Do You Ever Wonder…?

Do you see him in there among the mango leaves

I wonder about woodcock. Ten thousand years ago, during the last ice age, when they migrated north, did they stop in what is now Maryland? They must have. Further north was a frozen wasteland. But maybe Maryland was much like northern Labrador is today, so possibly they summered and raised their young in Georgia. Perhaps we can convince our government to spend a big chunk of money to figure this out.

And what about the woodcock’s favorite food, the earth worms? I’ve read authorities that stated they weren’t indigenous to North America, but were brought over by the Europeans. If that is true, what did woodcock eat? Just grubs? The woodcock would have followed the Europeans around to uproot up their newly introduced apple trees and such to get at those new “imported” tasty morsels.

And I’ve read other experts that stated the worms were here all along and died when the ice sheet covered over them. One writer even said the worms had returned north at something like eighteen inches a year. I’m not sure how that was measured or if our tax dollars paid for the research. Did someone actually put radio telemetry collars on earth worms? I’m happy the answers they found weren’t in metric.

Ruffed grouse in a mahogany tree?

If we could travel back through time to the last ice age, would it be possible to shoot ruffed grouse in the Florida Keys? It’s fun to imagine, skipping from island to island, the sand sticking to our waxed cotton brush pants. Woodcock probably flew right across the Straits of Florida to winter in Cuba and the Bahamas. I guess there wasn’t any rum then, but it still would have made a spectacular winter vacation, assuming the seasons lasted into January and February.

What I am glad of is that we don’t know all the answers. Can you imagine if we could google everything?

Are those holes in the sand from a woodcock's probing bill or clams...?

Where are the Woodcock?

It is that time of the year again, when the snow has retreated to hide in the deepest shadows. The ground finally feels soft and is spongy, like a mattress beneath the feet. A sweet mustiness hangs in the air and soon, we hope, will be replaced with the smells of things newly green.

I walk the dogs hoping to find woodcock. The little wanderers should be here, passing through on their migration north. There are never many on our island, but we usually find a few. Last year they arrived in mid-February, but this winter has been one of the nastiest in a long time.

It is easy to imagine the woodcock’s preposterous proboscis (love saying that) pushing down into the recently thawed ground, which feels only slightly firmer than pudding. The dogs race about on the newly bared ground, plowing through the underbrush. Robins and doves flee ahead of the youngest. None of my three girls find any game birds, but the blue sky stretches between the horizons. Life doesn’t get much better. We’ll look again tomorrow.

So home we go, where I’ll wipe down my guns that have been sitting in my safe through the winter. It’s time to start counting the days until fall.

Chara pointing a March woodcock a few years ago.

Waiting For Woodcock

      Doesn’t that sound like a movie—Waiting For Woodcock? It would probably be about an odd older guy living in a rural area, who frequented swampy areas and whose only understanding friend was a dog.

     The middle of this past week the weather felt like spring, and, on a morning walk out back with the dogs, I wondered when the first woodcock might show up. February is the only month I have never seen a woodcock in New England.

     Snow fell that night, about three inches of fluffy white stuff, and, when I walked the next morning, I decided that it would be a while before the woodcock showed up.

     The day turned out warm with the temperatures in the forties and by the middle of the afternoon most of the new snow had disappeared. A friend, Tom Flaherty, called to tell that he had run his Brittany pup in the next town over and she found three woodcock in some poplar near a gravel pit. 

Do you see him in there?

     Imagine that, woodcock in February. 

A Late Woodcock

     Christmas morning my oldest wirehair pointed a woodcock at the edges of the trees beyond the field out behind our home.  She froze rigid so quickly it startled me, it certainly wasn’t expected, and our younger wirehair honored when she spotted her elder.  As I stepped past the dogs the woodcock twittered away through the trees.

     Yesterday morning, New Years Eve day, and in almost exactly the same spot, the scenario played itself out again, with the woodcock picking the same escape route through the forest.

     So far the fall has been mild, but cold weather is forecast for the coming week.  I have to wonder if that woodcock will be able to poke its bill into the ground when it is frozen.

Resident Woodcock

Three years ago an April snowstorm caught the woodcock in our area nesting, resulting in many lost young, maybe most.  The local population of woodcock plummeted.  For the next few years the Fish and Game Department had the woodcock hunting season start about five or six days after the start of the ruffed grouse season.  The only woodcock around that early are the resident birds, and perhaps the late season was needed for their numbers to replenish.  It was awfully hard to explain to the dogs though, why we had to let the woodcock fly away.

          This year, during the late summer, the woodcock seem as abundant as ever and the season is again opening the same day as the grouse season.  That’s a good thing.

          But they all seem to have gone into hiding on opening day.  How do they know?

Shangri La

It was three seasons ago, before our pup Colby joined our clan, that we discovered Shangri La.  The first part of the day Don Pouliot and I hunted woodcock cover that we’d been poking through together for over thirty-five years, and it was full of memories and one woodcock.  Then we hunted a spot just down the river and found loads of flight birds.  It seemed every few steps Chara pointed another woodcock, but I was on a royal missing streak.  The way things were going, it didn’t look like I’d ever reach my limit, which meant I could hunt forever and I tried to tell myself that was a good thing.  By the time we left there we already had a full day’s fun and a couple of woodcock.

Don suggested trying to find a place he’d hunted before, deep in the national forest.  The drive there wasn’t long and we tucked the truck into the parking place that he remembered.  The hike in was down an old skid road that skirted the edge of a cutting and a ledge, and then went through some very rugged country along more mature timber to our east.  I remember thinking it looked like an easy place to get turned around in, and I was glad to have Don as company.  He’s easily the best woodsman I know.

Where the land flattened out we turned to the right and toward the river.  The trees weren’t large, maybe as big around as my thigh, mostly hardwoods with small scattered stands of fir and spruce.  In places the ground was wet and we had to make detours, but the going was more or less flat. 

Chara started to find woodcock in clusters, sometimes walking only a few steps between points.  Often she would point and then, on the flush and shot, another would take off or sometimes even two.  I had never seen so many woodcock.

My missing streak continued, but when Chara pointed a partridge next to a small clearing, I killed it easily.  Well, at least Don saw the bird fall. The way my luck had been going, I felt I had missed, but Chara found the bird belly-up in the leaves.

We hunted along the river, loosing count of birds pointed and shots fired.  Unlikely as it seemed, we met other hunters working up the river towards us, so we altered our course away from the water and inland.  Later that day, while driving out of the forest, we spotted their parked car and could tell that they had waded the river downstream to hunt back up toward us.

My shooting problem was firing too fast while the birds were still way too close.  I knew that and I tried to slow things down…focus on the bird, take a deep breath, and then raise the gun to shoot.  Nothing seemed to work.  I finally shot a woodcock, but hit the bird when it was so near that the shot charge carried away the bird’s head.

We worked back around toward the cutting and into a stand of softwoods, where a pair of partridge flushed almost under my feet and behind an old fallen tree trunk.  They roared off low over the ground and with a lucky crossing shot to my right I added another to my game bag.

When we found the old logging road we traipsed uphill and back to my truck.  My legs were beyond weary and actually hurt, but day had certainly been worth it.  Chara pointed more birds in the previous couple of hours than she did sometimes in a whole week.  I will never forget it. 

That day we had worked our way far enough from our camp that the drive back would take almost an hour, and on the way I mentioned that we needed to stop to pick up a few things at the grocery store.  Don asked if we were going to shop at the big store on the right side of the highway, or the smaller store on the left.  I remember telling him that I didn’t think my legs could do the bigger store.