Córdoba · all year
Zenaida auriculata, and the one fact that explains the rest
The bird is the eared dove, Zenaida auriculata. It is small — about 24 centimetres nose to tail, and roughly 112 grams — with a long wedge-shaped tail and the turn of speed to go with it.
The thing worth knowing, and the thing almost nobody mentions, is that the eared dove around Córdoba does not migrate. Everywhere else in the world, driven or decoyed birds arrive and leave, and a lodge lives or dies by the calendar. Here the flocks move between the roosting woods and the open fields and back again, every day, all year. That is why there is no closed season, and why the week you can get away is very nearly the only variable that matters.
Numbers get quoted a great deal in this business, so here are ours with their sources attached: the population of northern Córdoba is estimated at fifty million birds, and the Macha roost — fifteen minutes from the lodge — is put at over twenty million on its own. Estimates are estimates. What they tell you is not how many you will shoot, but that the ground is not going to run out.
- Population
- 50mEstimated, northern Córdoba
- The Macha roost
- 15 minFrom the lodge · put at 20m birds
- Ground
- 160,000Acres of exclusive fields, all year
- Bag limit
- NoneNo season, no daily limit
Before the field
What Guns ask about dove
There isn't one. The eared dove here does not migrate, so the birds are on the ground every month of the year and there is no closed season and no daily bag limit. In practice your day is bounded by your cartridge allowance, not by the calendar.
Fifteen minutes from the lodge. It is the Macha roost, estimated at more than twenty million birds, and it is the reason the drive to the field in the morning is short enough that nobody complains about it.
No, and a fair share of our guests come for exactly that reason. The birds are fast and they come high. Volume means you get the chances; it says nothing about whether you take them. Most Guns find the first morning humbling and the third one very good indeed.
Dove
In the field
Next
Tell us the month and we will tell you what is on
Give us the week you have and we will come back with what is flying or running, which lodge it means, and what it costs.