Clay, my 16 year old son, Steve Friedman, and Steve’s son-in-law, Michael, left Houston on Saturday, March 9th at 5:30 p.m. arriving in Miami at 8:30 local time. As luck would have it my suitcase with my chokes, clothes, tools and gun parts never arrived on the baggage carousel. We departed Miami to Santiago, Chile at 9:30 p.m. My bag stayed in sunny Florida. We arrived in Santiago, Chile at 7:30 a.m. local time, transferred to an 8:30 a.m. flight to Cordoba, arriving 9:30 a.m. We were met by one of the family members of the Estancia who helped us get our guns and luggage through customs. We finally arrived at the Estancia after a one and a half hour drive.

Serge Dompierre is a former resident of Montreal. He was an avid and competitive sporting clays shooter plus a world wide bird hunter. Two years ago he purchased 4,000 acres and built his beautiful estancia. The estancia is spotlessly clean, exquisitely appointed, and is everything one could possibly want in a hunting lodge. This is his first season and he has had 150 shooters, a fraction of what some of the other outfitters will host in a year. This will surely change as more shooters learn of his operation. Cordoba’s dove population is between 20 and 40 million. Estancia Los Chanares has an estimated 10 million on the property.

Serge has purchased land that once was used by other outfitters and he cultivates various crops that hold the doves on the property. Most other outfitters have to take their hunters on daily trips to leased property, sometimes an hour’s drive away from their estancia. At Los Chanares our first four hunts were within walking distance of the estancia. Never hunting the same spot twice we shot over a variety of geography. Being an avid bird hunter, Serge shot with us every day and tailored the difficulty of the shooting to our desires. A typical day of shooting would start with breakfast, followed by our first hunt, back for lunch, then the 2nd hunt of the day, back for dinner, ending with lounging around discussing the day’s events.

We wondered how long will shooting like this last in Cordoba. According to Serge the doves nest five times during the course of a year. Twenty to 40 million doves nesting five times, each time laying two to three eggs adds up to a lot of new doves each year. The kill from hunters is miniscule. The wild card in this scenario is the farmers of the area consider doves a pest. Consuming 20% of the farmers’ crops, the doves strip farmers’ fields in days. The farmers fight back by spraying poison on the fields from airplanes. Serge is hopeful that the hunting will last forever, however he says there is no way of knowing what effect the spraying is having on the population.

Serge and his people made us all feel at home and catered to our every need. Several of the other guests who had been to other estancias said it doesn’t get any better than this. If any of you are interested in going there, feel free to email Cindy and I will give you all the particulars.