DRIVEN
SHOOTING

Dove In Cordoba

While I love all aspects of our shooting sport, sometimes I think I work too hard at having fun. Certainly the amazingly long haul to Argentina falls into this category. Too often trips are planned to arrive in Buenos Aires, switch airports to take another flight to Cordoba, drive directly from Cordoba to the dove fields, and start banging away. Indeed, most packages in Argentina are based around an afternoon arrival and shoot, two full days of shooting, a morning shoot and then departure back to Buenos Aires. I am getting too old for this sort of schedule. Personally, it makes much more sense to spend a day or two in BA, a great city, to recover from jet lag, and then go on to the shoot. I also feel that Argentina is too far to go for merely three days of shooting. To my mind it makes much sense to combine a Dove shoot in Cordoba with a few days of duck shooting, some of the best wild duck shooting in the world can be found just south of Buenos Aires.

I have traveled often to the Argentine. My first trip was in 1980 to write a story on trout fishing in Patagonia for TOWN AND COUNTRY magazine. I made two more trips in the mid and late eighties for an addiction as great as any I've contracted save African safaris, tall driven birds, - namely polo. For many years I would go to Colombia to pursue the same bird - the eared dove. After all, it was only a shortish flight from Miami to Cali Columbia. I would shoot with Jose Herrara a great gent whose brother was the Governor of the province. Because of his political connections he would pick up shooters and whisk them through customs and immigration at lightening speed. Depending on the time of the year and the location of the doves one would either shoot near Cali or travel to Buga and the hotel all shooters stayed, the Guadalajara.

Then one year Jose called and said “ Alex it is just too dangerous, I'm closing down”. To me always seemed like Argentina was too far to shoot birds, brother was I wrong.

Cordoba was actually founded before Buenos Aires in the early 1600's and it boasts over hundred and twenty ancient churches, plus historic squares, charming restaurants and good shopping to amuse non shooting companions.

To say that the area is teeming with doves is to understate the obvious. Depending on which expert one believes, estimates vary from 30 to 55 million birds. This is a pest of significant proportions to farmers as dove breed 3 to 4 times a year and lay a couple of eggs each time. I was told 75 percent of the hatch survives to adulthood and at about 45 days old they fly off as adult birds creating sport for shooters and a nightmare for Argentine Agriculture. Zero population growth, regardless of the number of shooters present, just is not possible. At the lodge at which I was staying, Manuel Lainez’s clients shoot in excess of 10 million cartridges per year.

There are four main roosts in the area: Rio Ceballos, Santa Catalina, Macha & Churqui Canada. These are home to most of the birds in this section of Cordoba and in our three days of shooting we concentrated on the latter two.

We shot the foothills of Macha with scrub thorn bush and cactus which was very reminiscent of the American Southwest. The tightness in my back, caused decades ago by a car crash, was exacerbated by a long chartered plane trip from Bahia Blanca and my shooting suffered.