The Canadian Wildlife Service believes there are enough mourning doves for all Ontarians — from those who watch them coo at the backyard feeder, to those who like to shoot, clean, and pair them with a wild rice pilaf.

For the first time in 58 years, Environment Canada is allowing a mourning dove hunt in the central and southern Ontario districts. In municipalities that allow hunting, hunters are allowed to bag 15 a day and have 45 in their possession from early September to mid-November.

“The fall population has tripled since the 1960s and the harvest is likely to be less than 1 (per cent) of the fall population and would therefore have little to no impact on the population,” a spokesperson from Environment Canada wrote in an email.

Mourning doves, considered a game bird species under the international Migratory Birds Convention, are hunted in British Columbia. They were hunted only once in Ontario, during the 1955 season. According to Environment Canada, hunters had been asking to dove hunt for years.

Back in 2005, that didn’t seem likely. One Canadian Wildlife Service biologist emailed an interested hunter to say that there was no tradition in Ontario and only “sporadic interest.”

Over the next five years, more people asked, and by 2011, the Canadian Wildlife Service had produced a 45-page assessment in which it concluded hunting the dove was biologically justifiable given the population, but noted that “some segments of society regard this species as a beautiful song bird or a symbol of peace that should not be hunted. This species often evokes strong emotions in many people.”

For the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, that emotion is excitement, as they can finally join in the “continental harvest.” The mourning dove is a popular game bird south of the border, hunted in 40 states including Wisconsin, where it doubles as the state symbol of peace and, more recently, as the key ingredient in a mushroom soup recipe in a government pamphlet.

According to a map from the U.S. Humane Society, states that don’t allow the hunt are generally in the northeast, including New York, Michigan and Vermont. More than 20 million mourning doves are killed each year in the U.S., some used as “live targets,” according to the Humane Society. Hunters dispute that classification.

“It’s just something that is very hard to shoot with a gun, but that doesn’t mean we’re not picking them up and eating them,” said Scott Petrie, who is an executive director with Long Point Waterfowl, an adjunct Western University biology professor and board member with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. “I would never give doves away; they are just a delicacy.”

Dawn Sucee, a wildlife biologist with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, says the birds are excellent grilled, broiled or roasted, and noted the harvest is in line with the sustainable food movement.

In Ontario, mourning doves are a common backyard bird, and prolific breeders. Recent breeding population estimates range from about 1.2 to 1.3 million birds in the spring, and between 2.8 and 3.7 million in the fall, according to Environment Canada.

Chris Earley, an interpretive biologist and education co-ordinator at the University of Guelph Arboretum, doesn’t think the hunt will significantly affect the population, but he is concerned that other birds may be killed by mistake. (Sucee says the ability to differentiate between species is “implicit in all hunting.”)

He said it’s also important to consider animals that prey on mourning doves — like the Cooper’s hawk.

When Earley was younger, the hawks were much rarer because of pesticide use.

“I think part of their recovery is that the mourning dove population has gone up,” he said. “Cooper’s hawks really like to eat mourning doves. You wouldn’t want to affect the entire ecology, if the hunt becomes too much of a problem for keeping populations at a healthy level.”

Caroline Schultz, executive director at Nature Ontario, which represents 150 nature and conservation groups across the province, said members are upset with what they see as a lack of consultation on this issue.

Even though it’s contentious, she noted that many in the non-hunting conservation community are supportive of hunts that keep hyper-abundant populations in check.

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“In the case of mourning doves, these birds aren’t doing any damage that we’re aware of, it doesn’t fall into the category of a species that is having a negative impact,” she said.

She acknowledged that there is a consensus the hunt won’t devastate the population, but there are concerns.

“I think hunters are nature lovers, most of them, but the non-hunting nature lovers, they can’t understand the mindset around why one would want to hunt these,” she said, noting that other animals provide a lot more meat.

“Those are the kinds of questions that people have, and they feel those should have been brought up and discussed in a much more open public forum.”

Petrie says there are many animals that are small, but still delicacies. He also praised the hunt as being a great way for new hunters to get involved. While the birds are difficult to hit mid-air, they are less wary than other birds on the ground, in the farm fields where they are usually found.

“It’s very hard to hide a person in a wheelchair to hunt ducks and geese, but it’s not hard to hide a person to hunt doves,” he said. “I know a few guys in wheelchairs who are really excited about the opportunity.”