Last day for woodcock
 

Our last day was the 15th. Had a chance to get out with an old Scottish double, once again PointerPRO worked his magic! Man I love this combo!

Rick, it looks like you’re on the blueberry barrens... are you?






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yes sir! The barrens up here are surrounded by great covers, next year I'll get a few pics to show how crazy it is. There is a distinct line from dry hot sandy barrens to lush green and cool covers. I'm always amazing how you can find great soils around these barrens, which are nothing but sandy glacial till.

The blueberry barrens on a cloudy day in New Brunswick this year.

We went through the Downeast Maine blueberry barrens at harvest time a few years back and the blueberry smell was pretty nice at first but soon was almost overwhelming... still nice though.

I've never hunted in that area.





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Someone turned the barrels on that bottom gun!!

I just love woodcock. What's the Scottish double?

Wow!!!

Do you consider good woodcock numbers on Nov. 15 in Maine normal? Seems like most of the birds would have moved south by that time.

Don't they generally start to move south after the first frost?

I was thinking the same, I have hunted Maine in the last week of October and didn't find many Woodcock then, Nov 15 seems very late.

It's a provincial maker out of Elgin, Francis Davie. Most likely a Birmingham gun done up in Scottish fashion. Light 6lbs 5 oz. Our family name is out of Scotland, so it's a real treat to find one I can shoot and not worry too much about.

We're on the eastern most point along the coast, so our weather is a lot different than inland, but things have definitely been very different the past two years. Last year in October we were still in the upper 70's and the push( 15 to 20 bird days) happened after the 15th, we were running grouse and kicking up woodcock, in the past 20 yrs hunting Downeast that's the first time I had ever experienced that. With all things considered normally in the lower wetter thickets we can have a few birds that will hang around into Dec, but never in big numbers, there might be one or two stragglers. Over the past years there has definitely been a shift not only with climate but migration patterns as well. On a typical year the first week of November is when you start seeing the bird numbers dry up.

About the same in Vermont's NEK.





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Its one game bird I love to hunt, I try to find patterns, when you think you got it down, those little buggers will school you every time!

The past 2 years i thought i missed them, it has been very thin in the 3rd and 4th week of Oct. This year 1st week of Nov. was best with no time to hunt later. Rick you are right about trying to figure them out. I am hunting western mountain areas.

But this year the first big flight (17 productive points in 1 hr., 15 mins.) came in on the Friday of the third weekend of October and was sporadically good from then through the first full week of November. Then we got a lot of snow squalls and temps in the low twenties/high teens at night. That ended it.






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Here is a pretty cool link studying the migration routes along the East Coast, Moosehorn is about 30 minutes from the house. https://www.woodcockmigration.org