Tuesday Morning, the Whole State Walks Out Together

The state's real new year started this weekend. Football Friday night, dove season Tuesday morning, and the county fair calendars filling up behind them. Some places mark the seasons with an equinox. Around here we use a kickoff and a sunrise over a sunflower field. Welcome to LoneStarNation — a weekly letter about the Texas you actually live in.

Since before anyone reading this was born, the South Zone waited while the rest of the state hunted — a mid-September opener, more than a century running, built on federal nesting rules based on studies from the 1950s and 60s. Texas Parks and Wildlife took another look at the modern data, worked the change through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and got the answer South Texas has wanted for a hundred years: September 1, same as everybody.

So this Tuesday, a hunter outside Raymondville and a hunter outside Childress walk into the field on the same morning, under the same rules, for the first time in state history. The old Special White-winged Dove Days are gone; in their place, one straightforward season with one straightforward limit — 15 birds a day, statewide, no more than two white-tipped.

The birds are ready for it. TPWD's spring surveys put the mourning dove population around 37 million, the second-highest number the state has ever counted. Add the white-wings, and Texas carries close to a third of the nation's mourning dove harvest and nearly nine of every ten white-wings taken in the country. Roughly 300,000 Texans will be out there this season, and the money they spend — shells, leases, gas, café breakfasts at 5 a.m. — runs past half a billion dollars, most of it landing in the small towns.

The agency calls the statewide opener a three-year experiment while the biologists watch the numbers. Fair enough. But anyone who's stood in a caliche lot before first light on September 1st knows this isn't an experiment. It's a holiday. It just finally covers the whole state.

This space belongs to a real Texan every week. A lineman, a coach, a café owner, a welder — six questions, answered in their own words. Nobody rewrites them, nobody adds a twang.

It's the first edition, so the chair is empty. Help us fill it. Reply to this email with the name of somebody in your town who does real work and has something to say, and one line on why. We'll do the asking. When it runs, you get the credit — first name and town.

The 2026 season opened this weekend — Thursday through Saturday, stadium lights on in every corner of the state, with the road ending December 16–19 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

The opener everybody circled: Aledo's first game as a Class 6A school, on the road Friday night against North Crowley, the 2024 Division I state champion. Aledo built its name winning titles from a town that used to be a wide spot on the road west of Fort Worth; now the enrollment says 6A, and the schedule wasted no time asking if the Bearcats belong.

The answer Friday was rough. North Crowley 26, Aledo 0 — every point scored before halftime, including a 65-yard interception return by a sophomore defensive back. It was the first time Aledo had been held scoreless since a 2003 playoff loss to Denton Ryan. Twelve state championships buy a program respect. They don't buy it a district. How the Bearcats answer next Friday will say more than this one did.

Also worth knowing as the season settles in: bi-district playoffs land November 12–14, so every district race between now and then is live ammunition. If your town's team started 1-0 this weekend, we'd like to hear about it — see the bottom of this letter.

Caldwell calls itself the Czech Capital of Texas, and one Saturday a year it proves it: tens of thousands of kolaches, polka in the street, a parade in folk dress, baking and eating contests, and the Beseda danced downtown the way it was danced in Moravia.

Go hungry and know your order. A kolache is the open-faced pastry with fruit — apricot, prune, poppyseed if you're serious. The one wrapped around a sausage is a klobasnek, and using the right word in Caldwell is worth more than a firm handshake. Get there early; the contest bakers' tables don't stay full long.

That's the first one. If you got this from a friend, the signup lives at LoneStarNation.com — free, weekly, no clutter.

This week's ask: Send us one photo from your opening morning — the dove camp, the tailgate, the Friday night stands — with your first name and your town. The best ones run right here next week.

See you Tuesday morning, before first light.

— LoneStarNation