by Timothy C. Flanigan
All images provided by Timothy C. Flanigan.
Seeing the dark-eyed barred owl rise silently from the forest floor with my very-much-alive woodcock in its talons sparked a realization that the intrepid American woodcock lives a perilous existence daily, not just during the short, fall gunning season. The timberdoodle shares the spotlight with the ruffed grouse as North America’s classic combination of upland game birds. Those addicted to the pursuit of woodcock are typically super fans who revere this elusive little bird with deep-seated enthusiasm.
The occasion of the owl-interrupted woodcock hunt was also an introduction of an inexperienced hunter and his beautiful, young English setter, Dottie, to the pursuit of timberdoodles amid the hawthorns. Steve thought the pursuit of these little birds to be beneath him and his fine dog. Dottie was simply eager to hunt, and her first encounter with woodcock turned her into a quivering statue.
Fortunately, a flight was in, and Dottie’s nose skillfully located numerous, perfectly camouflaged woodcock beneath the hawthorn tangles. Our hunt led us to a high plateau of dense hawthorn trees interspersed with small openings of goldenrod and edged by a very open, park-like stand of red maples. At the very edge of the cover, Dottie froze with her head locked hard left, toward her master. I flushed the hen woodcock for Steve’s gun, but the dense cover forced the bird to cut a hard right to avoid the much too open maple stand. At my Browning’s report, the bird spiraled down into the open maples, merely wing-tipped.
Steve ordered Dottie to “Fetch,” and we hurried to the covert’s hardwood edge only to observe the spectacle of a large barred owl rising on silent wings, clutching my woodcock as it turned its head to look back at the orange-clad hunters and the classy dog that had discovered her. That hapless bird completed my bag limit, so we walked back to our vehicle with a unique memory also in the bag.
We had just witnessed the stark reality of what “cover” really means to wildlife. “The Hillside,” as this large woodcock covert is known by my hunting companions, isn’t an easy hunt, but its dense, thorny, hide-tearing cover draws migrating woodcock as though magnetic to them. It’s our proof site for the onset of the fall migration. If there are birds on The Hillside, they’re almost certainly in our other hunting spots.
A few years later, the state’s wildlife agency’s photographer, Hal, followed two of us and my Brittanys on another “Hillside” woodcock hunt to obtain PR photos for his employer. A flight was in, and the photographer quickly filled the storage media of his digital cameras and retreated to his vehicle for more. As we held our position, my Brits pointed an impatient woodcock that suddenly flushed downhill toward the photographer’s vehicle. We held our fire and heard Hal shout, “WOW! Did you see that?”
Returning to our position, he excitedly described the line-drive-like flight of the woodcock with a Cooper’s hawk hot on its stubby tail. The pair had streaked across a cover opening and the public highway within mere feet of Hal and into another hawthorn tangle. “It got away! The hawk lost! That woodcock dove into the cover, and the hawk flared off. Man, that was something to see,” he exclaimed.
The following fall, I was privileged to share a similar observation involving a sharp-shinned hawk in hot pursuit of the fastest flying woodcock I’ve ever seen. With the hawk about to strike, the imperiled doodle suddenly dove straight down, bullet-like, into a multiflora rose tangle foiling the predator’s intent.
My hunting companion Al Geis, a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service wildlife biologist and I were awed by the spectacle. Al, also known as “Doc,” quickly noted the importance of proper cover and the woodcock’s skilled and intuitive use of it. “Their life depends on it,” he said. “We hunters impact their population very little and for a very limited time each fall, but the woodcock fights for survival every day of the year.”
The value of dense cover was even more clearly illustrated during a recent springtime falconry hunt with friends, their talented rabbit-hunting beagles and a brace of red-tailed hawks. I’d often spoken of the ample rabbit numbers within my woodcock coverts, so it was no surprise when Greg called one March evening to ask if I’d be willing to take him, his brother and their hawks into some of my pet woodcock coverts for cottontail rabbits. “Sure thing,” I answered, and that weekend, the hunt was on.
Five exuberant beagles made the hawthorn thickets of our local state park ring with their music as they trailed numerous rabbits from one thorn patch to another, followed very closely by experienced and highly skilled red-tailed rabbit catchers. Each time the dog’s trailing music changed directions, the hawk relocated strategically ahead to ambush the cottontail. Chase-after-chase ended with failure until one hapless rabbit chose to cross a mowed hiking trail and the alert hawk dropped on it like a deadly rock.
After lunch, we relocated to The Hillside to try again with a fresh hawk and refreshed beagles. There too, the dogs flushed and trailed successive rabbits, but the cottontail’s skillful use of the dense protective cover foiled the falconer’s best attempts. At the end of the day, the falconers and their dogs posed for a group photo session that was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a goshawk streaking through the covert.
The ever-present threat of avian predation forces wildlife to seek and deftly use a protective cover. It’s, therefore, no surprise that woodcock typically sit perfectly motionless beneath the protective boughs of thorn-infested shrubs and the dense stems of dogwoods, arrowwood, witch hazel, gooseberry and others. The woodcock’s nearly perfect camouflage conceals them from predatory eyes in the sky, and the plant stems shield them from swooping attacks.
These few insights into the world of avian predation clearly illustrated the value of proper cover and how woodcock use it to survive. Their stereotypical flight characteristics of topping out of cover and immediately diving back into it is a learned survival instinct that foils both hawks and wing shooters. So too is the timberdoodle’s other habit of low, fast, cork-screw flight through the densest cover. Woodcock avoid flying through open space like the plague, making them exceptionally sporty targets for upland bird hunters, while they charm bird dogs with their reluctance to fly.
Savvy gunners learn to approach pointed doodles from the thickest escape cover side to push the birds into more open space for optimal shooting opportunities. Open chokes, super-fine shot and lite, short, quick-handling shotguns are vital to woodcock hunting success. So too is the willingness to push through the most inhospitable, skin-tearing cover to mine woodcock gold. Scratched noses, scarred hands and bleeding earlobes are part of the price paid for success and further proof of the exceptional value of proper cover.
Beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder – like the many wild critters that call such dense, damp places home, including songbirds, deer, turkeys, bears and more. Such coverts are readily recognized by veteran timberdoodle hunters who are drawn to them because they surely attract night-migrating flights of woodcock. Their value is evident and unquestionable to both factions, but unfortunately, these same thickets are commonly viewed as nuisance wastelands by the uninformed, and they’re especially attractive to land developers.
That reality is clearly stated in the late Don Johnson’s book; “Grouse & Woodcock – A Gunner’s Guide,” wherein the author decries the loss of precious wildlife habitat by surmising that, “Since we’re not finding many grouse and woodcock in shopping centers and on golf courses these days, we can conclude that shopping carts and 7-irons are deadlier to those species than shotgun will ever be.” It’s the hunter, not the non-hunting environmentalists, who truly knows America’s classic combination of game birds and cares about the wonderfully wild places they live. The Hillside covert is just one of these very special places that we must respect and protect.
