https://oodmag.com/gunning-for-long-bills/
If you like wing shooting, it’s worth the effort to find some woodcock. Hunt for them this fall with these tips on location, retrieving, and more.
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https://oodmag.com/gunning-for-long-bills/
If you like wing shooting, it’s worth the effort to find some woodcock. Hunt for them this fall with these tips on location, retrieving, and more.
Thats a a great little article
yes it is though the shooting isn't what makes the woodcock hunt great is working them with a good gun dog that makes it awesome. Article could of focused on that more.
Surprised there’s no mention of the crisis that the species is in! We lost 50% of the population that existed in 1968. The annual population decline has accelerated from an average of -.85% per year to now almost 2.5% per year for the last decade. Some people I know already question whether it’s ethically sound to hunt whats left. We’ll be down to one quarter of the former 1968 population in another decade. I wonder at what point the hunt will be shut down due to conservation concerns. I’m glad I got to hunt them 45 years ago !
That's definitely not good news. Where did you find the data? I understood the only reason we could hunt them was because of the population rebound.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenelon
Its not all doom and gloom. Hunting for them is as good as ever.
I assure you that hunting for Woodcock is most definitely “not good “as ever. You must be shorter in the tooth than me, and never had the privilege to hunt Woodcock back when the population was more than double what it is now. It was incredible. You didn'tQuote:
Originally Posted by finsfurfeathers
need a dog to easily shoot a limit. In good habitat you would be flushing two to four birds in 150 yards of walking. Even better if you had a dog. No need for a pointing breed. The family Lab was all I ever used. When I was twelve my buddy had an Irish Setter that was dumb as a garden shovel but it had pure pointing instinct. We never trained him but that dog was good. We used to roar laughing as kids because he would lock up before he even got into the swamp. He’d keep doing it when you were trying to leave the bush before dark. Fall migration was so big you had a couple of months of good hunting. We also had healthy Ruffed Grouse populations back then and you could usually get shooting at at least a dozen birds in a two hour hunt in good habitat. Find any stand with middle aged poplar or shrub willow, with a conifer understory, and the ground was solid white paint during migrations. We ’d sit out in lawnchairs in spring at dark when we were kids and you would see and hear non-stop peenting and displays.
Sadly the sky was full of bats as well. There is no good news for the status of the remaining continental population. It will only continue to decline. My bet is that the current loss of 2.5% per year will dramatically increase with time. We will see the effects of climate warming and the loss of more habitat as we pour more concrete for the world population that will double again in 30 years! I’ll be long gone by then, but I’m pretty sure the “young” readers on this forum will see the extirpation of the species in their time.
Kind of feel bad you hunted in the glory days and have become so demoralized. Fortunately for me came on in on the tails of the next generation. Still have a 2 month window of good hunting. A dozen point day is the norm. On the up side hunter competition is near zero and pretty much have the birds to myself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenelon
20ga IC with #7 shot?Quote:
Originally Posted by finsfurfeathers
yup 20g with 71/2 upfront and #6 as backup though toying with the idea of going 28 g over/underQuote:
Originally Posted by trimmer21
I’d go #8 over/under with cylinder choke. 7.5 as second choice. Number 6 steel as alternative. Doesn’t take much to knock them down and shooting is usually less than 25yds from my experience.
"The most common shooting error with woodcock is shooting too soon" LOL
Fenelon, thanks for the historical perspective, but I'll hunt them as long as it's legal or until they're gone.
People hunt grouse in some areas where they're lucky to flush one bird a day.
There was a book I read, perhaps it was Laverack... they used to shoot over 400+ woodcock in the UK per day. Now we're talking...
Everything goes the way of a dodo bird, this planet is overpopulated.
Look at caribou in Labrador.
Well saw it for myself. Took a chap out hunting as he regailed me of stories of going to Quebec and flushing 40-50 woodcock a day. His dog died and felt sorry for the guy and offered for him to come with me. At the first point I flush the bird and it sound like both barrels of his double touched off before the bird got shoulder height. This repeated again on the second bird where I suggest he might want to wait for the bird to clear the dogs head before shooting. After the third bird realized hwhy he always talked about flushes but never mention actual kills. Rest of the hunt took him around the bush avoiding the more woodcock proven spots and called it a day ASAP. There is a difference between being a snap shot and shooting too quick.Quote:
Originally Posted by vom Dufenshmirtz
I would have called it quits the first time he shot over my dog, so easy to make a mistake and the dog pays for it.
We used to have a hell of a time hitting them as kids because all we had was either a Cooey or Baikal single shot 12 ga that had super full chokes. If you hit them at less than 20yds they were blown to
hamburger. When i was 11 I got a Mossberg bolt action 20 ga that had a Cutts Compensator screw choke on it. It had what I called the barn door pattern if you cranked it all the way. You couldn’t miss with that gun. I will never forget the one swale in Courtice that was simply incredible. It was woodcock heaven and was consistant every year. It would have been 1975 to 1979. The swale had an overstory of balsam poplar and an understory of 4 foot white cedars and scatteted shrub willow. It was only about 200yds long and about 85yds wide. You couldn’t go six feet without seeing paint. You sometimes put 3 or 4 birds up at a time and this was just walking without a dog. As 12 year old kids we’d usually do a pile of missing and maybe fire 15 shells each in one pass. You’d flush multiple new birds when you tried to walk the 40 yds to get a second try at a short flushed bird. This swale was this densely loaded with birds almost every time we hunted it. Sadly, it’s concrete and houses now. All the brook trout streams of my childhood have now been destroyed, as have all the thick raspberry cane treed fencelines. All my haunts that were filthy with grouse and cottontail have vanished as well. Class A1 soils, the best we have for growing food and its now covered in houses and stores. What a terrible time it would be now to be a kid.
The population is one main worry, but the saddest part is the loss of habitat for these birds to reproduce and find food. I find that farmers, construction etc are destroying prime habitat. Also, many properties don't hold the young growth that woodcock prefer. Getting access to prime habitat is also a problem. In the last few years I have found the birds are coming down later and later. We would hunt religiously hunt the opener to Halloween and find many birds. Now the November deer season seems to be prime time to find birds, and God forbid we hunt a property that deer hunters use. A couple years ago, I was denied access to a property in mid October because the deer hunters told the landowner not to let anyone hunt there cause it would scare the deer. He actually told me to come back after the deer hunt. Well a foot of snow later chased the birds out of the area!
With woodcock hunting its a constant battle between getting access to prime properties, habitat loss and sometimes fighting with the deer hunters.
Just my opinion!