Read the original article in The Upland Almanac
Every day on the southern tip of New Jersey, a stream of trucks and cars lines up for passage on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, which has been carting passengers across the Delaware Bay since the 1960s. Cape May has also been a rendezvous point for American woodcock since long before there was a ferry — or a city — at the spot.
“When woodcock are coming south, they sort of bunch up before they cross the Delaware,” says Ben Larson, a forest conservation director for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society.
New Jersey’s human population is thriving, but its woodcock population, as elsewhere, has been trending in the other direction. A recently formed chapter of the American Woodcock Society is doing what it can to keep timberdoodles hunting for earthworms throughout New Jersey’s forests for generations to come.
The Hydro-Ax leaves freshly cut terrain behind to allow for the growth of the next generation of woodcock habitat in New Jersey. (Photo/Mark Dreyfus)
Their challenge: New Jersey has lost more early successional forest than any other state in the region, Larson says, and adds, “Diversifying habitats in New Jersey is really, really key.”
That’s because as hundreds of thousands of acres of young forest habitat that woodcock crave have disappeared, the Garden State has seen a corresponding decline in the number of these robust little fliers.
The American Woodcock Conservation Plan, developed through the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and released in 2008, remains a rich source of information about woodcock habitat. It noted that in Conservation Region 30 alone, which cuts across the southern part of New Jersey and includes its coastal areas, about 778,000 acres of small-diameter forest provided habitat from the 1960s to the 1980s. That number had fallen to about 139,000 acres by 2008. In the region, the prevalence of seedlings and saplings — young forest habitat — dropped from more than 60% to a little over 10%.
Statewide, New Jersey was down to about 196,800 acres total of small-diameter forest. It would have to cut nearly 10,000 acres of forest a year just to maintain the status quo of young forests, but much of that land is in private hands.
Population counts like the annual American Woodcock Singing-Ground Survey run by federal and state agencies, indicate the state has lost a large proportion of its woodcock since the 1970s. Based on this index, the conservation plan estimated New Jersey’s singing male population has declined from nearly 31,000 to a little over 5,000.
To counter that trend, Mark Dreyfus, president of the Jersey Shore American Woodcock Society chapter, organized his group in 2020. At the beginning of 2025, it was the only RGS/AWS chapter devoted specifically to woodcock in the Mid-Atlantic region. (The organization has several chapters in other states and is working to add more in the East.)
Volunteers for the Jersey Shore American Woodcock Society gather for a tree planting event in 2023. (Photo/Mark Dreyfus)
For Dreyfus, the effort is personal. He loves spending a winter Saturday in South Jersey with his brown and white Brittanys, alone or with another member of the chapter, pushing through thick brush along the Delaware Bay in pursuit of woodcock. Most of the chapter members share a similar love for hunting and bird dogs, and they’re driven by a desire to keep one of New Jersey’s last huntable wild game birds from disappearing.
Training dogs is his passion. “It just gets into your blood,” Dreyfus says. “… I was lucky enough to have some mentors that showed me woodcock down in South Jersey, and I just fell in love with it.”
He sees woodcock as one of the last viable options for wild bird hunting in New Jersey. Other game birds like bobwhite quail and ruffed grouse have suffered even more dramatic losses than woodcock, according to state wildlife reports. The hunting season for grouse was recently shut down entirely.
“Nobody wanted to shoot the last grouse in New Jersey,” Dreyfus says.
He knows his group isn’t going to be able to fund thousands of acres of habitat to restore, but Dreyfus wants to contribute in small ways, working with state officials and showing them that residents do care about this little game bird.
“Critical factors in the mix to get things done (are) to have a little money and to have passionate individuals to work with partners and sometimes be the squeaky wheel,” Larson says. Agencies respond to good suggestions and persistent citizens, he observes, and Dreyfus and the Jersey Shore Chapter have been very strategic and effective in working with New Jersey Fish and Wildlife.
Their advocacy goes both ways. When groups like the AWS chapter rally to public hearings, other non-profits and concerned citizens see that habitat efforts aren’t just ideas the state is pushing, says Peter Winkler, bureau chief of New Jersey’s Bureau of Land Management.
Chapter board member Ralph Di Iorio marks an area before the state cuts it to create woodcock habitat. (Photo/Mark Dreyfus)
Over the past decade, New Jersey Fish and Wildlife has sponsored a number of woodcock-specific habitat projects in wildlife management areas. These are very modest in size, considering the tens of thousands of acres that foresters dream of, but Dreyfus and Winkler point to increasing momentum.
The state has estimated about 20,000 acres of early successional forest vanished from 1986 to 2022 just in tracts that make up wildlife management areas, so the Bureau of Land Management is shooting to restore a similar amount of lost acreage on these lands in coming years, Winkler says.
A showcase for woodcock habitat restoration is Assunpink Wildlife Management Area, east of Trenton and not far from I-95. Informed by the American Woodcock Conservation Plan, work began here in the early 2000s and has expanded since. That WMA alone features 120 acres managed specifically for woodcock, including ground suitable for mating displays. The trees are cut on about an eight-year rotation to keep the habitat fresh.
Winkler points to about 15 other WMA sites around the state with efforts underway specifically for woodcock. Statewide his department is managing more than 8,000 acres as early succession habitat, he says. That includes projects aimed at other species like quail or songbirds, but woodcock appreciate the same cover.
James Luciano takes part in a habitat creation project with the Jersey Shore AWS chapter in 2023. (Photo/Mark Dreyfus)
The work is far from cheap. State employees use a powerful Hydro-Ax mulcher to chew through undergrowth and young trees with ease. It’s efficient, but costs thousands of dollars per day.
Dreyfus, who highly praises the work state officials are doing, loves to see that mulcher at work, and the chapter pitches in some money to help out. While their donations are a drop in the bucket for these costs, Dreyfus credits the group’s advocacy and spending with having an impact on New Jersey’s efforts.
The chapter recently celebrated news that state officials had planned to invest about $100,000 in new habitat projects at the end of 2024 and into 2025 — the equivalent of about 50 days of cutting. According to Winkler, annual spending in the Central Region has only been around about $60,000 for the past number of years.
“I almost fell over. It was amazing,” Dreyfus reported at a chapter meeting.
Once the Hydro-Ax has cleared the way, the Jersey Shore chapter also organizes tree planting events so that in a few years, the freshly mowed acreage will host the clusters of young saplings that draw woodcock.
Volunteer Stephanie Carbin helps plant trees in 2023 at one of the chapter’s yearly events at New Jersey Wildlife Management Areas. (Photo/Mark Dreyfus)
Since its founding, the group has trekked around the state for a series of restoration projects at wildlife management areas. In 2021, the group planted 150 alder trees on a two-acre field in Monmouth County. In Salem County in 2022, it planted 200 silky dogwoods on seven acres. The next year, it came together to plant 100 northern bayberries on six acres in Cape May County. In 2024, the chapter returned to Monmouth County to plant 126 alder trees, along with a bonus 20 persimmon trees to benefit wild turkeys, while also installing protector tubes on the saplings.
Alders are ideal for these plantings, Winkler says, because they’re scrubby and top out at 15-20 feet. Other trees might be chosen based on location. Bayberry, for example, has a high salt tolerance for areas closer to the coast.
Winkler notes that a handful of employees are responsible for snowplowing, stocking pheasants and trout, mowing and other maintenance on the Central Region’s 110,000 acres of land. Since they’re spread so thin, they’re glad when they see Dreyfus and his gang of tree planters arrive. “We can make a big impact on one weekend,” he says.
“It’s really fun, actually,” Dreyfus says. “Everybody gets to get their hands a little dirty.”
“It’s been great,” Winkler says of the partnership. Dreyfus makes an effective liaison, able to translate the bureau’s plans to chapter members in layman’s terms.
The downside here is that these efforts will likely never get New Jersey back to the habitat heyday of the 1970s.
“No state has enough habitat to support 1970 densities (of woodcock),” the American Woodcock Conservation Plan concluded. As a more realistic goal, it recommended shooting for comparable woodcock density levels on the habitat that can be restored.
That outcome would please Dreyfus in his goal of being able to keep spending Saturday hours stomping through thorny thickets.
“To be able to get out and go away and just kind of have a little bit of peace and quiet and walk into the woods and hear the tinkle of a bell, it’s perfect,” he says.
(Note: Tom Cooper, Central Flyway Representative for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Mark Seamans, FWS biologist, provided invaluable help by explaining key aspects of woodcock habitat needs and the American Woodcock Conservation Plan.)
