Woodcock flights

[Ed Norman]

Originally Posted by Jay Gardner

First woodcock I ever shot (or even saw) was along White River outside of Winchester, Indiana. I was riding on top of the grain hopper on a combine shooting rabbit as they ran in front of the combing.

I hunted northern MI last weekend and only moves one. Pretty sure they have left Michigan.

Jay, Our guys up here are confused a bit about the flight birds. One guy I hunt with a lot says they have not been through yet, he thinks there were lots of woodcock early in the season. He was getting 6 to 18 points in a couple hours consistently. Another guy thinks they have already gone through and most of the birds were east of 1-75. The first guy said the birds he shot this week all had a lot of fat on them (like they were local birds) ( his reasoning was that flight birds may not have a lot of fat on them) I am just trying to learn, today we had 2 woodcock points that held, and several that I think were running woodcock, plus a few grouse points. Another guy said a week ago saturday that he was seeing some flight birds in Lovells. I have hunted nearly every day for the last 2 weeks, only one day last week did I see a few woodcock in one area. My regular areas did not have an excess amount of birds like last year yet.