September brings hunting and election seasons to Delaware

September brings the return of hunting seasons to Delaware. Longbow and crossbow hunters took to the Sussex woods on Sept. 1 for the archery deer season that continues through Jan. 31. That’s a quiet sport.

The booming of shotguns also started Sept. 1 with the opening of mourning dove and resident Canada goose seasons.

Pound for pound, hunters are better off targeting resident Canada geese, considered a nuisance by many, especially around golf courses.

The meat of one Canada goose is roughly equivalent to the meat of 15 doves, the daily limit. The daily limit for resident Canada geese is also 15 birds. Clearly, state officials are among those who consider resident Canada geese a nuisance.

When the season for migratory Canada geese opens later in the fall, the daily limit is one bird.

Although resident Canada goose hunting is more productive, most wing shooters will side with fast-flying doves as more sporting and fun hunting. They’re also delicious wrapped in a strip of bacon and grilled. One dove breast is considered an hors d’oeuvre; one goose breast, a family meal.

Dove hunting tends to be a north/south thing along the East Coast. Traditionally, states to the north of Delaware consider doves to be songbirds and don’t allow hunting. States to the south, including Delaware, consider doves game birds.

Doves also tend to be more prolific in the south where milder weather favors greater production. Doves waste little time in building their flimsy nests, often just a couple dozen haphazardly placed sticks in the thick branches of cedar trees. Depending on weather, pairs – not particularly faithful – can produce up to six broods of two to four birds each in the several months of a single nesting season.

Sussex County, with its temperate climate, extensive forests and marshes, and steadily increasing expanses of preserved open spaces, supports an enviable population of wildlife. Hunters and naturalists appreciate that, and work to help sustain, improve and increase wildlife habitat.

Chris Coons visits

U.S. Sen. Chris Coons stopped by the Cape Gazette offices recently. With a primary election coming up quickly – Sept. 15 – and the November general election looming large, the incumbent Democratic senator is spending lots of time on home turf.

Here are a few takeaways from the Coons visit:

• Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, his office has helped repatriate 40 Delawareans marooned overseas. “For the first couple of months, the state department was the largest operating airline in the world, chartering flights to bring people home.”
• Many people in Delaware will be voting early by mail this year. “Over half of the votes that will be cast in the primary have already been cast.”
• In the past month, Coons said, his office has received over 3,000 phone calls from people concerned about not getting their mail on time, due primarily to changes in United States Postal Service overtime, sorting and delivery policies.
• More than 3,900 businesses and nonprofits in Sussex County have received a total of $147 million in federal Payroll Protection Program funds designed to help keep people on payrolls instead of unemployment. “That program and federal stimulus checks are the only thing keeping us out of another great depression.”
• He and U.S. senators from small-population states like Rhode Island, Wyoming and others worked to ensure that a “small-state threshold” was included in the $2.3 trillion federal package that was passed by Congress to address the public health and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “That 800-page bill passed the Senate unanimously in 10 days,” said Coons. “It just shows what we can do when we all work together.” He said the small-state threshold in funding for states and cities guaranteed that Delaware and the other small states below a certain population level would receive a minimum of $1.25 billion in federal aid. “Without that provision,” said Coons, “Delaware, on a pro-rata population basis, would have received $500 million less.”
• Using a federal pool of $1 billion, pharmaceutical manufacturer Astra-Zeneca, which has a history in Delaware, has already begun manufacturing 200 million doses of a promising CoVid-19 vaccine. “The cost of waiting six months after all Food and Drug Administration requirements have been met to begin manufacturing is far greater in terms of national morale and economy than getting started on the process now with the hope that the vaccine will ultimately prove to be effective and receive approval and the doses will then be immediately ready for distribution.  I think we’ll have a vaccine ready for public use in the first quarter of 2021,” said Coons.