South Carolina dove season 2026

SCDNR manages 45 public dove fields across the state on Wildlife Management Areas and partnered public lands. All fields are open to public walk-in access during designated hunt dates (posted seasonally by county). Special regulations apply: 50-shell limit per hunt, afternoon-only access (no entry before noon), and no shooting after 6 p.m. during first season segment. Free Migratory Bird Permit required.

SCDNR publishes the current list here

SCDNR publishes no sub-state regional breakdown for mourning dove, despite having an active, long-running in-house dove research program (SCDNR biologists helped develop the national Call Count Survey methodology in the 1950s and continue harvest/survival studies with Clemson University). Both SCDNR's own species page and its dedicated management guide describe dove habitat preference and biology only in general, statewide terms -- 'the majority of doves harvested in South Carolina are resident birds,' preferring 'river and creek bottoms near agricultural fields' and open/semi-open grain-producing land -- without naming a denser sub-region the way SCDNR's own quail sourcing does for the same row-crop habitat type. The state's public WMA dove field program (roughly 45 fields annually) reinforces this: SCDNR's own youth dove hunt list spans the Upstate/Piedmont (Spartanburg, Pickens, York, Abbeville counties), the Midlands (Lexington, Fairfield, Newberry), and the coastal plain/Lowcountry (Aiken, Orangeburg) in the same season, deliberately distributed statewide rather than concentrated in one region. Treated as uniform statewide distribution per this dataset's own genuine-no-breakdown precedent -- not an unresearched gap.