Sitting in the late afternoon shade of a berm next to a dugout, shotgun across my lap, I was coming to understand why in most of the 40 states that permit dove hunting, gunning for the fleet-winged bullets is the most popular hunting (and in many instances, social) event of the season.

Sharing the shady spot was farmer Marty Jaus, his petite .410 pump shotgun also at ready.

Yes, we were dove hunting. But mostly we mused about the weather, the crops, the general state of farming, of mutual acquaintances.

Every so often, one of us would rise to take aim at a passing, gray-feathered bullet as it inspected the watering hole. Sometimes, we fired at the birds that had interrupted our conversation; just as often we did not.

An hour or so earlier, I had wandered into the cool darkness of the dairy barn northwest of Gibbon to announce my arrival to my host, who was in the middle of the afternoon milking.

I had offered a hand and he held out his, clad in the rubber gloves and bearing ample evidence of his chores. “Maybe not,” he said, withdrawing them.

Our paths had crossed at a wedding a few weeks earlier when he extended an invitation to gun for doves on his organic farming operation.

“Go north up the road a quarter mile past the ditch, take a left, and then when you get to the CRP field, park and veer to the right on the path,” he said.

There, he said, I would find the watering hole that would draw birds in for evening flight.

“And do you mind if you have company,” he asked. “I thought I might join you when I finished milking.”

“Absolutely, I was hoping you were planning to hunt,” I said.

Ten minutes later, after setting out a couple of decoys to augment the pair already perched at water’s edge, I had barely settled down into the vegetation and slipped a couple of shells into the gun when a pair of birds circled once and set their wings. I fired twice and both birds tumbled.

“Nothing to it at all,” I thought, retrieving the downed birds.

My confidence was short-lived when moments later, a flock of doves buzzed me and my next two shots drew nary a feather.

For the next half-hour or so, several flocks and numerous singles and doubles were drawn to the watering hole.