Originally Posted by Buzz
Larry, Have you ever seen a woodcock fly off like a grouse? I sure have…flew like rockets and even made a similar explosive like noise typical of grouse. I’ve often wondered if the slow one’s are the birds which are exhausted after their long haul migration….and the fast ones are the well rested. I think so.

Buzz, living where I do (northern Wisconsin), we have a pretty fair population of local birds. I've certainly seen flight birds that you almost had to nudge with your boot to get them airborne. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a woodcock's flight I'd compare to a rocket. It makes sense that they do fly faster when they're in the open, like flying down a trail or something.

Comment on flight birds vs locals: I've seen several articles that tell us woodcock breed and raise their young a lot further south than we once thought. I hunted them in Iowa for about a decade before I ever headed north to hunt them. Back then, the season opened in mid-September. We always found woodcock on our opening day hunts in northern Iowa. Pretty obvious that they wouldn't have been flight birds that early in the fall. And it turns out that some woodcock nest a good bit further south than Iowa.