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 seasons. 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 was beneath him and his fine dog. Dottie was eager to hunt, but her first encounter with a woodcock turned her into a quivering statue.
Fortunately, a migratory flight was in, and Dottie’s nose 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, which 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 in the bag.
We’d just witnessed the stark reality of what “cover” really means to wildlife. “The Hillside,” as my hunting companions know this large woodcock covert as, is not an easy hunt. 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,” then they’re almost certainly in our other coverts.
A few years later, the state wildlife agency photographer, Hal, followed two of us and my Brittanys on another “Hillside” woodcock hunt to obtain some press release photos for his employer. The birds were plentiful, and the photographer quickly filled the storage media of his digital cameras before retreating 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?”
Upon 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 and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist, and I were awed by the spectacle. Al – aka “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 the hunt was on that weekend.
Five exuberant beagles made the hawthorn thickets of our local state park ring with their music while trailing successive rabbits from one thorn patch to another, closely followed 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 our day, the falconers and their dogs posed for a group photo session interrupted by the sudden appearance of a goshawk streaking through the cover.
The ever-present threat of avian predation forces wildlife to seek and deftly use a protective cover. It is, therefore, no surprise that woodcock typically sit nearly motionless beneath the protective boughs of thorn-infested shrubs and the dense stems of dogwoods, arrowwood, witch hazel, gooseberry and others. The woodcock’s near perfect camouflage conceals them from predatory eyes in the sky, and the plant stems shield them from swooping attacks.
These insights into avian predation clearly illustrate 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 wingshooters. So, too, is the timberdoodle’s habit of fast zigging and zagging cork-screw escape flight through the densest cover and avoidance of cover openings.
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 ear lobes are part of the price paid for success and further proof of the exceptional value of proper cover.
Woodcock cover beauty is indeed in the eye of the many wild critters that call these dense, riparian habitats home, including warblers and cuckoos, deer, turkeys, bears and more. Experienced upland hunters are drawn to them as surely as they attract night-migrating woodcock flights.
The dense, thorny cover deters avian predators, and the rich riparian floodplain soils host abundant earthworm populations. Ruffed grouse recognize the security of such covers and annually glean the cornucopia of soft mass that thrives in these riparian buffers.
These wildlife-friendly habitats are often viewed as wastelands of thorny brush by the uninformed, but golf course developers drool over these level plains of damp, dark alluvial soils. Unfortunately, vast expanses of chemically treated grass constitute an ecological desert for the wild species that thrive in hawthorn and alder thickets. Three such displacements of prime bird cover have occurred in my local area, yet the birds still flourish in portions of the remaining cover.
That reality is well 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 who truly knows and appreciates the intrinsically wild nature of America’s classic combination of game birds. It’s the hunter who truly cares about the wonderfully wild places where the wildest of wild critters live. The “Hillside” covert and its adjacent stream bottom is one of these exceptional places we must cherish, respect and protect.
Tim Flanigan is an outdoor writer, book author, wildlife photographer and retired wildlife conservation officer, but, more importantly, he’s an American woodcock super fan. Tim eventually retired his browning over/under in favor of the camera, to study and record the woodcock’s fascinating lifestyle. He donates much of his photography to support the RGS & AWS mission, and in 2020, he gave 100 copies of his book, “GROUSE & WOODCOCK –The Birds Of My Life” to the organization, in support of fundraising.
