According to the morning news, the mourning dove season opens in the Feather River region September 1st. "One of the most popular sports," it was stated, but when you look at the gentle-eyed bird with the streamlined gray body, you wonder how the innocent-looking peace symbol made the hit list.

As a former Missouri hunter, I advocate hunting the surplus game animals as an appropriate balance and check system in wildlife management, and as beneficial to habitat restoration, since hunters don't hunt without having a hunting habitat. Other forms of wildlife benefit from hunting areas, which is a boon for wildlife watchers.

In spite of small game pursuit with a gun among those Missouri riverbreaks and No Creek hills of childhood days where I shot quail, rabbit, and squirrels, I just never could bring myself to shoot a dove. Perhaps I had seen too many of them "cooing" along No Creek and the fishing holes, or watched as they built their flimsy nest and laid their two white eggs. They are more "watchable" than many other shy birds that secrete their nests deep in the thickets, in burrows, or high in the tops of trees. A dove simply gathers a few sticks, builds its nest l0 or l2 feet above the ground, and sits there rather openly. It is surprising that they succeed in maintaining their populations.

When I hear the plaintive, "mourning" call of the mourning dove, I remember the Fence Hole fishing place on Florence's Place down in the No Creek bottomland. There seemed to always be doves at that spot, wailing their notes to the buckbrush and Kit's woodland across the fence.

The dove call strikes that almost forgotten memory and suddenly I am again sitting on the green grassy bank with my dog Boots, watching my cork for a sign of fish bite. That is where the blacksnakes climbed trees searching for dove nests and where the snapping turtles crawled out on the bank to lay their eggs. There the red fox ran, and the fox squirrels chattered in the maple, and up on the bluff sheltering the curve in the creek, the groundhogs dug their dens and watched the lonely lad.

There is no doubt that doves are rapid flyers, taking off with a darting, twisting motion as if they anticipate flying rocks. They have the wild look in their eyes, as if danger and death is imminent. So timid looking, and yet, if you have seen them around backyard bird feeders, you know they are bully birds, bumping most other species into submission. You wonder what goes on in that diminutive head. How can they make best-laid plans with so little guidance or protectors?

How can dimwitted birds compete with an Ithaca .12 gauge and a blast of lead shot? How can they avoid camouflaged hunters slipping through the woods? How can they survive the perils of the world?

I was reminded of the uniqueness and adaptability of the mourning dove the other day, when quite unexpectedly I saw one fluttering in the dust and pecking seeds along the busy sidewalks of Chinatown in Oakland! This wild, shy bird that dodges hunters in woodland mazes, was seemingly content and confident in a concrete jungle where birdlife seems at peril. The traffic light changed, and exhaust-producing autos roared on down the street, but the dove seemed unfazed, and continued its solitary pursuit in a dust pile of the city.

As peopled hurried on all sides of me, focused on reaching some kind of destination, I had to stop and watch that dove so out of place. I braced against a light pole for shelter from stop-light people that only go and stop when the light changes. The dove watched me more than the banging feet plopping only inches from its sidewalk niche. I finally went my way, leaving the bird to forge its way through the day, but one thing is certain, there will be no hunters with number 6 shot and a double barrel out for a bag of birds. People shoot people in the city, but they just do not shoot birds.

I know doves are numerous in Lakeside Park, and thrive on the Garden Center grounds, feeding on seeds around the tended grounds and roosting in the English Birch. They are more versatile than the California quail that lived in the park at one time and are able to rise above the dangers of the soil. Abandoned house cats have become the deadly force for all kinds of birds around parks and streets, easily seeking out fluttering fledglings and replacing hunters as predators.

No wonder the dove flies nervously fast! They not only skirt the hunter, but birds of prey are constantly on the attack. It is enough to put the fear of the world in a living creature.

The dove story illustrates the fact that all life is subject to some kind of deadly danger, and indeed, in the end will be consumed by some scavenger...or struck by a moving vehicle! Look well, therefore, to this day! It may be all you or the dove will ever have! Rex Burress, Aug. 20, 1999