Gunning for long bills

[Fenelon]

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.

[vom Dufenshmirtz]

"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.

[finsfurfeathers]

"The most common shooting error with woodcock is shooting too soon" LOL
.

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.

[sabmgb]

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.

[Fenelon]

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.

[Frank16]

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!