Dove & Pigeon Hunting in Argentina

In northern San Luis, we hunt over more than 200,000 acres in the largest pivot-irrigated farming region in Argentina. The same agricultural system that sustains millions of pigeons also generates one of the highest concentrations of doves in the country. Both species, in the same territory, throughout the entire season.

For dove, the territory speaks for itself. For pigeon, there is something more: for over twenty years we have been managing the area with an annual hunter quota to protect the pigeon population. That is what guarantees the pigeon hunting in this program meets the same standard as the exclusive one – with no concessions for combining both species.

Our field staff tracks the movement and feeding patterns of both species daily. Every morning we put you where the action will be most productive.

In the dove shooting, your birdboy keeps your gun loaded while you work through case after case, shooting from every angle. The flocks don’t stop. Volume is the protagonist – you can easily go through more than a thousand shells in a single day.

Everything changes when we move to pigeon. In the blind, silence. Concealment matters, wind matters, distance matters. You wait for the flock to commit to the decoys and pull the trigger at the exact right moment. Every shot counts in a different way.

That shift – from explosive dove shooting to the kind of pigeon hunting you don’t forget – happens in the same day, in the same territory, with the same guide team.

When Ramiro de las Carreras first arrived in northern San Luis, what stopped him was not one species – it was two. Thousands of doves covering the crops and, over those same fields, pigeon flocks in concentrations he had never seen in any of the provinces he had scouted. He understood that this territory was different.

Ramiro founded South Pioneers in 2004 on that conviction. Over the years he built access to the land, assembled the guide team, and in 2015 completed the lodge – the only one in the area. Everything South Pioneers is today came from that work on the ground.

Ramiro is present on every trip. Not as a background host – as the person directly responsible for ensuring each day delivers what it promises, for both species.

After a day with two disciplines that different, the table has its own stories. The cases of shells from the dove shooting, the exact moment the pigeons committed to the decoys. The chef already has the grill going.

The lodge features five rooms, a pool, and small groups – designed so that rest is part of the experience, not just the interval between days in the field. Argentine cuisine prepared by our professional chef, paired with Mendoza wines chosen to match each course, closes every day the right way.

For those looking to extend the trip, South Pioneers is the closest hunting lodge in Argentina to Mendoza – Malbec country, and one of the “10 Great Wine Capitals of the World.“

How to get there? South Pioneers Lodge is located in northern San Luis Province.

Via Córdoba: from Santiago de Chile, take a flight to Córdoba. From there, take a charter flight to the paved landing strip in Villa Dolores. Our comfortable van will transfer you to the lodge on a 50-minute drive.

How to get there? South Pioneers Lodge is located in northern San Luis Province.