We finally got a little rain at the middle of this month and it cooled things down a very little bit. Of course, as hot as it was, any drop in the temperature was certainly appreciated. With squirrel season coming in back on the 15th of this month, you might just get close to the house before your game spoiled. Just lets you know to move faster or hunt faster until it cools off quite a bit more.

This week I got an Alabama Hunting and Fishing Digest. It supplies the 2010-2011 requirements, fees, and season dates for both fishing and hunting in the state of Alabama. It seems that the small game seasons are pretty much in line with ours here in Georgia. Dove season is similar though the days are mixed up a little differently. Our third dove season comes in for Thanksgiving and stay in until January. Theirs is just in during the four days at Thanksgiving and then goes out. It comes back in on December 4 until January 8. The number of days for the dove season is set by the federal government, so we should have as many days to hunt as Alabama does.

The big difference is in the deer season and I can hear you yelling now that Alabamans have more days to deer hunt than we poor souls in Georgia do. I don’t think so. Our season comes in more than a month ahead of theirs and theirs only lasts two weeks longer than ours. That really gives us more than two weeks more to hunt deer than they get. However, their extra time is after ours goes out at the last of January. That makes their last two weeks of deer season fall during the colder part of the winter and supposedly the better hunting time. Regardless, we have what we have and it is a lot better than it used to be, so don’t complain. It could be a whole lot worse and if we complain, I have no doubt it will get that way. The next time that I go down to the panhandle of Florida, I am going to get one of their hunting booklets and see how their deer season stacks up with ours.

Another difference I noticed is the length of the alligator season. Alabama has very few days and it is legal to hunt alligators only in the Mobile Delta region. The season is open eight days. Two seperate four-day seasons, with both being in August and already over for this year. I am thinking that there is no way that they have enough alligators and being good neighbors, we should give them a few. From right here on Lake Seminole, we could supply a breeding pair to most of the bodies of water in Alabama and still leave us enough to keep increasing the population here at home.

It will not be long before Labor Day weekend is upon us and with that comes in the first dove season, starting Saturday, September 4. That is still almost three weeks from the official close of the summer season, but most folks are willing to call Labor Day the end of the summer season. I just wish with all that calling for an end to summer they could send the intense heat on with it. I have seen the Labor Day weekend cool enough that a long-sleeved shirt or maybe a light jacket felt good. We don’t have enough of those weekends in September or even October. Any change in the weather we have had this summer is surely welcome and if this winter is as cold as the summer was hot, we are in for a terrible time here in Southwest Georgia.

Even though dove season is in during the Labor Day weekend, this weekend is the last big fishing holiday weekend of the summer. Have great time catching those fish, killing those birds and be safe doing it.