“Dove Czar” Vandy Collins and Waddell Discuss Hunting and the Early Days of “Roadtrips”
DENVER (July 29, 2026) – Join Host Michael Waddell as he sits down with Vandy Collins, longtime manager of the legendary Quail Valley Lodge near Faunsdale, Alabama. Known as the “Dove Czar” because of his reputation as the South’s best dove field prepper, Collins also played a role in management and recovery of quail and wild turkeys in West-Central Alabama, and in addition to Quail Valley Lodge he managed other nearby commercial hunting properties, as well as lands in neighboring Florida. A native of West-Central Alabama, Vandy Collins noted that when he was a young man there were no deer in that part of the state, so he hunted doves and quail and squirrels. “If you grow up squirrel hunting,” said Collins, “you learn to see, you learn to hear, and you learn to shoot. Every facet of hunting can be learned from still, squirrel hunting.” Collin’s dad didn’t hunt, so he was introduced to hunting by his uncle. Everyone would dove hunt, and when he was seven or eight years old, he went with them just to retrieve downed birds for them. He learned how to dove hunt by “being the dog,” by watching where a dove flew, learning how to mark where the dove fell, and then how to retrieve the downed bird. It was some years later that he got his first opportunity to dove hunt, and it was with a .410 shotgun. From that time on, Collins was obsessed with shooting a shotgun, and after chasing competitive skeet shooting as far as he could go, he returned to the dove fields of West-Central Alabama, determined to be the best dove hunter and the best dove field prepper ever, and he’s our special guest on this episode of The Michael Waddell Podcast, presented by Spandau Arms and in partnership with Folds of Honor, Cigars International and Poncho Outdoors. Among Collins’ biggest challenges in life, outside of living up to the reputation of consistently putting on the best dove hunts in the South, was overcoming a recent health scare and bidding farewell to his old friend Lord Calvert.
“My heart quit about the time that Covid hit,” Collins explained, “and I was scared to death. We housed Canadian dog trainers is how we made our living really, and my dove hunting business, and that was the part of the country these dog trainers came to, to train in the winter…We had it made, and I was a fool, and I lived a bad lifestyle, and it caught up to me. And when Covid hit, I mean, my wife was horrified, I was horrified, nobody would get close to me, you know. And my doctor said to me, ‘You don’t have to worry about Covid – a cold would kill you tomorrow. You have only about eight percent of your heart left; that’s it!’”
“I sat on the porch one whole turkey season,” continued Collins. “You know what it’s like when you’ve hunted every day of turkey season for 40 years and you sit in that rocking chair for 35 days. It’ll wake you up! But I still love building dove fields, and that’s all I did, and we rallied, and we came back. I did what they said couldn’t be done. Actually, I quit drinking, lost 100 pounds. Actually started – I’m not going to say living right; I’ll say living different. And you learn a lot of stuff.”
“It was ugly,” said Collins, in answer to Waddell’s question about how much he drank at his worst. “It was ugly. The guy asked me, he said, you know, ‘How much do you drink?’ and I was lying there right before they put me in that helicopter. And it wasn’t the blockage; it was the muscle side of my heart… I said, ‘I drink a half gallon every other day. I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and I don’t have a drink until four o’clock in the afternoon.’ I said, ‘From 4:00 to 8:00, I’m the best that ever walked. I can get in my buggy, and my wife sees me coming toward the back porch and when I ride by and shake that cup, she hands me a fresh one right out the back door, and I keep riding and looking at my stuff and entertaining myself and enjoying myself and just knowing that it’s going to happen to everybody else and not me. [I drank] Lord Calvert, $19.95 for a half gallon. I drank so much…that when we started back entertaining people, after I’d straightened up a little bit, got well, a little bit well – and we had some dove-hunting obligations to attend to – my wife went to the liquor store in the town of Demopolis, Alabama, to buy some assorted things, and the lady asked my wife, she says, ‘What about all this Lord Calvert stacked in the back of this store? Do we need to send this back?’ And Melba said, ‘Yeah, you all can send that back. He’s done with that; I can tell you right now!’”
Following his serious health scare, Collins focused on getting well and returned to his love of dove hunting. “…I’ve stuck to the dove-hunting thing, and I love it. I love it to death, but this is my last year,” Collins teased. “People say ‘We’ve heard that forever. We’ve heard that forever.’ And I said, ‘But you haven’t heard it this year.’ I am, actually, I’m going to fool with my friends and my family. I have done it commercially for so long, and people cannot – I think you can [gesturing to Waddell] – people cannot relate to the pressure that’s involved when you’re the best of the best. Now, I’ve got groups who have been hunting with me for 50 years, and you know what makes that so bad, they expect it. Every time. Every time. Every time.”
When questioned about how he has managed to stay so consistent and maintain the quality of his hunts, Collins answered, “…You’re not going to have a bad shoot. What I’ve done is, I’ve kept so many fields, and I’ve got so many variables, and I only do so much hunting on the weekend, so I’m always able to jump around and do this and that, and I attribute it to a lot of scouting. I scout a lot. My wife scouts a lot. We do a lot of work. And we’ve got established fields that we’ve had for a long time. I know for a fact that when I give up these last four fields – and I don’t know that I will, for sure – because I’m going to keep them [for friends and family]; no more commercial, no more taking money, because when you take somebody’s money, they expect, you know, they have purchased something, and they expect that. They may be your best friend in the world, but they want something in return. …So, the pressure has been so great, so bad. …When I give those leases up, they’ll never be leased again. Those landowners are only letting me have them because I’ve had them for an eternity.”
Collins gladly helps other hunters wanting to build their own dove fields, but his advice for getting started is simple: “The only thing I can tell you to do is to clean you up a spot and put some feed out and see if some doves show up, and if they do, maybe you can cultivate that into being a great dove field. But the best thing to do is talk to the local folks who have been there all their lives and when they tell you, ‘Oh, yeah, down there around that corner by that down there, by that, that’s always been a good spot. That was a good spot when I was a young man.’ Well, things change. Evolution. Things change, but if you start off with a place doves want to be, you’re ahead of the game.”
The Michael Waddell Podcast is produced by Outdoor Sportsman Group and is available widely on Outdoor Channel YouTube, MyOutdoorTV, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and OutdoorChannel.com, to name a few.
“To me, we’ve done some things with dove hunting and dove fields,” Collins continued, sharing advice. “One is staging. Staging is the most important part of a dove field to me. Staging is more important than the feed; it’s more important than everything. After you’ve picked a location that a dove wants to be at. That’s number one. Pick a location a dove wants to be at. Now, you can take a semi-good location and maybe build on it over the years. If it’s your house, if it’s somewhere that’s easy, if it’s not, you know, a complicated venture. You can spend time and build on that area; if they kind of want to be there. You might could develop something that they want. But staging is the most important thing. You can shoot a dove one time, or you can shoot him two times. And by that, I mean, a dove is going to feed, say at different times at different fields…”
“Say a dove is going to put on a major feed coming to this field at three o’clock. That’s when they’re going to flip out from where they’ve nooned. They’re going to flip out and come to this field to feed at three o’clock. Now, you’re going to be able to shoot him and beat him back; shoot him and beat him back. If you’ve got a powerline across this field, if you’ve got a big dead tree in the field, he’s going to stage probably about 1:00 or 1:30. So, in other words, you’re going to get to shoot this dove staging, and beat him back, and then you’re going to get to shoot them when they’re feeding and beat them back. So, that staging puts that dove in the middle of your hunters… and we [make use of] ‘suicide wires,’ dummy powerlines. Everybody has them now. You can hardly go to a field that doesn’t have them…and you can hang a decoy on them. Staging, and those decoys, are so important to get that dove in there before he’s going to feed; so therefore, you’re going to be able to shoot him a couple of times,” Collins emphasized.
Collins readily shares his thoughts on dove feed, including his new go-to – Dove Destroyer sunflower seed. He discusses a variety of other sometimes hot topics, including baiting, when and how best to introduce kids to hunting, and advice for new game wardens and biologists. He also has quite a few priceless turkey hunting memories from Waddell’s early turkey-hunting days.
“Oh, my, I am so thankful that Vandy Collins was able to make it over to Downton Dixie to visit with me!” said Waddell. “He always had a spot for us to hunt and never failed my friends Eddie Salter, Matt Morrett and me when it came to locating big gobblers. He’s known as the Dove Czar, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s the Turkey Czar too! He gave us all a big scare, but it’s wonderful to see him back and in much better health now and ready to hunt again. Vandy and I may not always agree, but one thing’s for sure – I will always know where he stands, and his position on certain topics will be rock solid.”
The Michael Waddell Podcast releases new episodes every other week.
Waddell’s story began in the backwoods of Booger Bottom, Georgia, where he grew up surrounded by nature, family, and a love for the outdoors. A self-proclaimed “rowdy redneck,” his passion for hunting and storytelling led him to win a Realtree turkey-calling contest, which launched his career in the outdoor industry. From guiding and filming hunts to creating hit shows like Realtree Road Trips and Bone Collector, Waddell has become a beloved figure in the outdoor world.
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