Covert names: let's hear 'em

[Andrew Sacco]

I name coverts that have consistently produced birds over the previous several years. Each name has a meaning. I have more, but these are my better ones. Let's hear yours.

Faceplant- name explains is

Betrayal- took a friend here who ended up being much less than a friend

Holy Corner- consistent producer

Baby's Graveyard- hidden within is an 1800's graveyard with headstones, all babies

Shithead- got here after an hour and a half drive and realized I forgot my shotgun

Granola Head- near Ithaca NY

Libtard Heaven- closer to Ithaca, NY, where I see men in spandex trail jogging

Porcupine- Yup, more than once until he became dead

Pisser- nature calls and a pair of grouse erupt giving me what would have been my easiest chance in life at a double

[Mills Morrison]

We have deer stands down here, but it is the same idea

Gator Hole Stand

Graveyard Stand

Turnaround Stand

Favorite Stand

2nd Favorite Stand

Lucy's Stand (my niece)

[Garry L Gordon]

Alarm clock
Wolf trap
Boat guy
Bear track
Well lot
Big gunshot
Little gunshot
Pit road
23 Skidoo
Dead bobcat
(Many more)

[Daryl Corona]

The Graveyard Covey. In the middle of a copse of trees where a 1700's homesite was located with children and adults, the oldest being in their 30's.

The Garden Covey. An abandoned farm's garden patch, overgrown but still producing asparagus.

Vietnam. A thicket of cat briars and blown down trees that always produced nice bucks during the season.

All three located on a farm on Maryland's Eastern shore outside of Cambridge, MD.

[Andrew Sacco]

Love it. I am kinda glad I can't name one Gator anything as we don't have gators!! And thank God I don't have a Grizzly covert of any kind. I could, however, name a skunk and bobcat covert if pressed to.

[Daniel Carter]

Dad's double hill.
Blizzard meadow
He's flapping hill
The devil's garden
The lawyer's camp
The cars
The wood cutter's camp
The orchard
The cemetery
Old schoolhouse
Reign of terror corner
Silas and Hazel's
The professor's
Over the bridge
The snow machine trail
The tractor shed

[Harold Lee Pickens]

Genes Love Shack:
an abandoned small school bus located back near a favorite grouse cover. Someone had painted that on its side.

[James L. Martin]

Old Lady
Hillside
Swamp Edge
Barking Dog
3 Ponds
Thorn Apple
4 Corners
Barberry
Flatbark
Rock Quarry
Rickie's Spot
George's Spot
Ice Cream Spot

[Andrew Sacco]

Man, those are some awesome names! Reign of Terror Corner? : ) Gene's Love Shack? That's great.

[Daniel Carter]

Man, those are some awesome names! Reign of Terror Corner? : ) Gene's Love Shack? That's great.

To answer the question mark after Reign of terror corner. Woodcock hunting with 2 sons and granddaughter. A woodcock jumped by one and missed twice flew by the other two and each missed twice. It is in the corner of an overgrown to alders hay field, i marked it near an opening and shot it when it flushed. Son asked if i got it and i answered '' his reign of terror is over''since then it is known by that name. Blizzard meadow got it's name when younger son shot a woodcock flying low over milkweeds in a strong wind and it looked like a snowstorm with the seed heads flying.

[Andrew Sacco]

To answer the question mark after Reign of terror corner. Woodcock hunting with 2 sons and granddaughter. A woodcock jumped by one and missed twice flew by the other two and each missed twice. It is in the corner of an overgrown to alders hay field, i marked it near an opening and shot it when it flushed. Son asked if i got it and i answered '' his reign of terror is over''since then it is known by that name. Blizzard meadow got it's name when younger son shot a woodcock flying low over milkweeds in a strong wind and it looked like a snowstorm with the seed heads flying.

I love that Reign of Terror quote :rotf::rotf:

[Garry L Gordon]

These are great covert names! Great thread, Andy.

[Andrew Sacco]

These are great covert names! Great thread, Andy.

Thank you Garry!

[Dean Romig]

In my little piece of heaven in the NEK of VT keep in mind I’ve been hunting there since about 1960 or earlier and some of them were meadows, pastures or fields with no trees, or tangles of any kind and most of them were actually used for grazing of livestock.

1. The Pine-Apple Bowl became a fabulous grouse, woodcock, deer and bear cover and four years ago the 100-plus foot pines and spruces were harvested. It STILL holds game.

2. The Scrub-apple Hillside was a barren hillside pasture that I used to ski in winter vacations but has become our favorite grouse and woodcock cover. You may remember my post from last week where the new owner posted it to keep us out so we wouldn’t disturb “his” deer. (He and his sons are deer hunters.z)

3. The Shattuck Pasture which has the rock remains of the oldest pioneer settler's home in these hills. ca 1780’s always was a good grouse and deer cover… but is also owned by the same guy who posted all his land.

4. The Old Wood-Cutters Shack, which has rotted into the ground some forty years ago, continues to be a reference point while we’re hunting in the area.

5. The Milk Can is also a point of reference in the same general area.

6. The Old Ford Cover had three 1920’s Ford skeletons and has always been a nostalgic location for the fact that my Dad loved to find himself there in deer season and also because it is on a slight rise above the rest of the woods around it and always was a great place to find grouse. Unfortunately a local logger was called in to harvest about a dozen acres but he thought those old Ford skeletons needed to be flattened and crushed into the earth. Some other hunters who are my friends don’t remember those Ford skeletons and simply refer to that area as “The Tin Pile”. :crying:


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[Dan Steingraber]

Bad Back
Hell Hole
Dotties Cover
Hazels Cover
Rocky Horror
Moose Trail

[CraigThompson]

I don’t have any of these closest I can do is say , Christmas Hill , First Mine Run , Rasawek and Prospect Hall 🤷🏻*♂️

[Dean H Hanson]

The Big Hill
Dead Mans Curve
The Corners
Lisa's Bridge
The Honey Hole aka The Pressure Cooker aka Eric's Stand aka I'm not sitting there
Ash Swamp
Sugar Bush
Drummond Loop
The grouse/deer aren't in the cabin. Matt's favorite hunting spot.... the woods.
These are a mixture of grouse and deer spots. Some both.

[Kevin McCormack]

A few most memorable upland covers and a litany of our most cherished waterfowl hunting blinds and locations:

Uplands

Wet Cheek Bottom: a slick clay bottom creek near Union Mills MD that one of our party (not me!) went AOTC (ass over teacups) in trying to jump over while pheasant hunting in northeast MD.

Castle's Bottom: a wonderful 2-3 mile long forested valley floor along a meandering creek that always held pheasants in abundance; within sight of the MD/PA border above.

The Graveyard: a steep sloping hill filled with headstones dating from the late 18th centuery, tended by the locals just enough to not look unkempt, but "shaggy" enougth that it always held some big roosters. Located above and to the south of Castle's Bottom.

The Rock Pile: A long (c. 40 ft. long x 15 ft. high) pyramid shaped pile of shale and field stones built from stones grubbed from surrounding fields cleared in the 19th century, located just off a logging road in a public hunting area in upstate NY. Always good for a grouse flush or two any time during the season; they knew how to put the wall in front of your gun!

Waterfowl:

Old 55: A blind on Eastern Bay south of Stevensville MD which was supposedly built on the edge of tidal dropoff into deep water reportedly great for Canvasback and Bluebill shooting. Given the mean depth of the Chesapeake Bay at 18 ft., the blind drew large rafts of divers off of the big water onto the shallower reaches behind the blind where the birds could easily feed on the sea grasses.

The Junk Yard: A makeshift boat launch landing at the end of a blacktop road which dead-ended into the marsh at Mt. Vernon MD. This point provided direct access via numerous canals to some of the best diver duck shooting locations in and around Monie Bay, Dames Quarter, Deal Island, and the lower Manokin River, all of which were prime locations in the 1980s for both puddle ducks and divers. The name derived from locals simply abandoning their no-longer serviceable boats at various points along the access canals. alway careful not to obstruct the outgoing boat traffic of fellow duck hunters!

Lay-Down Battery Blind: In the heyday of the early 1980s point system for ducks, I built a double laydown battery blind for duck shooting. Think not quite a true sinkbox but damn little freeboard, fully decked and marsh-legal, towed and poled out into the center of the shortgrass marsh at Deal Island. After I used it two times, I understood why they outlawed true sinkboxes. It was just too deadly: I never actually had a duck knock my hat off, but a couple of times I felt the wind on the side of my face as they whizzed by me from behind, out of my vision. Unwieldy and requiring two people to offload, handle and rig, which I seldom was able to line up, I abandoned it after the second season and "commended its body to the deep."*

[Andrew Sacco]

These are just awesome. I feel like penning a piece of fiction using one or two or three of them : )

I had one that no longer produces called Rockefellers Cellar. It is, as named, accurate. You can find it on a map. It's John D. Rockefellers birthplace home and my old lab Duck retrieved a grouse from the below the foundation level back when it was littered with apple trees all around. It's barely discernable with the stones outlining where his home stood where he was born in Richford, NY

[Chris Pope]

1. F-You Slough in Artas, SD (Evil Pheasants)
2. Big Rock at West Indian in NH (Woodcock)
3. Trout Improvement in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
4. THE Snipe Covert (name classified as it would give location away) in NH (Snipe)
5. The Russian Olives in SD (Pheasant, Sharpies)
6. Bikini Covert in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
7. Torn Achilles in SC (Quail)
8. Noble Cemetary in SC (Quail, Woodcock)
9. The Sod Farm in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
10. The Island in NH (Ducks)

I think we might have gone through this exercise a couple years ago because Dean wanted to know how Bikini covert got its name, which has only recently become "un"-classified. But so happy to revisit the topic- great idea. For me, this is like a list of most revered religious sites!

[Bob Hayes]

We have only a couple named trails
Training Ground
River Road
Both produced this season multiple times

[Brett Farley]

Woodcock Hill
Lady’s Covert
Oil Can Popple Stand
Triangle Covert
612 Covert
EWBucks Covert
Twin Creek Covert

[Donald F. Mills]

Martha’s Place
The stump
The big woods
Cullier’s run
Ida’s
The swamp
The ditch

[james whittington]

Autumn Olives 1
Autumn Olives 2
The Long Walk
Coon Den
The Buck Thicket
The Turkey Thicket
Game Warden
Sparky's Spot

[Stan Hillis]

The Smokehouse, because you can always go there and get meat. It's roughly 400 yards by 20 yards and is surrounded by old oaks that drop acorns onto the food plot.

https://www.jpgbox.com/jpg/73812_800x600.jpg (https://www.jpgbox.com/page/73812_800x600/)

[chris dawe]

From way up here...
Wood slide
McCarthys
Flats
The snares
Quarry
Skibbereen
Up the river
Jabes garden
Ken's cutover
Flume
Birch village
The island
The farm
Greenwoods

[Andrew Sacco]

Smokehouse, I love that one

[Chris Pope]

I could sit by a fire with tired dogs in front of it after hunting some cold day and just listen to someone read off these names...there must be some amazing stories that could be told about each one.

[Kevin McCormack]

Two more waterfowl spots:

Seneca Breaks, the first significant set of rapids beginning the fall line on the Potomac River above the Great Falls. All types of flotsam and jetsam get caught in the rocks and pile up. We would paddle out across the face of the slack water to the middle of the river and put about a dozen duck decoys upriver in the slack water and hide in the blowdowns, which made perfect cover for pass shooting. The year I made an impossible shot on a beautiful Blackduck highballing over the rig, only to lose it in the rapids below, was the year I bought my first Labrador retriever.

Rowser's Ford, the shallow water across the face of the lower Seneca Breaks, where Jeb Stuart brought 5,000 confederate cavalry and troops across the river by moonlight on the way to Gettysburg. He made a fatal detour to attack Rockville, MD, which deprived Lee of his intelligence reports which cost Lee dearly in the epic battle that followed. You could wade out across the ford, but ice creepers or golf spikes were an absolute must, and cover was scant compared to the Breaks above. Scrambling to retrieve a kill could result in a quick ice bath, and a lively cripple no dog could run down in the shallow but swift rapids.

[Garry L Gordon]

Two more waterfowl spots:

Seneca Breaks, the first significant set of rapids beginning the fall line on the Potomac River above the Great Falls. All types of flotsam and jetsam get caught in the rocks and pile up. We would paddle out across the face of the slack water to the middle of the river and put about a dozen duck decoys upriver in the slack water and hide in the blowdowns, which made perfect cover for pass shooting. The year I made an impossible shot on a beautiful Blackduck highballing over the rig, only to lose it in the rapids below, was the year I bought my first Labrador retriever.

Rowser's Ford, the shallow water across the face of the lower Seneca Breaks, where Jeb Stuart brought 5,000 confederate cavalry and troops across the river by moonlight on the way to Gettysburg. He made a fatal detour to attack Rockville, MD, which deprived Lee of his intelligence reports which cost Lee dearly in the epic battle that followed. You could wade out across the ford, but ice creepers or golf spikes were an absolute must, and cover was scant compared to the Breaks above. Scrambling to retrieve a kill could result in a quick ice bath, and a lively cripple no dog could run down in the shallow but swift rapids.

I love the names and stories for your coverts. If the rest of the world understood what these places meant, they’d be crawling over the landscape. Best to be a hunter who knows their value and holds the faith.

[Russ Jackson]

Again , I seem to be arriving late to the party but I have quite a few of these ,

The Reservoir = Grouse
The Hollow = Deer ,Grouse
The S Field = Deer ,Woodcock , Grouse
Hiram's Place = Pheasant ,Grouse
The Old Jackson Place = Grouse and Woodcock
The Bottom = Woodcock, Deer and an occasional Grouse
The Lower Field = Deer
The Crab Apples = Everything that lives can be found in this mess ,just getting through it and getting a shot off is the issue !
Grouse Point = Guess :rotf:

[Chris Pope]

The Amnesty Patch:
Just remembered this one. It's a 200 yard by 50 yard patch of standing corn that a friend plants right next to his home in South Dakota. It runs 90 degrees from a shelter belt behind his house up to a pair of long ago abandoned silos. Pheasants are attracted to it like a magnet. The patch is so named because the owner only rarely lets anyone hunt it. He feels therefore that he has granted the pheasant residents of the patch "amnesty". On my first trip to SD many years ago he lifted the amnesty order and sent me in. A rooster exploded from under my feet and tried and escape between the two silos. It crash landed inside the horse pasture. Before I could retrieve it the big critters had to come give it a sniff and one stepped on it before I could get it in my bird vest.
So that was my first SD rooster- right out of the "amnesty" patch.

n.b. No horses were harmed during this incident.

[Dean Romig]

Good one Chris!





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