NY Catskills Woodcock

[Dean Romig]

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".





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[James L. Martin]

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.

[Cold Spring]

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

[Kevin McCormack]

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.

[Andy]

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.

[Kevin McCormack]

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.

[Ken Waite III]

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!

[James L. Martin]

Thanks Ken, will do

[Ken Waite III]

Vic, Nice meeting you at North Branch last week!

[Dean Romig]

Originally Posted by Kevin McCormack

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.

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.”




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