doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Woodcock Sighting!

In my Dads waning years, we did a short hunt in Iowa, along the edge of a cornfield bordering a brushy creek. Dad was on the creek edge, I was in the corn. Dad shot 7 times on the short walk. I asked him, when we got to the end of the field what he was shooting at. "Woodcock, missed the same one every time, they arent any damn good to eat anyway"...

The snipe I've seen have some kind of death wish. They do that whirring helicopter takeoff, fly in circles making there funky noise and then land in the same spot they flushed.

Snipe do have jet boosters, though! BTW, ever been taken
"snipe huntin" at night?

March is the month when I have seen woodcock in Central Park in Manhattan, doing a stop-over during their migration north. It's great to have them visit a park with 8 million people around it. A while ago, a friend of mine saw a woodcock walking around a garage in Manhattan. I used to live in Brooklyn (only a few million people there) and my German shorthair pointed a woodcock in our backyard. I have hunted these amazing little birds in the Fall for decades in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New England - wherever I have been able to go and chase them. They are a treasure here in the mid-Atlantic, where pheasant, grouse and quail in many areas are fast disappearing. They are also a wonderful rich feast, baked for 20 minutes or so with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream.

Hey - that reminds me.

I found a dead woodcock a few springs ago in downtown Boston.

It was on the street, right out in front of the Municipal Court building (I'm sure there's a clever joke in their somewhere).

Felt bad for the little guy. Must have gotten lost on his way up the coast.

OWD

Worth Mathewson got me interested in Snipe. I bought a limited edition of his 'Replections on Snipe' and reprint of J J Pringle's recording of all the snipe he dusted.

I told myself that I'd hunt them one day. Also told myself I'd hunt rail one day. A lot of days have come and gone, I hope it's not getting too late for "one day"..........

You guys have fun with all this talk about "Bog suckers"--I never shot many woodcock back in my grouse hunting days (mid to late 1970's mainly) as my English Setter would refuse to pick up and retrieve to my hand those long billed stinky birds- she a was a lady indeed, and her good taste in ignoring them while dead and dying in the October leaves spoke volumes to me- she would point the little buggers like a champ, just as tightly as she would the bobwhites we had in MI back then--but would zip right past a dead 'doodle' on the ground- it that were a grouse or a pheasant- Bingo--

So- screw the woodcocks- I'm waiting for Spring and the wood
-chucks instead. Nothing like a one shot kill in an April alfalfa pasture at 250 yards with your .220 Swift 'Chuck-Croaker'--nice sight picture, breath held, gentle pressure on the Timney trigger under your right index finger- and the view in the glass of the Leupold of a fat porky "pasture Piggy" being vaporized by a Hornady moly-coated 50 grainer at 4755 fps-sorta makes me think of old "Deacon" Andy griffith- "Aunt bea, you shore know how to make a man's day"-- Yassir!!

My ankles hurt just thinking about Snipe!

Guys used to decoy snipe, as depicted in this print by A.B. Frost:

http://www.printsoldandrare.com/hunting/239hun.jpg

OWD

Gregg, "snipe" was the broad, collective term used to describe all shorebirds back when they were legally hunted. Wilson Snipe which are legally hunted today don't decoy. Here's a limit from last month. The gun is a 1957 Ithaca M37 20 gauge.