Duck ....I mean woodcock....season 2016-17

Dani

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Well, this past duck season was a really odd one. The hurricanes in September and October wreaked havoc upon some of our better areas for duck season and became devoid of ducks as a result this season, so THANK YOU Hermine and Matthew. Steve and I did have a couple of really good woodduck hunts early on but wood ducks being woodducks, they did a disappearing act pretty quickly. The ducks waited until the last week to put in an appearance, so there wasn't much point loading up the boat and all the gear associated with hunting the Gulf. Add in the fact that Steve has gone to the dark side and got a pointy dog instead of a duck dog. All of that combined to make me less than enthused about going to see if I can find ducks that might have been hiding out away from the crowds. BUT since I had a little luck last year and the conditions seemed right for a decent woodcock season in FL, I was quite happy to sleep in and head out chasing timberdoodles with my black dog, Steve and his new little rocket, B. Drake has turned into one helluva upland dog and has become an excellent Doodle Dog. We had high hopes for getting B onto quail and woodcock to let her begin figuring out hunting in FL.

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We hunted areas that are managed for quail and in managing those areas for quail, they're also pretty good wood cock spots. Plus there is the added bonus of wood ducks from time to time, and as we found on occasion some snipe.

I did get my and Drakes first limit of FL woodcock this year. And after that, it was like we were finding woodcock everywhere. That boy loves him some woodcock.

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B, as we already knew from MT, has some wheels under her. We would let her out of the truck to burn off a little steam while we loaded our packs and Drake did the c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon you guys take FOOOOOOOOOOREVER dance. One of those days was on a field where B could run straight line for several hundred yards before hitting the woods. In the time it took us to put our packs on, grab our guns and lock the truck she had managed to run over a mile and a half and was still a blur. We started walking the field and she took off straight line away from us and Steve asked me how fast I thought she was going. Turns out that little rocket was running a steady 28 mph! That little lady can run. With all of her silky fur, she also is a burr magnet so snack breaks were often spent checking her over and removing burrs.

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Drake was never shy about making sure that he too got his rub down and deburring.

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One weekend, we parked and began walking some fields but then began wandering our way through from pond to pond in the woods, looking for another field edge to walk. We wandered and found woodcock and wandered some more and found more wood cock and wandered some more and I found a deer carcass with a nice 8 pt rack and then eventually we ended up on the edge of another field. At first we had no clue where we had ended up. We couldn't decide where exactly the truck was and knew with all the wandering and meandering that we did, we had probably meandered through the middle of a swamp that we weren't sure we'd be able to pick our way back the same way. We came upon a couple of guys driving the management area and when we stopped and asked them where we were they just kinda laughed a little and told us. They asked us where we were parked and when we told them, they almost yelled HOLY CRAP! That's all the way on the other side of the management area! How did y'all end up here?!?! It was a long walk back that day but quite the adventure.

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Lunch back at the truck was a very welcome break.

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Most weekends, B clocked in around 50-55 miles run for the weekend. I'm not sure how far Steve, Drake and I walked but it wasn't that much. Regardless, Drake was still a tired boy each afternoon and we normally had had at least opportunities to shoot woodcock, woodduck and snipe.

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We searched all season for the elusive quail. We did finally find a covey on the last weekend and B had several nice points on them. Too bad we weren't able to get a picture but wild quail in FL don't hold, especially when they've been pressured hard.

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I never figured when I first stumbled across my first woodcock, about 8 years ago while I was in the spring turkey woods and I had to chase it and jump it several times before I figured out what the heck that weird bird was, I never figured that I'd be happy skipping duck hunting in favor of chasing those little fellers but I have fallen in love with woodcock. FL may not get the numbers that other states get but when the conditions are right up north, we can have days where we might see a dozen flushes while out in the woods. The trick is making the most of those flushes.

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When the season ended, it was a sad day but it was such a good season that it gives me something to look forward to and hope that this year we will again get that perfect set of conditions and the woodcock will find their way to florida again in good numbers.

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So it was a strange duck season for me. But a very good woodcock season...

Dani
 
Excellent!

First bird I held in hand was a Timberdoodle, shot by my dad.

The outliers are my preferred hunts, jealous.
 
My favorite memory of Ocala when my parents were alive and lived there was the sound of quail calling at sunrise, a long ago familiar sound from my childhood in southern Michigan. My brother still lives down there in an area where we used to hunt pheasants, quail and rabbits among the grape vineyards west of Kalamazoo. Farmers were happy to allow us hunting access to keep the rabbits down and away from their vines in winter. My brother said he hasn't heard a quail in years...sad!
 
Dani, quite an adequate replacement I'd say. You have to take the opportunities nature provides and it seems You and Steve did just that.

Our low areas can load up with woodcock in the fall and spring, they are such weird, neat little birds.

RL quail have been declining everywhere, and I haven't heard a wild bird in 5 years. Everyone vilifies the trapper, but Racoon are the scourge of ground nesters everywhere!
 
Oh man, that's living.....How about a shot of the cast iron pan doing it's magic on those breasts?
 
A couple of the management areas that I turkey hunt, I will typically hear bobwhites call and on occasion I will see them (heck I actually saw an entire covey this turkey season...that excited the dickens out of me). But they clearly aren't around in numbers like they used to be. What's interesting is that one of the management areas that we hunted is managed very intensively for quail, both the habitat and hunt days. The habitat is there and still the biologists claim that they're thrilled if they can get half a quail per acre. It's about as pretty a place as you could ever hope to hunt for quail and they still struggle to maintain a wild quail population. The property isn't blessed with an over abundance of predators either. Though I suppose it doesn't take many if there aren't many nests to begin with. Hopefully the biologists figure out what's causing the bobwhites to struggle the way they are because they sure were exciting to have flush out from under us.
 
Given the declines from "historic" numbers, if bobwhites were ducks, the season would have been closed 15 years ago and never re-opened.

I can remember coming to Alabama as a kid, sitting on my great aunt's porch and hearing up to 10 males calling at one time.

These days there is only silence in those same areas. If you hear a quail, you tell your friends.

I don't think the population decline and failure to recover has a single cause but a multiple set of factors.
And it's also probable that the "historic" number of quail (in late 1800's to early 80's) was "artificial"; a response to many years of predator control, small plot farming and habitat disturbance (logging), etc..
The days of every farm kid trapping, small plot farming and shooting hawks are long gone and thickly planted pine plantations, fire ants & armadillo's are here to stay. Its highly probably that bobwhites will never recover to the populations we saw "back in the day".
 
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And it's also probable that the "historic" number of quail (in late 1800's to early 80's) was an "artificial" was a response to many years of predator control, small plot farming and habitat disturbance (logging), etc. . . . Its highly probably that bobwhites will never recover to the populations we saw "back in the day".

I'm afraid that the decline of the paper industry in Maine will mean the same for "historic" numbers of grouse and woodcock. The combination of management for pulpwood and the last outbreak of spruce budworm (and very heavy salvage logging after it) created an awful lot of young forest teeming with partridge and woodcock. As the forest gets older, I wonder how that will change?

Older timber stands and fewer undersized culverts on management roads will be better for my brook trout streams, so things will balance out.
 
Dani, My introduction to those goofy birds was memorable. We were grouse hunting in northern Wisc. between morning and evening duck hunts. It was miserable hot so as we worked the lower areas with water in them I keep seeing these goofy little birds. The rest of the guys were blasting away and laughing. When I finally got clued in and shot a few my dog Yukon Jack decided he really liked hunting them. The rest is history. Fun fun fun
 
Jeff, I am on the UP Habitat Working Group, a State/Federal/Corporate/Private Landowner Forestry initiative focused on stabilizing and expanding existing Winter Deer Complex habitat blocks. Jim Hamill, former Region 1 Wildlife Supervisor chairs the group. At our last meeting Jim provided an overview of a habitat manipulation template that he and another researcher, J.R. Moran, developed for ruffed grouse management. We have experienced the same decline in clear-cutting as the paper pulp industry has declined. The gist of the study: A structured edge with vertical tiered shrubs and trees, as well as clear cutting, and improve grouse biomass up to sixty percent. The MDNR launched their Grouse Enhanced Management units using this habitat manipulation scheme a couple years back...they have been a marked success, so much so, that the State is now expanding them again.
http://www.midnr.com/...uette_08_11_2015.pdf
Obviously, the added secondary benefit of these GEMs is that management for ruffed grouse confers broad benefits to whitetail deer as well.

The second point of interest from the last UPHWG meeting was a Weyerhauser manager's report on some test harvest of a number of aspen forest compartments they cut for pulp wood for the Louisiana Pacific plant in Sagola, Mi. that produces oriented strand board (OSB) sheets. Weyerhauser just recently purchased all Plum Creak Timber, Inc. forest holdings about a year ago. These are nearly three decade old clear-cuts that are yielding about twenty-percent more wood than expected. LP has been so impressed with what they are getting that the two entities have entered into expanded negotiations to expand and extend the contract.
Clear-cuts are starting to expand here again. Something to offer to light a fire under your Ruffed Grouse Society chapter officers out there in Maine....
GEMs sites and an overview of the program:
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIDNR/bulletins/19f1c26
Five more are in the planning stage beyond these 17...
 
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