[Wild Skies]

I received the following in an e-mail, found it interesting and thought youse might find it interesting, too.

PDJ Pass Along Email


Grouse and Woodcock Shooting

By Steve Smith
If you've spent any time at all in the grouse and woodcock covers, you have likely figured out that woodcock are easier to hit than ruffed grouse. But how much easier?

Ken Szabo from Ohio runs a nifty little outfit called The Loyal Order of Dedicated Grouse Hunters. He puts out a newsy monthly newsletter called Grouse Tales and sells some nice products as well. (I'm pretty sure Ken doesn’t remember me, but we met at a RGS banquet in Ohio more than 30 years ago.)

Every year, he asks his members to keep a log of their grouse-hunting success: days and hours hunted, flushes, flushes per hour, type of dog and shotgun used, percentage of flushes they were able to get shots at, and how many of those shots bagged a bird. This year, he also asked for the number of woodcock flushes, flushes shot at, and successful shots, too.

The percentages of flushed grouse that the cooperators got shots at came out close to the group's long-term average for grouse = 24.9 percent. For woodcock, the same group got shots at 32.27 percent, which you would expect because woodcock are generally in sight longer and are less likely to flush wild. But shooting success? For grouse it was 33.98 percent, but woodcock a whopping 55.99 percent. And remember, though woodcock lie better and fly slower, the majority of woodcock shooting takes place while the leaves are still up, while grouse, not being migratory, are hunted well into the fall when visibility is better.

Of course, as you can imagine, this gang can shoot. But if their success rates can be applied to grouse and woodcock hunters nationwide, you have to flush four grouse to get a shot at one, then you’ll hit one of three you shoot at. That means it takes a dozen grouse in the air to produce one bird in the oven.

For woodcock, you get a shot at one in three. I would have thought that number would be higher, but a number of the cooperators had very low woodcock shot-at numbers – one fellow flushed 123 woodcock and shot at none (there’s a purist for you); another flushed 70 and shot at eight, killing six – that had to be a guy working a pup. With a shooting success rate better than one bird for two shells, it would take only six woodcock up to bring one down – just about twice the grouse success.

Just an FYI: A quick glance through the data shows that those hunting with flushing dogs did about the same as those with pointing breeds on either bird.