Ode to the Woodcock

[Garth Gustafson]

AN ODE TO THE WOODCOCK
BY DAVE HURTEAU

I like an oddball.

Oddballs make life interesting. They're a break from the ordinary. A cure for the mundane. When you’re met with the everyday, you say, “Well, there it is.” But when an oddball shows up, you say “Wait, what?” and suddenly there are questions to be asked and things to ponder.

Are there some odd things you’d rather not stumble into? Sure. But just as often, a chance meeting with something curious is an opportunity for surprise and delight. Which is what makes woodcock the perfect little oddballs and so much fun to chase each fall.

On any given year, you have a good idea of when and where to find the birds—in early to mid-October around here, among alder thickets bordering boggy creeks and in the upland aspens nearby. But whether they’ll be there when you are is a crapshoot. They’re passers-through. They might or might not be. And so, each one that whistles up through the branches in front of you is a little bombshell of unexpected wonder. One that never gets old.

Whether you hit the fluttering knuckleball or whiff (and whiff and whiff) doesn’t add to or subtract from the intrigue. Even when you hold a downed woodcock and inspect it in your hand, there are still questions to be asked and things to ponder. Why is there a bird that’s built like a potato and flies like a butterfly and sounds like a frog in the spring? How do their wings make that trilling noise? Why do standing woodcock pump up and down like they’re doing squats? Could there be a goofier-looking gamebird?

But also, Does hunting get any more fun that this?

And, When do I get to chase these little oddballs again?