. Dove had no interest in any of it. Crop dusting/spraying at the end time of grain crops in that area and not much water killed the bugs the quail ate and some of them were likely poisonous themselves w/insecticides before dying and killed the birds that ate them [it happened on the llano Estacada w/turkeys at one time & they had to be re-established] and moisture was very hard for the survivors to come by because most of the ground succulents the birds could have watered off of during times of drought in that particular area were killed off by whatever was being sprayed for weed control.
No question there are dynamics afoot still not all that well understood that affect mourning dove populations, in some areas, but where there are good populations of birds in times of plentiful water it gets down to scouting and access at the correct time(s)as much as anything.
Recall being outside Throckmorton several years ago mid season. Dove were plentiful & landowner called for a couple of us to come out and enjoy some good sport, so we headed that way immediately. Shootable dove population had gone from plentiful to skinny in hours(!), weather had not changed, no fronts, nothing. We both took a couple of limits, but it was a lot of work over two days doing. On the way back to the city, twenty miles removed from where we had been they were cutting some milo w/a sickle bar, not harvesting it just cutting it down & there must have been near every dove within two counties out there feasting on the grain being spilt! No shooters were evident. Birds talk to one another & the word gets out like the proverbial secretarial grapevine.
