Daniel, Thank you for your post. I have a few thoughts. It is my experience locally (SE CT) that people are losing interest in hunting woodcock. Every time I venture somewhere new and bump into another hunter they always ask what I am hunting, and it seems my reply always come as a surprise. Yesterday as I put my gun and other belongings away to head home, a State of CT EnCon officer that lives 3 miles from the site I was hunting stopped in to say hello. I asked if he sees anyone ever hunting this Wildlife Management Area, and his response was other than Bow Hunting Deer, no.
Something else interesting that was brought to my attention this morning as I was chatting with a local Wildlife Biologist that manages private land for a local land conservationist was the fact that on Tuesday he was called to the exact overgrown field to respond to a GPS receiver he had put on a Bobcat sometime ago. He is involved in a project the State of CT is running on studying Bobcat behavior. Apparently when the Bobcat stops moving for more than 8 hours the GPS sends a signal. His job is to go find the cat or the collar. In this case the cat was into this area about 75' and seemed to have died from natural causes. This makes me conclude that these particular resident woodcock are more likely to flush due to the bobcats presence. And who knows, maybe the bobcat moved into the area between my visits and the woodcock where forced to head for denser cover!?
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