Woodcock

[DJP]

Someone educate me on these birds. I am in the woods a good bit, but know nothing about them. I honestly don't know anyone in the upstate who hunts them regularly.
I saw one about two years ago for the first time. It flushed and I was sure it was a woodcock. Never saw another until today when I jumped three in a bottom along a creek of a property we might list for sale. Are these birds local like quail....likely to stay in the same area? Or do they move around in a broad range more like doves. School me.

[smallwater]

I hunt them on occasion in the Upstate. They do migrate, and it seems a little early for them. I would say I'm a novice, but it's fun, and we see more of them than we do wild quail.

We just hunt them like quail around swampy areas.

[NUTZ]

Migrators.

[NUTZ]

They have showed up.

[tman]

They're birds. They fly around, but sometimes they sit still. If you shoot them with a gun, they will die. Also, they make noises.

[DJP]

They're birds. They fly around, but sometimes they sit still. If you shoot them with a gun, they will die. Also, they make noises.

Should I use tss loads?

[Duck cutter]

Should I use tss loads?

no but you need a kick's Xtra full

[GobblerHntr]

Jenks you take me there and tag along I'll show you what you need to know.

Hell I'll even bring a proper gun

[Gone South]

They're birds. They fly around, but sometimes they sit still. If you shoot them with a gun, they will die. Also, they make noises.

Wow, quite helpful I must say

[cut em']

They love a privet bottom. Know a fella that has a dog and hunts them on the regular with great success.

[Two Barrels]

Now that I have the dog back, I would be glad to bring him and you can do the shooting.

TB

[riverrat8991]

I've seen them in swamps never shot any. Have always wanted to hunt them but really don't need to add on to the pike of stuff I already hunt

[tman]

Should I use tss loads?

Some of the little birds REQUIRE it. some you can kill with good ol fashion lead

[BigBrother]

I love those little brown birds.

[TheVisorGuy]

I got a bottom on the sandy river in chester that is flat loaded with them. Never been intereted in killing any

[Calibogue]

They're pretty weak little birds and a light 2.75 lead load in 8 or 9 will do just fine!
They blow out of cover harder than a quail and often its so thick you hardly see them.
Throw some lead their direction and if one pellet hits em they are on the dirt.
They also throw a lot of scent so they're pretty easy for a dog to find.
Once your dog gets a nose full they'll get all giddy about it....have fun!
Pointing dogs not required but you damn sure don't want a dog out of gun range from you.

[thawhacker]

I got a bottom on the sandy river in chester that is flat loaded with them. Never been intereted in killing any

well lets shoot some of them!!

[Spur hunter]

Just brushed over the responses so far so some of this may be a repeat. They migrate through here but are subject to show up from September through April. I know I hear and see them early and late through those times. They like drainages, bottom land and will hold tight for a pointed dog. If you flush them and miss they usually will set down within 50-75 yards. Makes them a bit easier to kill than wild quail. They are like ducks, cold will push them into and out of the area. Beautiful birds and good eating IMO.

[MorningWoody]

Plan on hunting them in January a couple times, our club in the upstate has plenty of habitat along the rivers and they are chocked full. Flushed a couple up this past weekend filling up deer feeders. The only hard thing about hunting them is seeing them when they flush because the areas they are in are usually the thickest spots.

[Rubberhead*]

I fell in love with woodcock as a youngster. I killed my first one with a Sheridan Blue Streak pellet gun when I was 11 or 12. He was nestled in a bramble thicket in the woods behind our house and I shot him on the ground. I read castoff copies of Field and Stream at Moncks Corner’s Friendly Barber Shop and was a budding birder so I knew exactly what I was shooting but when I got home mom said, “boy, you done shot a sandpipa’.”

It was a long several hours before Dad got home from work but, having grown up in the northern Appalachian Mountains, he knew exactly what I had done. I got the praise I wanted from dad along with instructions on how to clean it. Mom shallow fired the dark breast and white meat legs and thighs the same way she fries chicken. It’s amazing how five minutes can chart a course for the rest of someone’s life but that’s what that first meal of woodcock did for me.

The woods where I killed that first woodcock were about 100 yards wide and ran all the way down to the upper Cooper River. They were bordered on the far side by a well-built and well-marked fence that indicated the boundaries of Gippy Plantation. A small, manmade creek separated my unfenced backyard from the unclaimed strip that served as the source for many of my childhood adventures. I had built a makeshift bridge out of two cedar trees that I chopped down with the claw-end of our household hammer. I almost never did any homework when I was a kid mostly because of all the time I spent in that strip of woods looking to shoot the ghost of a red fox that I saw on several occasions. I never got a shot at the fox and I never saw another woodcock there but I did kill a handful of squirrels in those woods before I was given a boat and a Remington 1100 and became a duck hunter.

In the late 1980’s, when the duck season was shorter than the woodcock season, I learned to pass shot woodcock. I had seen the birds flying right at daylight when I was scouting for blackwater flyways that the current crop of wood ducks would be using. I bought an open-choked 20 gauge side-by-side and joined the woodcock wing survey. I think there were a total of seven of the South Carolinians in the survey during those years. I never shot a five-bird limit; never even shot a three-bird limit once populations crashed but did manage a lot of singles and several braces of woodcock shot during the 10-minute window when they move from the nocturnal feeding grounds to the uplands where they’d spend the day sleeping and digesting last night’s meal.

One thing about shooting daybreak woodcock is that you have to remember to dump the Jonah earthworms out of your game bag after a successful hunt.

Look for a copy of Come October; there is no better source for woodcock shooting prose and lore. Good luck on your woodcock journey.