Planting feed plots for game is not the same as putting out bait. Lazy men bait to create a easy to shoot hot spot. Feed plots will feed birds for months not just a few days. Most birds eating on a field will never be shot at. And if you are in it for the long haul you can keep high numbers of birds for week after week. I was taking full limits of dove into mid October last year. Had to work a lot harder than opening day to be sure but if dove were always as easy as opening day I would not care to shoot them.
I’ve been planting,for dove, for several decades. It’s hard to keep dove in a field much after opening day. The natural tendency is to hunt them one time too soon after opening day and burn them out. By the second week of a season most field are burned out or worse local corn harvest causes dove to be so dispersed that finding huntable concentration is impossible.
I hunt a field in a very limited way. Four hours max on opening day and hunting must be done by six o’clock. It is a stuiggle to keep people out of the field to two o’clock on opening day. But it gives dove a chance to feed before we shoot and then return after six o’clock for a good feed before heading to their roost. Four hours hunting once a week, twice a week at the most will keep a field fresh and birds in the area.
For every dove you harvest there are multiple dove you never even see much less kill. The seeds will last much longer after the season than people think. I had dove well into December last year eating in the feed plots. Also had turkey, geese , ducks and quail eating in those fields. None of those birds ever got hunted.
