Dove season begins Sept. 1. That's in fewer than 30 days. If you can afford to pay day rates to hunting outfitters, that's the best method of finding a good opening weekend hunt. Most outfitters charge $50 to $100 a day. For that rate, they secure the fields and do the scouting for you.

Texas Parks and Wildlife offers a less-expensive alternative through the public dove-lease program. Hunters buy a $48 annual public hunting permit (APHP) and have season access to leased lands for themselves and their children 16 and younger.

Many dove leases are close to metropolitan areas. This year, there are 147 public dove leases scattered throughout the state, including 52 in the Dallas area. Collin County leads with 13 leases, and Hunt County has nine. A Denton County public dove lease drew more than 550 hunters during the 2004-2005 season.

Vickie Fite, TP&W's public hunting coordinator, said that not all dove leases are created equal. Fite advises hunters to perform preseason scouting chores to identify which areas doves are using.

"Doves are most active early and late in the day," Fite said. "That's when you need to be scouting. You're scouting to see how many doves are coming to a particular field and also to see how the birds fly in and out of the field. There may only be two or three good hunting spots in a field. If you know where the hot spots are before opening day, you're way ahead of the game."

The public dove-lease map booklets will not be available until hunting and fishing licenses go on sale Aug. 15. When you buy the APHP, the booklet will be mailed to you and will take several days to arrive. That doesn't leave much scouting time before Sept. 1.

Fite said public dove-lease maps will be available on the Internet no later than Aug. 15 at www.tpwd.state.tx.us. Click on "hunting and wildlife," then on "public hunting land," then on "public dove hunting areas and other small game leases supplement."

Fite recommends hunters look on the Internet to preview public dove leases near them. If they start the process Aug. 15, hunters have two weekends to check out leases in their area and determine if access to those spots is worth $48.

The dove-lease program pays for itself through permit sales. Last year, hunters bought 31,437 permits. In surveys, about 30 percent of the APHP hunters named dove hunting as their primary interest.

TP&W lacks the manpower to monitor usage or success rates on the public leases, but a pilot program last season on leases in the Panhandle indicated a lot more use than biologists expected.

Some Panhandle leases offered hunting for pheasant, quail and ducks in addition to doves. Hunters were required to fill out a survey daily. Dwane Lucia, a Lubbock biologist, analyzed the data.

"We were surprised by how far people traveled to reach the public leases," Lucia said. "We had hunters from Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston. They traveled the farthest to hunt pheasant, and they often hunted on more than one of the public leases. In fact, you could look at the dates and track the same hunters from one lease on Saturday to a nearby lease on Sunday and another one on Monday."

At one of the dove areas east of Floydada, hunters averaged bagging 6.2 birds, exceptional for a public area. Public leases near Lubbock were heavily utilized by college students.

Hunting on public areas will seldom compare to private property. On the most popular pheasant lease last season, 85 hunters reported bagging just 21 birds.

"At least we provided them a place to hunt," Lucia said. "Unless you know landowners in the Panhandle, it's not easy to find a place to hunt pheasant."

The Panhandle surveys were deemed such a success, the program is being expanded this year. All 147 public dove leases will require on-site registration and harvest reports for opening weekend.

Fite said information gathered through the reporting process should enable TP&W to do a better job of providing future public-hunting opportunities.