52 Week Season is a project featuring interviews with mid-Atlantic hunting and fishing guides, biologists, and other wildlife experts. The focus of the site is the "sportsman's calendar" and the mindset that you could hunt or fish for some kind of critter in our region pretty much every week week of the year.

From dove in September to rockfish in October to the whitetail rut in November, below is a rundown of the fall months.

Read the full Interviews here.

SEPTEMBER

Week 27. Dove

At high noon on September 1 every year, guns across the region are unloaded, and doves fly for cover. The fields are thirsty by this time of year but if you can stand the dust and the heat and the chiggers, hunting doves is a fine way to spend a September afternoon. 

The great thing about dove hunting is that you can hunt in a t-shirt with a bunch of buddies. All you need is a seat and a shotgun. But while the going may be easy, the hunting certainly is not. Mourning doves have been clocked at 55 mph, and even if that doesn’t impress Sammy Hagar, they have an uncanny ability to corkscrew at precisely the moment after your brain tells your finger to pull the trigger. 

Lefty Kreh estimated the ratio of shells to doves bagged is larger than any other species. “Unless it is alerted, a goose will continue to fly the same direction for some time,” he once wrote in his Baltimore Sun column. “Grouse and woodcock flush close enough that the hunter has a chance. Pheasants are known for their straight flights. But when a dove approaches, it may do fancier aerial tricks than a jet fighter pilot.” 

The best place to hunt doves is really whatever farm you have access to, but ideally, it’s over a field of seeds and waste grains. Being close to their roost around a stand of pines doesn’t hurt either. 

As most dove hunters know, a dove hunt on public and private land is very different. We are blessed with public lands in the United States, lucky to be public land owners, and beneficiaries of the wisdom of our forefathers who devised the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. But a DNR officer working a public-land dove opener is like an SEC official assigned to cryptocurrencies.

Either way, nothing beats the ritual and social aspect of a dove hunt, and very few wild game species can compete with with dove as table fare. Many hunters go with dove poppers – an unfailable option – but Fredericksburg chef Wade Truong swears by grilling the whole bird on high heat. 

“I think somebody that plucks a bunch of doves and roasts them would be hard pressed to go back to breasting them out and wrapping them in cream cheese,” says Truong. “I keep doves pretty simple: generally, pluck them whole and grill them over high heat, and baste the bird with butter or any kind fat. I keep them medium rare breast-wise, and the skin alone is worth the plucking effort.”

It’s hard to beat a grilled dove. That is, of course, if you can hit one. 

Week 28. Rail: Marsh Hens

The closest thing you can get to the mix of flats fishing, upland hunting, and waterfowling is rail hunting. These sneaky, skinny creatures are technically migratory waterfowl but prefer to lay low in the seclusion and cover of a salt marsh. 

“The best way to hunt them is to walk the bank of a 20- to 50-foot-wide creek that ends at a point and try to drive them to the point,” says Pete Wallace of Chincoteague Hunting and Fishing Center. “Rails’ first choice to avoid being captured is to run, second choice is to hide, third to swim, and the last choice is to fly. Your best shots will be birds trying to fly across the creek. The higher the tide, the more successful the hunt.” 

The best time to hunt them is on a high tide during a harvest full moon or new moon when the water swamps the marsh grass. 

Week 29. Teal

Mid-September brings the first cool nights, which are signals to blue-winged and green-winged teal to begin their journeys south. These pint-size birds are among the first migrators to stop over to feast on the seeds of wild rice, millet, and pondweeds in our ripe freshwater marshes on their way south. 

“Blue-wing teal arrive very early, because they winter in southern North America and Central and South America, farther south than most other ducks,” says USFWS Atlantic Flyway Representative Paul Padding. 

Their migration can be tough to pinpoint, though, and they are often halfway to Havana by the time opening day rolls around. Even when you do time the migration right, the shooting can also be fleeting. Teal can get by you like a Cy Young fastball, and their flocks scatter into the marsh at the sound of the first shot. 

Brought to hand, teal sport a handsome green or blue badge, respectively, on their wings. Green-winged teal are the smallest of our ducks and their blue-winged cousins are scarcely bigger. Because they are seedeaters, these single-serving ducks are mild and tender with a layer of sweet fat.  

Week 30. Elk

When Daniel Boone and his long hunters headed up the Warrior’s Path and over the Cumberland Gap, they gazed down upon endless savannahs punctuated by rolling woodlands and canebreak groves. Kentucky was a land so rich in game, wrote Boone biographer Robert Morgan, that “buffalo and elk, deer and turkeys, practically stationed themselves in front of a rifle sight.” 

As settlers moved in, they found another valuable natural resource in coal that sustained the livelihood of central Appalachia for generations. Today, many mines have completed their commercial lifecycle but are coming full circle and providing a new use as a refuge for many of the region’s native wildlife. It turns out reclaimed abandoned strip mines can provide ideal grasslands for elk, and Kentucky now boasts the largest herd east of the Mississippi. 

“Elk are grazing animals, more so than deer which are browsers. Ideal elk cover would be about 30% forest and 70% grasslands, with limited human access,” says Appalachian Wildlife Foundation president David Ledford.  “Some mined landscapes provide thousands of acres of this type of forage.” Boone himself might recognize some of the native landscapes around the old mines. 

 As for the best time to hunt, “the last weekend of September into the second weekend of October is generally the peak rut,” says Ledford.

Week 31. Sika Deer

Imported from a small Japanese island by a Tidewater family hundreds of years ago, sika deer have thrived in the wooded marshes of southern Dorchester County. “It’s the only place in the country -- in the world -- that you’re able to hunt this subspecies. The same subspecies is found wild only on an island in Japan,” says Marcia Pradines, who manages Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. 

Sika’s unusual story began about a century ago, when a fellow named Clement Henry stocked a handful on James Island, a spit of land off Dorchester County that once supported a community with a Methodist church but is now not more than a bushy sandbar and some flooded timber. Eventually those deer made it across to Taylor’s Island and the mainland. They’ve cozied in to the thick wooded wetlands of Dorchester County and Blackwater NWR and earned the nickname the “ghosts of the marsh” for their elusiveness. 

The best time to hunt them is during the rut in the fall. “I’ve heard them bugling in September, but mid-October is when the rut really peaks,” says Pradines. Hearing the sika bugle in the morning, evening, or the middle of the night — it makes your hair stand up on your neck.”

Week 32. Wood Ducks

It’s mid-October, and the foliage is nearing its peak in the hardwood groves overloooking the Chester River. What better time to hunt woodies? The wood duck drake is among the most brilliantly-colored ducks, with a red-green hood, speckled chestnut hackle, caramel flanks, and bolts of white streaking and curling across its head and body. Its head, shaped like a mullet haircut fresh out of the shower, is a rich emerald with violet and rust hues. 

Like the name implies, woodies feel most comfortable in flooded timber, and can be heard -- and, if lucky, seen -- squealing jeeb jeeb as they twist through forested swamps at nearly 30 mph. Also known as a summer or Carolina duck, woodies are one of the first migrators and have one of the highest percentages of resident populations of all waterfowl, which both make woodies a great early season target. There is hardly a more spectacular place to watch the autumn colors change than from a wood duck blind. The first duck season split is a week in mid-October, which "is really a wood-duck season," says Tyler Johnson, who runs one of the oldest and largest hunting operations on the Eastern Shore.

Wee 33. False Albacore

They say not to bring a knife to a gun fight. Well, don’t bring an undersized rod albie fishing. It will get snapped. Pound for pound, few fish pack the raw power of false albacore. They school up in the fall like rockfish or blues but have the sheer muscle of tuna. Like “true” tuna (which, as the name implies, they are not related to), albies are ocean-going, torpedo-shaped fish with large forked tails and tight metallic skin, but at the same time, they stay close to shore to feed on frenzied bait balls. Albies migrate south in the fall and will congregate for epic blitzes off the Outer Banks in the late fall. 

Week 34. Rocktober

Late October is primetime on the Chesapeake. Temperatures start to drop steadily, water clarity improves, days shorten, and striped bass feel the primal urge to fatten up for the winter ahead. This the best time of the year for constant action on rockfish. This is Rocktober.

Stripers can be caught for most of the year somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic in endless different ways, from trolling to surfcasting to soaking bait, but it’s hard to beat chasing them on light tackle or the fly rod during the Rocktober blitz. 

Sure, springtime brings the cows home, and the coastal elders are always going to outclass the resident youngsters. You could also make a strong case that striper culture is all about banging down beach roads to a sandy point or getting your ass kicked by surf on a wet rockpile and that there are striper meccas to our north. That’s all true. And yes, there are other more sporty, interesting, or effective ways to catch rocks, like sight casting on flats, working the inner-city harbors at night, or dragging planer boards. 

But when the conditions are right, nothing compares to the nonstop live action of Rocktober on the Chesapeake. It’s the feeling of getting on getting bundled up on a frosty morning after staying up late to watch Howie Kendrick go yard and getting on birds before you even leave the river.

Week 35. Steelhead

Steelhead are ocean-run rainbow trout native to the Pacific Northwest that were introduced to the Great Lakes in the 1800s. Keeping one on the line is like driving a speeding Mack truck down a cluttered alleyway.  

Late fall brings the kind of persistent cold rains that make the Great Lakes feel like British Columbia and triggers steelhead to run up swollen rivers.  Mid October through November "is our bread and butter!" exclaims Greg Senyo of Steelhead Alley Outfitters. "Steelhead start to show up mid-October with the change from summer to fall. … This is the best time to catch a Lake Erie steelhead in peak physical condition."

Week 36. Whitetail Rut

For whitetail hunters, months of preparation come down to moments in mid-November. “I think about deer hunting all year,” says Jeff Phillips of Star City Whitetails. “I think about it 365 days. On a hot, muggy, horrible day, I often think about what that big buck is doing, or on a 2-degree night, my mind goes to that buck, and what he’s doing!”

Preparation for that one shot starts in the spring and summer with the planting of crops that will sustain the deer through the next winter. By late August, it is time to start thinking seriously about where to place stands, to start checking trail cams more studiously, and to start watchfully eyeing the patterns of edge habitat where the forest meets the farm. 

The bucks will continue traveling together in bachelor groups through early fall, but they will have shed their velvet by the time archery season kicks off mid-September, and the high, green pastures of early September will give way to the first frosts of late October. "The rule of thumb is that three weeks after the bachelor groups break up, it’s the peak rut," says Levi Pitcock of Double Spur Outfitters in Star Tannery, Va. 

The timing can be slightly dependent on weather and local conditions, but for the most part peak rut is around November 10-20. “If I could only hunt one day all year, I would pick cold, clear, frosty morning during the first weeks of November,” says Pennsylvania whitetail writer Tyler Franz. “The bucks cruise the ridges between doe bedding areas looking to pick up the scent of a doe coming into estrous.”

Week 37. Fall Harvests

The Chesapeake Bay once grew so many oysters that millions of bushels were exported across the continent. At the peak of the oyster trade in the late 19th century, the U.S. Commerce Department reported “daily oyster trains of from thirty to forty cars from Baltimore to the West,” and “scarily a city or town [in America] which is not supplied with Maryland raw oysters.”

Oysters spawn in early summer, which leaves the meat watery and bland, but by late November, they are hitting their meatiest and most flavorful. Towns up and down the Chesapeake, like Urbanna on the Rappahannock, are hosting oyster festivals. “Tonging for wild oysters starts October 1, and dredging is November 1, but I don’t think that the Maryland oyster is really at its prime until January 1,” says JD Blackwell of 38 North Oysters. 

Week 38. Woodcock and Ruffed Grouse

Many hunters consider the explosive flush of a ruffed grouse to be the epitome of upland hunting. The satisfaction of covering miles on a snow-coated fire road, watching your pointer work the brier patches, or breathing in the air of a hillside meadow under blustery November skies can only be beat by the heart-stopping flush of black and russet feathers. As Aldo Leopold once remarked, “There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting and grouse hunting.”

The first frost in the Virginia Piedmont is, on average, the third week of October, and peak foliage comes around the same time in the mountains. Both are good reference points for when grouse hunting can start to get good. “It’s that really golden time in the fall, when the leaves change and they start to drop,” says grouse hunter Tripp Way. “You get the crunchy forest floor and you can now see through the thick regenerating cuts that they drop in. And that's the prime time.”

Week 39. Whitetail Rifle

When Pennsylvania was still just a colony, General George Washington’s Continental Army recruited 13 new rifle companies. Nine were from Pennsylvania, and they organized into the Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion, the first rifle battalion in U.S. history.  Over two centuries later, the Pennsylvania riflemen still show up in force, but these days it’s as the “Orange Army” on the state’s legendary opening day of firearms season the Monday after Thanksgiving.  

"Opening day of rifle season is one of the most storied traditions in Pennsylvania," says Tyler Franz, a Pennsylvania wildlife writer. The Keystone State today has nearly a million hunters and maintains one of the richest hunting heritages in the mid-Atlantic.  "The Monday after Thanksgiving is the holy grail for hunting in Pennsylvania -- the first day of firearms deer season."

“Deer hunting is a tradition that is just immeasurable,” says former Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist Gary Alt. “It's like religion.”