Covert names: let's hear 'em

[Andy]

Originally Posted by Daniel Carter

To answer the question mark after Reign of terror corner. Woodcock hunting with 2 sons and granddaughter. A woodcock jumped by one and missed twice flew by the other two and each missed twice. It is in the corner of an overgrown to alders hay field, i marked it near an opening and shot it when it flushed. Son asked if i got it and i answered '' his reign of terror is over''since then it is known by that name. Blizzard meadow got it's name when younger son shot a woodcock flying low over milkweeds in a strong wind and it looked like a snowstorm with the seed heads flying.

I love that Reign of Terror quote

[mobirdhunter]

These are great covert names! Great thread, Andy.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by Garry L Gordon

These are great covert names! Great thread, Andy.

Thank you Garry!

[Dean Romig]

In my little piece of heaven in the NEK of VT keep in mind I’ve been hunting there since about 1960 or earlier and some of them were meadows, pastures or fields with no trees, or tangles of any kind and most of them were actually used for grazing of livestock.

1. The Pine-Apple Bowl became a fabulous grouse, woodcock, deer and bear cover and four years ago the 100-plus foot pines and spruces were harvested. It STILL holds game.

2. The Scrub-apple Hillside was a barren hillside pasture that I used to ski in winter vacations but has become our favorite grouse and woodcock cover. You may remember my post from last week where the new owner posted it to keep us out so we wouldn’t disturb “his” deer. (He and his sons are deer hunters.z)

3. The Shattuck Pasture which has the rock remains of the oldest pioneer settler's home in these hills. ca 1780’s always was a good grouse and deer cover… but is also owned by the same guy who posted all his land.

4. The Old Wood-Cutters Shack, which has rotted into the ground some forty years ago, continues to be a reference point while we’re hunting in the area.

5. The Milk Can is also a point of reference in the same general area.

6. The Old Ford Cover had three 1920’s Ford skeletons and has always been a nostalgic location for the fact that my Dad loved to find himself there in deer season and also because it is on a slight rise above the rest of the woods around it and always was a great place to find grouse. Unfortunately a local logger was called in to harvest about a dozen acres but he thought those old Ford skeletons needed to be flattened and crushed into the earth. Some other hunters who are my friends don’t remember those Ford skeletons and simply refer to that area as “The Tin Pile”.


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[Steiner]

Bad Back
Hell Hole
Dotties Cover
Hazels Cover
Rocky Horror
Moose Trail

[6pt-Sika]

I don’t have any of these closest I can do is say , Christmas Hill , First Mine Run , Rasawek and Prospect Hall 🤷🏻*♂️

[Dean Hanson]

The Big Hill
Dead Mans Curve
The Corners
Lisa's Bridge
The Honey Hole aka The Pressure Cooker aka Eric's Stand aka I'm not sitting there
Ash Swamp
Sugar Bush
Drummond Loop
The grouse/deer aren't in the cabin. Matt's favorite hunting spot.... the woods.
These are a mixture of grouse and deer spots. Some both.

[Kevin McCormack]

A few most memorable upland covers and a litany of our most cherished waterfowl hunting blinds and locations:

Uplands

Wet Cheek Bottom: a slick clay bottom creek near Union Mills MD that one of our party (not me!) went AOTC (ass over teacups) in trying to jump over while pheasant hunting in northeast MD.

Castle's Bottom: a wonderful 2-3 mile long forested valley floor along a meandering creek that always held pheasants in abundance; within sight of the MD/PA border above.

The Graveyard: a steep sloping hill filled with headstones dating from the late 18th centuery, tended by the locals just enough to not look unkempt, but "shaggy" enougth that it always held some big roosters. Located above and to the south of Castle's Bottom.

The Rock Pile: A long (c. 40 ft. long x 15 ft. high) pyramid shaped pile of shale and field stones built from stones grubbed from surrounding fields cleared in the 19th century, located just off a logging road in a public hunting area in upstate NY. Always good for a grouse flush or two any time during the season; they knew how to put the wall in front of your gun!

Waterfowl:

Old 55: A blind on Eastern Bay south of Stevensville MD which was supposedly built on the edge of tidal dropoff into deep water reportedly great for Canvasback and Bluebill shooting. Given the mean depth of the Chesapeake Bay at 18 ft., the blind drew large rafts of divers off of the big water onto the shallower reaches behind the blind where the birds could easily feed on the sea grasses.

The Junk Yard: A makeshift boat launch landing at the end of a blacktop road which dead-ended into the marsh at Mt. Vernon MD. This point provided direct access via numerous canals to some of the best diver duck shooting locations in and around Monie Bay, Dames Quarter, Deal Island, and the lower Manokin River, all of which were prime locations in the 1980s for both puddle ducks and divers. The name derived from locals simply abandoning their no-longer serviceable boats at various points along the access canals. alway careful not to obstruct the outgoing boat traffic of fellow duck hunters!

Lay-Down Battery Blind: In the heyday of the early 1980s point system for ducks, I built a double laydown battery blind for duck shooting. Think not quite a true sinkbox but damn little freeboard, fully decked and marsh-legal, towed and poled out into the center of the shortgrass marsh at Deal Island. After I used it two times, I understood why they outlawed true sinkboxes. It was just too deadly: I never actually had a duck knock my hat off, but a couple of times I felt the wind on the side of my face as they whizzed by me from behind, out of my vision. Unwieldy and requiring two people to offload, handle and rig, which I seldom was able to line up, I abandoned it after the second season and "commended its body to the deep."*

[Andy]

These are just awesome. I feel like penning a piece of fiction using one or two or three of them : )

I had one that no longer produces called Rockefellers Cellar. It is, as named, accurate. You can find it on a map. It's John D. Rockefellers birthplace home and my old lab Duck retrieved a grouse from the below the foundation level back when it was littered with apple trees all around. It's barely discernable with the stones outlining where his home stood where he was born in Richford, NY

[Chris Pope]

1. F-You Slough in Artas, SD (Evil Pheasants)
2. Big Rock at West Indian in NH (Woodcock)
3. Trout Improvement in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
4. THE Snipe Covert (name classified as it would give location away) in NH (Snipe)
5. The Russian Olives in SD (Pheasant, Sharpies)
6. Bikini Covert in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
7. Torn Achilles in SC (Quail)
8. Noble Cemetary in SC (Quail, Woodcock)
9. The Sod Farm in NH (Woodcock, Grouse)
10. The Island in NH (Ducks)

I think we might have gone through this exercise a couple years ago because Dean wanted to know how Bikini covert got its name, which has only recently become "un"-classified. But so happy to revisit the topic- great idea. For me, this is like a list of most revered religious sites!