dove hunted in Bolivia several years ago in an area settled and farmed by Mennonites who welcomed dove hunters since the huge numbers of doves were considered pests and actually did a lot of crop damage....this was a sparsely populated area and towns were few and far between..the farmers would ride their buggies to town even tho the trip might take 4 hours or more each way...no electricity in their homes but I did see a couple of welding torches going in their farm buildings and presume they were run off generators...

one day I was hunting and a horse and buggy stopped across the field from me and a Mennonite(pictured) maybe 30 years old got out of the buggy and started walking across the field toward me carrying a shotgun....I was a little uneasy because all I had was a bird boy with me and he only spoke Spanish...as the guy got closer,he had a smile on his face so I felt better.... he didn't speak any English but from words and gestures,I figured out he wanted to shoot birds with me....he had an old 12 gauge single barrel gun with just a few shells and I don't think he had ever shot at a flying bird before.....I offered him one of my guns and handful of shells(20 gauge) and tried to coach him but he just couldn't get the hang of following through with your swing so he was always shooting behind the bird..he shot at several birds without any luck and handed gun back to me....I had killed a lot of birds and offered him as many as he wanted but he didn't take any...he watched me shoot for about 30 minutes then walked back across the field and left...me nor the outfitter never did quite figure that out...

our outfitter told us that sometimes they will accept birds for table fare and sometimes they won't.....we would often eat lunch under tent shelters near their houses but the Mennonite men wouldn't let the women or children near us but they would stand off at a distance and watch us... our outfitter also said they didn't like us taking pictures of them.....but I took a few including this one from a distance..
one of the things I noticed about the Mennonite kids was that the little girls wore dresses and would run,skip and play...the boys wore overalls and would walk purposely with a stiff back..no running,jumping or dodging like our kids do..... they always looked serious and I never saw them act playful....our outfitters wife told us Mennonite boys have a reputation as being "born old"....

and story.

Awesome story and pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks.

Very cool

Very interesting story, good pics to go along with it!!!!

Nice pictures and post.