NY Catskills Woodcock
 

First 2 woodcocks this season with the magic gun. 28ga repro. Those Q1 and Q2 chokes are great. So far grouse are hard to find, only flushed 1 today with no shot.

The 28 is such a bird gun! Perfect for woodcock.

Nice going Jim.

Nice work! My recent trip to Upper-Lower, Michigan, resulting in just one woodcock encounter. Spots that were stacked with resident birds in years past were sterile this year. Looking forward to some flight birds.

-Victor

Nice Jim

I put up 5 grouse and 5 woodcock (6 flushes and 7 flushes with re-flushes) this past Saturday. I haven't had good Catskill grouse hunting in 3-4 years, and even then it was just mediocre. There are pockets elsewhere. I ran into 4 other bird hunters on public land and they all moved grouse. Here's to hoping the season remains good.

Victor, Hate to hear about Michigan as I am going there for a week this Sunday, lower part. Andy ,yes I have run into some pockets of grouse in NY just not where I was yesterday but not woodcock yet. This year is much better than the last few for grouse.

I had one covert with the woodcock, which I've named "Cocky Corner" : ) They had to be resident birds as they flushed about 15 feet each time and I let them be, they were small. There were a group of two then three individuals all in one general area. No others in other coverts. Best of luck Jim!

Added a grouse today ,had 6 flushes but only 1 shot. Most birds I only heard. 28ga did it's job again.

Good for you, Andy!

While our Springer "Nitro" was doing his morning runs he flushed two big flights of woodcock from fencerows just about 1/2 mile from our home. First time last week was about 20-25 birds that took off in 2's and 3's with time to reload a double-gun if while hunting and I knew more were still in the brush and ready to take to the air. Then on Monday of this week Nitro did the same with about 15 birds in another fencerow on the opposite side of the access road. Nitro was in his glory but not I ...... our PA season for woodcock and grouse doesn't come in until October 19. My neighbor there raises beefers and in those areas his pastures are wet and soft this year, and with the many plops are probably ideal for earthworms.
.

Wow Frank - That's awesome! I've never had flights/flocks like that in all the years I've hunted woodcock in VT's NEK.
Best we ever did was in 2014 when Dave and Danny Suponski came up to hunt with Jamie and me... 14 woodcock flushed in about 20 minutes in my favorite grouse and woodcock cover that I named the "Scrubapple Hillside".





.

Frank that's the most woodcock I've heard about in a long time, Nitro looks great. Hope you and Nitro run into some woodcock when your season opens along with grouse.

Thank you Dean and Jim. Two really special mornings. Jim, good luck on your upcoming grouse trip to Michigan.

In October 1969 a former ag biometrics teacher of mine at the U of MD who had moved back up to NH invited me and another hunting buddy up for a week of grouse and woodcock hunting. While we were in the local feed store getting our licenses,the phone rang and the owner picked it up. "Yeah, when? Well, there was nothing there yesterday when my son and I worked though it. Must be flight birds come in overnight. Why can't you go this morning? Well, the 'Doc' (my former teacher) is here with two friends from down South; OK if I send them over? You bet!" He turned to us and said, "better get over there, Lans says they're in there like fleas!" We high-tailed it about a half-hour north to a large dairy farm with several loafing and grazing pastures. As Frank points out, the earth was moist and soft, churned up by hundreds of hooves every day. As I recall we didn't even use Tom's wonderful GSP 'Belle', simply walked the plots slowly. It was the only time I can truly claim to have been into a flight of woodcock. We put a self-imposed limit on ourselves to take only 2 birds each against the legal limit of 3. To this day I don't remember how many we shot, but I do remember we flushed somewhere in the neighborhood of dozen to 15 birds. This was about an hour northwest of Dover, NH.

About ten minutes from my then house in Apalachin, NY 30 years ago, I asked a hobby farmer if I could hunt grouse. He was the kindest man who said yes, and I remember three things vividly.

One, the great numbers of woodcock in the moist pastures and with not much cover
Two, how much it sucks to grab an electric fence designed for cows
Three, the fact the old man fell into an abandoned well on his property with a rotted cover and died in there alone in the deep part of fall. That always bothered me.

Yeah, Andy -

I grabbed an electric fence or two while pheasant and quail hunting in DE; gets your attention fast! Your mention of the abandoned well creeps me out - one of our hard focal points in drinking water protection at EPA was the location, mapping, and tagging (warning labeling) of abandoned wells. When the federal gov purchased most of the land that became Dulles International Airport in the late 1950s they surveyed all of the natural resources, including water sources and supply, of the individual farmlands making up the land mass that became the airport. There were at least 6 abandoned wells identified and tagged and were probably half again as many more that were never identified.

In the early 1990s I had the good fortune through duck hunting to meet the man who was chief of maintenance and engineering for the entire airport. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the existing game habitat and also had the keys to every gate....We hunted the interior for many years and the abundance of game was unbelievable: deer overran the place, wild turkeys abounded, there were ducks by the hundreds in the abandoned sewage lagoon settling ponds (unused for years when the airport got county public water supply), and, in season, the place was a woodcock stronghold in the mixed-age farm cuttings. The only thing we never saw was a bear. All this of course ended with 911.

The reason I say your abandoned well story creeps me out is that I firmly believe that's exactly what happened to Ed Scherer, the reknowned skeet shooter. Anecdotal posts on a number of websites over the years have it that he disappeared while grouse hunting in Canada, that no trace of his gun or clothes was ever found, and that the remains of one of his dogs was found and positively ID'd. IMHO these tangents are very consistent with him having fallen into an abandoned well and completely vanished: his dog could have roamed quite far from the site of the well before dying or being killed by a predator and unless the person or persons who found the dog's remains had the diligence to search at least the surrounding area, they would have never located the well.

James, I’m in the UP right now. Birds have moved out of the 2010-12 aspen cuts right now because they are too dry, Having a lot of successful hunts in approx 30 year old aspen with hemlock and alder underneath. Look for green. Not lower Michigan but hope it helps. Picture of cover and a double I shot yesterday with a Parker GHE! Good Luck!

Thanks Ken, will do

Vic, Nice meeting you at North Branch last week!

Well Kevin, I’ll bet you didn’t know you were smack in the middle of “Spiller Country”. He lived right there in East Rochester. He wrote often of “those little russett fellers.”




.

Kevin, great post. I was scouting for birds on state land and saw him in his field, and he was a wonderful gentleman who eventually became a patient. I asked to help him on his property because he had his hands full and he didn’t need any help so he said. He was a retired engineer, but looked like a strapping farmer in his late 80s. His property was probably only 70 or 80 acres. Apparently he took a walk and fell into a well And family didn’t hear from him for two days. He was eventually found. The family let me hunt for one or two more years then they sold it. It was turned into lawn and fire pits and totally useless shit that nobody wants to deal with.

K-III, nice double! Is your sidekick along with you? The two legged one.

Thanks Scott. I’m here with a group of friends including Todd Burdick and of course our four legged sidekicks. Wish you were here with us. Picture of Todd and his MacNaugton plus dogs

Ken, does Burdick carry that McNaughton in a holster? Murphy

He’s a big guy. All the guns look like toys in his hands!

kevin, i am from dover, NH and live 4 miles from dover, do you remember the town you hunted and what store you picked up your licence at? in 69 there were a lot of farms here. i bet you wouldnt believe what it looks like now around here. we used to hunt grouse the same way by just walking them up no dog. i havent seen a grouse around here in 5 or 6 years and that was 1. scott

An hour north west of Dover might put you in my neck of the woods, the Lakes Region.

As I recall the feed store we bought our licenses at was in Rochester and the dairy farm we hunted was either in Lebanon or Farmington. I returned to NH to hunt with my former teacher 2 more times, once in Pittsburg NH in the late 1990s then back in Ossipee in 2002. He died in 2007 and I have not returned to that part of the country since then to hunt.

Kevin, there is a Farmington and Lebanon would be in maine just over the state line in Rochester. Its all gone now houses,highways, stores and lots of people.:crying: scott

Back to Tughill for 3 days, had 9 grouse flushes with 2 shots . The magic gun came thur again, no woodcock.

wow what a beautiful gun and mix of birds thanks for sharing