Turlock Sept. 25, 1971 Betty and I drove up last night to join Ed Channing and his family on a last-of-September dove hunt. Ed located a pretty good bunch of doves on Saturday in the slough country along San Joaquin River, but when we went there at daylight Sunday nothing showed up. No evidence of any shooting or disturbance. Ed was non-plussed. We drove around and found some doves feeding in a big millet field that was plowed and being disced and leveled. Doves still found enough seed on the surface to gather a cropful. I killed three birds there and Betty got one. That was the days shoot! This area is one of the spots where Ed and some of his co-workers have put up a lot of wood duck boxes -- 30 right here. They get high production (70%) if they visit the boxes weekly and throw out the starling nests. If unattended the boxes are virtually all captured by starlings. We saw little groups of woodpeckers all morning. Also a few flocks of spurge flew over. Curiously, there are no deer here, though there seems to be plenty of cottonwood timber and thickets. Saw and heard lots of quail.