Woodcock hunting in……well I was told specifically NOT to mention where we were woodcock hunting, but I don’t think that the folk who were helping me out by giving tips and updates will be upset that I reveal that Steve and I were woodcock hunting in the “Bahamas”. But woodcock hunting is FUN! Lots of fun! Since Steve now has a camper, I didn’t have to worry about my non-hunting boy and where to keep him when we were hunting, so Kenz got to go on his first hunting trip at about 12 years old. He had a great time, though with two people and two dogs in a 26’ camper things can get a little cramped. So the boys got to camp out on Steve’s bed when we were in camp and we needed them out of the way. The boys sure lived like kings.
LOTS of water in the woods of the “Bahamas” right now and we walked through lots of covers that looked very woodcocky. Everyone we talked to prior to the trip told us that this is a very slow year and that this year might not be the best year for us to give it a try. This year in the “Bahamas” a good day for many of those people was having 10 woodcock contacts. It’s just been so warm this year that the birds just haven’t had a need to come this far south they told us. Very good to have fair warning, but if I saw 10 woodcock a day here in FL that would be an OUTSTANDING day. So while we were headed to a place that is having a bad year bird-wise, their bad year is still an excellent year for Florida.
The day before our licenses started we set up camp and headed out to do a little bit of scouting around of the terrain. With an area in mind to just start walking in, we headed out the next morning. We walked for about four hours and put up three woodcock. Of course they weren’t very obliging but at least we found some. But not enough that we wanted to stick around in that area. On the way out, the light low under the canopy I saw something move across the road. We were still too far away to make out what it was that moved across the road. I told Steve that there was either a bear, a deer or a person that had just crossed the road. Steve slowed because deer seem to have it out for me and are incredibly fond of trying to arrange a meeting with the gods for me. As we got closer I told Steve it’s either a person or a skinny bear that walks upright. There were no trucks on the road and it was a looooooong narrow road. With the windows rolled down I can smell him 50 yards before we even get to him and looooordy does he smell strong. Steve doesn’t smell him until we’re about 10 yards away but he had to agree. We roll up and stop next to him and he quickly extinguishes what he was smoking and we ask if he is ok (I mentioned that there are no trucks on that road and it’s a long straight road?). He said that he was and so we offered him a ride to his truck and his response was immediate: “I don’t have enough to share. I mean, no I don’t need a ride, but thanks. I’ve got a friend coming to pick me up.” At which point we said have a good evening and we drove off. We couldn’t help but laugh as we drove off. Doooooooooood we don’t want what you’re smoking, we were just offering you a ride.
The next morning had us pulling out of that campsite and heading off to campsite number two. If nothing else, campsite number two was faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar prettier a place than campsite number one. It was quiet. It was pretty. We seemed to have it all to ourselves since it was a weekday.
When we were heading out to go do a little scouting out of where we might want to start, we stopped to chat with a very friendly game warden. Sadly he didn’t know what woodcock were so didn’t really have much to offer on where we should start looking but when we told him the kind of habitat they can be found in, he sent us on with at least an idea on where to start looking for those areas. So off we went. We marked a few places down to try the next day and continued on our way. We ended up at a big field with lots of woodcocky cover surrounding it and we figured it was a great place to start. It was perfect looking. Edge of a field that was covered in robins and doves, perhaps even some quail in there. The woods were littered with leaves and muddyish and plenty of canopy and just absolutely beautiful. We walked a couple of miles around the field and through the woods and Drake got excited a couple of times but nothing ever came of that excitement. As we were nearing the end of our loop around the field, we’re walking through some possible quaily areas when I hear a “HEY” coming from above me. I look up and there’s a bow hunter in a tree stand. OOOOOPS. We really didn’t mean to walk right under him and told him so. The guy asks if we wouldn’t mind getting out of the woods so that he actually gets a chance to hunt. We hadn’t meant to stumble under his tree stand and we both apologized a couple of times so we headed back towards the truck since we were close to the truck anyway.
When we got back to the truck we decided to try the woods across the little dirt road that the parking area was at as we still had about an hour left of daylight. We get into that little stretch of woods and Drake got a nose full of something tasty and his whole body got wiggly. Drake flushed a woodcock, but all I saw was a glimpse of it. PFFFFFTTTT Oh well. We at least did see good signs that said woodcock were in there.
We continued through the woods and Drake flushed a couple more, I got off one shot and Steve got off two but sadly the woodcock all flew away laughing at us. That stretch of woods was pretty. Kind of open understory. A bunch of young trees that formed a canopy above Steve’s head in the more open areas, in the less open areas even I was stooping down to get through the woods. There was a lot more less open area than open so it was challenging to say the least. And then above the first canopy was a second canopy of taller more mature trees. If I were an earthworm that’s where I’d live that’s for sure. And there were trees that had spines as long as my fingers!
With the sun going down quickly, we moved through that little stretch pretty quickly. As we were coming around the front side of the pond near the road, there’s a person stalking down the road and comes to the edge of the woods we are at. I told Steve that I was pretty sure that was the dude who was up in the tree stand. At which point Steve asked him if we’d messed him up again. Now mind you at that point we were a good half mile from the truck and when we shot were no closer than a quarter mile from the trucks. The dude answers the question by declaring us to be the two biggest F-in assholes in the woods and then launched into a rant about how we effed his hunt up by walking all through the woods putting human and dog scent all over the place and no one has been in this stretch of woods for three days and he’d been planning this hunt for three days and we come in and totally eff him up. Steve had interrupted the dude several times to apologize and got to the point where he just said that we’ve apologized, we can’t apologize any more than we already have but we’ve been planning this trip for two years and we weren’t going to not hunt an area just because there was one truck parked at a parking lot on a 700 acre field.
Steve’s a lot more diplomatic than I am and I have much to learn in that respect. MUCH. After the first couple of apologies and the dude continuing to go off and acting like the woods were HIS personal property I was ready to tell him to put his big girl panties on, take a Midol and get overhimself. Eventually the guy ran out of steam, though honestly I wasn’t sure there wasn’t going to be a fight there on the road. He stalked back down the road, we followed behind since it was right at sunset, when he got to the parking lot he felt the need to take a picture of our tag and we loaded up our stuff and headed on back to the campground. We took a round about way getting there though because we wanted to drive another couple roads to see what we could see while it was still light and we had much to say about the “gentleman” deer hunter. As we were making our way into the campground, a game warden was coming out when he flashed us down. We rolled our window down and asked how he was doing and the response was “Better than y’all.” Not in a very friendly manner either. When we asked if there was a problem he responded there most definitely was and when we asked what the problem was he informed us that we already knew what the problem was. Steve and I kind of looked at each other, quite confused and we told the officer we didn’t know what the problem was. At which point he informs us that we were shooting from the road and that’s illegal to do.
I did mention didn’t I that I have much to learn about diplomacy? Well I also have much to learn about not getting my back up when I’m accused of something that I didn’t do. The game warden continued after an initial outburst that he had fielded a call about two people shooting from the road. Before my mouth ran away with me Steve told the game warden what had happened today with the deer hunter. The game warden suggested we go down to the camper to discuss this, which was fine by us. As the game warden was turning around, I had reached back to give Drake a last end of the hunt day cookie for being so good when we hear him yelling at us HEY HEY HEY WHAT IS SHE DOING????? I was stunned and stuttered quite a bit wondering what is so wrong with giving my dog a cookie. He got out of the truck and as he was walking towards us he was firing off questions. Do you have guns? Yes. Where are they? Here and in the back seat. Let me see them. They were in the cases so we pulled out the cased guns to show him. Are they plugged? No. Why not? Well, they’re double barreled shotguns. Do you guys even have licenses? Yes. The disbelief in his voice was clear when he said Well let me see them. I pulled them out of the waterproof case that I keep licenses, permits and my phone in and hand him our licenses. He asked me again what I was doing when he stopped us and I told him that I had given my dog a cookie for being so good today. Then he informs us that hunting with a dog during deer season is illegal and that we need to go down to the camper while he checks to see if our licenses are valid.
So off we go. The no hunting dogs during deer season was a new thing to me. I read through all the regulations for the places that we were going to be hunting or potentially be hunting and I didn’t run across anything like that except on one property and it gave specific dates for that property. Plus, I had people who had been hunting where we were that were giving us a little bit of information and no one ever mentioned such a thing to us. I pull out all the regs that I had printed out and went through them all again and nothing. Nada. But what we were really baffled with was why he seemed so convinced that we didn’t have a license. The game warden came down to us about thirty minutes later and you would’ve thought that we were all best friends. Total change in attitude towards us. Handed us our license, cleared up (sort of) the dog deer hunting thing and told us that he’d gotten a report from the deer hunter that he said we were shooting from the road. Steve again explained what had happened and the game warden seemed more inclined to actually listen to what he said. The game warden stuck around a little longer, was very pleasant, then wished us a good evening after letting us know that he’d be calling the deer hunter to inform him that we weren’t in the wrong, but that he was and then he went on his way.
Geesh. Two days into the adventure and people seem to think that we want some of whatever they’re smoking, get pissed off at us for ruining their hunt and the game warden thinks that we are hunting without a license. The “Bahamas” is truly an interesting place to hunt woodcock in.
The next morning dawned gorgeous though cool. Off we headed to walk another likely area. Should’ve held birds if there were birds down. Lovely wet hardwood drainage. We walked the little valleys in the hardwoods and then up on the hillsides. Nada. We continued on across the street to more of the hardwood drainage and still nada. On the way back to the truck Drake and I are walking a little further up the hill in the transition from pine to hardwoods and he turns on a dime and begins hunting. Up flushes a woodcock that gets away with a salute. A little further down the hill Drake does the same thing. Two woodcock in about 40 yards. We waited for Steve to make his way over to us again and we headed back to the truck. Get a snack, some water for the dog and just cool off a little. After a nice little break, we head back into the woods where we had at least flushed the two woodcock and continue further into the woods. Nothing. We walked for another hour and it was getting dark out with very angry looking clouds so we turned back. Drake and I headed up hill again and when we reached the edge of pines and turned onto a seldom used road, Drake gets super duper wiggly and heads into some super thick stuff. I am standing there watching him follow his nose all over the place in there, never getting out of shooting range even with that super thick stuff, just following a trail of yumminess all over the place. As I’m watching him, I hear something else just a little off and turn my head to see a woodcock just waddling away from me very near to the thick cover that Drake is working. Not very fast. I walk a little towards him and he waddles off a little more so I stop and he stops. I get ready to shoot as I’m also keeping an eye on Drake and he’s following his nose closer and closer. I tell ya, those timberdoodles must do lots of wandering in the woods cuz he was going in circles in some places. But I kept watching him when the timberdoodle just began walking away from Drake. Eventually his nose caught up to the little waddler and the bird flushes about the time Drakes nose gets up under that short little body. This time when I shot, that little woodcock wasn’t laughing.
They sure are pretty little birds. Steve even let me use his old woodcock gun for the hunt. I really enjoyed walking around with that gun. Short barrels (compared to my Benelli at 26” and my Remington with 28” barrels) that don’t try to get caught in every vine there was. Although there’s a huge learning curve for me because it has two triggers and that was the first time I’d ever shot a double triggered gun for fun. Still very fun to carry around.
After a celebratory coke and crackers back at the truck we headed back to the camper to have some lunch and let Steve do some work stuff. The boys and I relaxed in the sun while we waited for Steve to get done with his work stuff.
Late that afternoon we went back to the same cover that we’d had the five woodcock contacts the night before. As much as I enjoy carrying around that sweet little SxS, I don’t shoot it very well. Not sure why, but we flushed about 15 woodcock in there and I missed every bird that I shot at. A few trees were wounded in my attempts to bring down a woodcock. Much laughter was had by Steve at my expense, but hey…..I really needed a can of Lysol because I truly STUNK at shooting that night. I just kept telling myself it was the trees fault. They kept jumping in my way. Yeah……that’s what it was. Or maybe the trees kept being pushed in the way by other critters.
We had been contemplating moving onto another property after that evening, but what we saw and what we were hearing from other people was enough to make us want to stay for another day and do more exploring. So we explored more areas in the morning, finding nothing yet again (although we did find fresh shotshells in the woods so at least at one point there WERE birds there) and went back for another afternoon stop with the woodcock. I had decided to shoot my Remington 870 instead of the little Stevens that day. I shoot the Remington fairly well and I was working on the Benelli so it wasn’t ready to go woodcocking with us this trip. Someone once gave me some advice for hunting woodcock and that’s to wait til they get above the canopy and then shoot.
Clearly they hunt in areas a bit more sparse than where we were. This is a VERY light canopy for where we were. We got into some cover and again Drake gets all wiggly and all hell seems to break loose. I tell Steve I see one on the ground walking away from us about the same time that Drake flushes one that couldn’t have been three feet behind me and when I spoke, Steve has one flush real close to him. He shoots and he sees his bird go down. I shot when my walking bird flushed at the shot and I got that one! Drake comes barreling in and gets my bird for me. Steve is standing near where he thought he had his bird go down when he puts down his gun against the log. We tell Drake dead bird and he gets in there and finds that bird. And that bird does this little hop of a flush before really flying away giving Steve a beautiful shot. He sure knows how to shoot that’s for sure. We were pretty tickled with ourselves and the birds. We continue on our way.
We wandered through the cover, finding a few more birds, giving us both opportunities. Some missed and some taken. On my part, more missed. I learned that it’s VERY hard to keep a dog in super close to you. The places we were hunting we had to be mere feet from the bird if we wanted a chance at seeing them it was so thick. If Drake was even 10 or 12 feet away and flushed a bird, we would hear it flush but very rarely see it.
Later that morning, after walking through some cover and then heading on to go find another, we have ourselves another adventure. The roads were wet in the “Bahamas”. Steve’s truck is a big old 1 ton, full bed 4-door Chevy. Put the two together and when you pull over close to the side of the road…well. I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising that when we stopped, the road just kind of oozed out from under us and sideways we slipped into the ditch. It didn’t look deep. We thought we’d be able to get out. We gave it our best efforts…ending up very muddy in the process…but the super wet ditch and mud and gravel and the actual depth of the ditch? Well the ditch won. We got VERY lucky because some property managers were actually working that day I noticed when we left the campground. Even more luckily for us, they were still there when I walked back to go see if they could help out. I was dubious about whether their ½ ton pick up would be able to pull us out but I wasn’t going to complain. I sat on the sidelines and watched and hoped. I was not surprised when the pickup eventually started reeling itself into our truck. So the very nice gentleman said I’ll be right back so we cooled our heels until he showed up with John Deere. Pulling us out from the back didn’t work. Pulling us out from the front didn’t work. The tractor had to be turned around and we had to be lifted and pulled to get us out. I tell ya what…….when we get stuck, WE GET STUCK.
But, we don’t let getting stuck slow us down either. There was a very small cover right near the truck that we figured oh what the heck. It couldn’t hurt to take a very short walk.
Well that afternoon was spent at the mechanics shop checking everything out, though it was just as well since the afternoon and evening hunt would’ve been stopped cold by one helluva ferocious storm that came through. The next days that followed were gorgeous though. We had a couple more days of lots of walking and having about 10 woodcock contacts a day.
Even though it was a very low bird number year, it was outstanding for us. We learned a little bit about woodcocking and we wished we could’ve had more time. We will go back to the “Bahamas” in the future. Kenz sure enjoyed his first hunting trip at almost 12 years old and I know that Steve and I are both looking forward to future hunts greatly…..
LOTS of water in the woods of the “Bahamas” right now and we walked through lots of covers that looked very woodcocky. Everyone we talked to prior to the trip told us that this is a very slow year and that this year might not be the best year for us to give it a try. This year in the “Bahamas” a good day for many of those people was having 10 woodcock contacts. It’s just been so warm this year that the birds just haven’t had a need to come this far south they told us. Very good to have fair warning, but if I saw 10 woodcock a day here in FL that would be an OUTSTANDING day. So while we were headed to a place that is having a bad year bird-wise, their bad year is still an excellent year for Florida.
The day before our licenses started we set up camp and headed out to do a little bit of scouting around of the terrain. With an area in mind to just start walking in, we headed out the next morning. We walked for about four hours and put up three woodcock. Of course they weren’t very obliging but at least we found some. But not enough that we wanted to stick around in that area. On the way out, the light low under the canopy I saw something move across the road. We were still too far away to make out what it was that moved across the road. I told Steve that there was either a bear, a deer or a person that had just crossed the road. Steve slowed because deer seem to have it out for me and are incredibly fond of trying to arrange a meeting with the gods for me. As we got closer I told Steve it’s either a person or a skinny bear that walks upright. There were no trucks on the road and it was a looooooong narrow road. With the windows rolled down I can smell him 50 yards before we even get to him and looooordy does he smell strong. Steve doesn’t smell him until we’re about 10 yards away but he had to agree. We roll up and stop next to him and he quickly extinguishes what he was smoking and we ask if he is ok (I mentioned that there are no trucks on that road and it’s a long straight road?). He said that he was and so we offered him a ride to his truck and his response was immediate: “I don’t have enough to share. I mean, no I don’t need a ride, but thanks. I’ve got a friend coming to pick me up.” At which point we said have a good evening and we drove off. We couldn’t help but laugh as we drove off. Doooooooooood we don’t want what you’re smoking, we were just offering you a ride.
The next morning had us pulling out of that campsite and heading off to campsite number two. If nothing else, campsite number two was faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar prettier a place than campsite number one. It was quiet. It was pretty. We seemed to have it all to ourselves since it was a weekday.
When we were heading out to go do a little scouting out of where we might want to start, we stopped to chat with a very friendly game warden. Sadly he didn’t know what woodcock were so didn’t really have much to offer on where we should start looking but when we told him the kind of habitat they can be found in, he sent us on with at least an idea on where to start looking for those areas. So off we went. We marked a few places down to try the next day and continued on our way. We ended up at a big field with lots of woodcocky cover surrounding it and we figured it was a great place to start. It was perfect looking. Edge of a field that was covered in robins and doves, perhaps even some quail in there. The woods were littered with leaves and muddyish and plenty of canopy and just absolutely beautiful. We walked a couple of miles around the field and through the woods and Drake got excited a couple of times but nothing ever came of that excitement. As we were nearing the end of our loop around the field, we’re walking through some possible quaily areas when I hear a “HEY” coming from above me. I look up and there’s a bow hunter in a tree stand. OOOOOPS. We really didn’t mean to walk right under him and told him so. The guy asks if we wouldn’t mind getting out of the woods so that he actually gets a chance to hunt. We hadn’t meant to stumble under his tree stand and we both apologized a couple of times so we headed back towards the truck since we were close to the truck anyway.
When we got back to the truck we decided to try the woods across the little dirt road that the parking area was at as we still had about an hour left of daylight. We get into that little stretch of woods and Drake got a nose full of something tasty and his whole body got wiggly. Drake flushed a woodcock, but all I saw was a glimpse of it. PFFFFFTTTT Oh well. We at least did see good signs that said woodcock were in there.
We continued through the woods and Drake flushed a couple more, I got off one shot and Steve got off two but sadly the woodcock all flew away laughing at us. That stretch of woods was pretty. Kind of open understory. A bunch of young trees that formed a canopy above Steve’s head in the more open areas, in the less open areas even I was stooping down to get through the woods. There was a lot more less open area than open so it was challenging to say the least. And then above the first canopy was a second canopy of taller more mature trees. If I were an earthworm that’s where I’d live that’s for sure. And there were trees that had spines as long as my fingers!
With the sun going down quickly, we moved through that little stretch pretty quickly. As we were coming around the front side of the pond near the road, there’s a person stalking down the road and comes to the edge of the woods we are at. I told Steve that I was pretty sure that was the dude who was up in the tree stand. At which point Steve asked him if we’d messed him up again. Now mind you at that point we were a good half mile from the truck and when we shot were no closer than a quarter mile from the trucks. The dude answers the question by declaring us to be the two biggest F-in assholes in the woods and then launched into a rant about how we effed his hunt up by walking all through the woods putting human and dog scent all over the place and no one has been in this stretch of woods for three days and he’d been planning this hunt for three days and we come in and totally eff him up. Steve had interrupted the dude several times to apologize and got to the point where he just said that we’ve apologized, we can’t apologize any more than we already have but we’ve been planning this trip for two years and we weren’t going to not hunt an area just because there was one truck parked at a parking lot on a 700 acre field.
Steve’s a lot more diplomatic than I am and I have much to learn in that respect. MUCH. After the first couple of apologies and the dude continuing to go off and acting like the woods were HIS personal property I was ready to tell him to put his big girl panties on, take a Midol and get overhimself. Eventually the guy ran out of steam, though honestly I wasn’t sure there wasn’t going to be a fight there on the road. He stalked back down the road, we followed behind since it was right at sunset, when he got to the parking lot he felt the need to take a picture of our tag and we loaded up our stuff and headed on back to the campground. We took a round about way getting there though because we wanted to drive another couple roads to see what we could see while it was still light and we had much to say about the “gentleman” deer hunter. As we were making our way into the campground, a game warden was coming out when he flashed us down. We rolled our window down and asked how he was doing and the response was “Better than y’all.” Not in a very friendly manner either. When we asked if there was a problem he responded there most definitely was and when we asked what the problem was he informed us that we already knew what the problem was. Steve and I kind of looked at each other, quite confused and we told the officer we didn’t know what the problem was. At which point he informs us that we were shooting from the road and that’s illegal to do.
I did mention didn’t I that I have much to learn about diplomacy? Well I also have much to learn about not getting my back up when I’m accused of something that I didn’t do. The game warden continued after an initial outburst that he had fielded a call about two people shooting from the road. Before my mouth ran away with me Steve told the game warden what had happened today with the deer hunter. The game warden suggested we go down to the camper to discuss this, which was fine by us. As the game warden was turning around, I had reached back to give Drake a last end of the hunt day cookie for being so good when we hear him yelling at us HEY HEY HEY WHAT IS SHE DOING????? I was stunned and stuttered quite a bit wondering what is so wrong with giving my dog a cookie. He got out of the truck and as he was walking towards us he was firing off questions. Do you have guns? Yes. Where are they? Here and in the back seat. Let me see them. They were in the cases so we pulled out the cased guns to show him. Are they plugged? No. Why not? Well, they’re double barreled shotguns. Do you guys even have licenses? Yes. The disbelief in his voice was clear when he said Well let me see them. I pulled them out of the waterproof case that I keep licenses, permits and my phone in and hand him our licenses. He asked me again what I was doing when he stopped us and I told him that I had given my dog a cookie for being so good today. Then he informs us that hunting with a dog during deer season is illegal and that we need to go down to the camper while he checks to see if our licenses are valid.
So off we go. The no hunting dogs during deer season was a new thing to me. I read through all the regulations for the places that we were going to be hunting or potentially be hunting and I didn’t run across anything like that except on one property and it gave specific dates for that property. Plus, I had people who had been hunting where we were that were giving us a little bit of information and no one ever mentioned such a thing to us. I pull out all the regs that I had printed out and went through them all again and nothing. Nada. But what we were really baffled with was why he seemed so convinced that we didn’t have a license. The game warden came down to us about thirty minutes later and you would’ve thought that we were all best friends. Total change in attitude towards us. Handed us our license, cleared up (sort of) the dog deer hunting thing and told us that he’d gotten a report from the deer hunter that he said we were shooting from the road. Steve again explained what had happened and the game warden seemed more inclined to actually listen to what he said. The game warden stuck around a little longer, was very pleasant, then wished us a good evening after letting us know that he’d be calling the deer hunter to inform him that we weren’t in the wrong, but that he was and then he went on his way.
Geesh. Two days into the adventure and people seem to think that we want some of whatever they’re smoking, get pissed off at us for ruining their hunt and the game warden thinks that we are hunting without a license. The “Bahamas” is truly an interesting place to hunt woodcock in.
The next morning dawned gorgeous though cool. Off we headed to walk another likely area. Should’ve held birds if there were birds down. Lovely wet hardwood drainage. We walked the little valleys in the hardwoods and then up on the hillsides. Nada. We continued on across the street to more of the hardwood drainage and still nada. On the way back to the truck Drake and I are walking a little further up the hill in the transition from pine to hardwoods and he turns on a dime and begins hunting. Up flushes a woodcock that gets away with a salute. A little further down the hill Drake does the same thing. Two woodcock in about 40 yards. We waited for Steve to make his way over to us again and we headed back to the truck. Get a snack, some water for the dog and just cool off a little. After a nice little break, we head back into the woods where we had at least flushed the two woodcock and continue further into the woods. Nothing. We walked for another hour and it was getting dark out with very angry looking clouds so we turned back. Drake and I headed up hill again and when we reached the edge of pines and turned onto a seldom used road, Drake gets super duper wiggly and heads into some super thick stuff. I am standing there watching him follow his nose all over the place in there, never getting out of shooting range even with that super thick stuff, just following a trail of yumminess all over the place. As I’m watching him, I hear something else just a little off and turn my head to see a woodcock just waddling away from me very near to the thick cover that Drake is working. Not very fast. I walk a little towards him and he waddles off a little more so I stop and he stops. I get ready to shoot as I’m also keeping an eye on Drake and he’s following his nose closer and closer. I tell ya, those timberdoodles must do lots of wandering in the woods cuz he was going in circles in some places. But I kept watching him when the timberdoodle just began walking away from Drake. Eventually his nose caught up to the little waddler and the bird flushes about the time Drakes nose gets up under that short little body. This time when I shot, that little woodcock wasn’t laughing.
They sure are pretty little birds. Steve even let me use his old woodcock gun for the hunt. I really enjoyed walking around with that gun. Short barrels (compared to my Benelli at 26” and my Remington with 28” barrels) that don’t try to get caught in every vine there was. Although there’s a huge learning curve for me because it has two triggers and that was the first time I’d ever shot a double triggered gun for fun. Still very fun to carry around.
After a celebratory coke and crackers back at the truck we headed back to the camper to have some lunch and let Steve do some work stuff. The boys and I relaxed in the sun while we waited for Steve to get done with his work stuff.
Late that afternoon we went back to the same cover that we’d had the five woodcock contacts the night before. As much as I enjoy carrying around that sweet little SxS, I don’t shoot it very well. Not sure why, but we flushed about 15 woodcock in there and I missed every bird that I shot at. A few trees were wounded in my attempts to bring down a woodcock. Much laughter was had by Steve at my expense, but hey…..I really needed a can of Lysol because I truly STUNK at shooting that night. I just kept telling myself it was the trees fault. They kept jumping in my way. Yeah……that’s what it was. Or maybe the trees kept being pushed in the way by other critters.
We had been contemplating moving onto another property after that evening, but what we saw and what we were hearing from other people was enough to make us want to stay for another day and do more exploring. So we explored more areas in the morning, finding nothing yet again (although we did find fresh shotshells in the woods so at least at one point there WERE birds there) and went back for another afternoon stop with the woodcock. I had decided to shoot my Remington 870 instead of the little Stevens that day. I shoot the Remington fairly well and I was working on the Benelli so it wasn’t ready to go woodcocking with us this trip. Someone once gave me some advice for hunting woodcock and that’s to wait til they get above the canopy and then shoot.
Clearly they hunt in areas a bit more sparse than where we were. This is a VERY light canopy for where we were. We got into some cover and again Drake gets all wiggly and all hell seems to break loose. I tell Steve I see one on the ground walking away from us about the same time that Drake flushes one that couldn’t have been three feet behind me and when I spoke, Steve has one flush real close to him. He shoots and he sees his bird go down. I shot when my walking bird flushed at the shot and I got that one! Drake comes barreling in and gets my bird for me. Steve is standing near where he thought he had his bird go down when he puts down his gun against the log. We tell Drake dead bird and he gets in there and finds that bird. And that bird does this little hop of a flush before really flying away giving Steve a beautiful shot. He sure knows how to shoot that’s for sure. We were pretty tickled with ourselves and the birds. We continue on our way.
We wandered through the cover, finding a few more birds, giving us both opportunities. Some missed and some taken. On my part, more missed. I learned that it’s VERY hard to keep a dog in super close to you. The places we were hunting we had to be mere feet from the bird if we wanted a chance at seeing them it was so thick. If Drake was even 10 or 12 feet away and flushed a bird, we would hear it flush but very rarely see it.
Later that morning, after walking through some cover and then heading on to go find another, we have ourselves another adventure. The roads were wet in the “Bahamas”. Steve’s truck is a big old 1 ton, full bed 4-door Chevy. Put the two together and when you pull over close to the side of the road…well. I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising that when we stopped, the road just kind of oozed out from under us and sideways we slipped into the ditch. It didn’t look deep. We thought we’d be able to get out. We gave it our best efforts…ending up very muddy in the process…but the super wet ditch and mud and gravel and the actual depth of the ditch? Well the ditch won. We got VERY lucky because some property managers were actually working that day I noticed when we left the campground. Even more luckily for us, they were still there when I walked back to go see if they could help out. I was dubious about whether their ½ ton pick up would be able to pull us out but I wasn’t going to complain. I sat on the sidelines and watched and hoped. I was not surprised when the pickup eventually started reeling itself into our truck. So the very nice gentleman said I’ll be right back so we cooled our heels until he showed up with John Deere. Pulling us out from the back didn’t work. Pulling us out from the front didn’t work. The tractor had to be turned around and we had to be lifted and pulled to get us out. I tell ya what…….when we get stuck, WE GET STUCK.
But, we don’t let getting stuck slow us down either. There was a very small cover right near the truck that we figured oh what the heck. It couldn’t hurt to take a very short walk.
Well that afternoon was spent at the mechanics shop checking everything out, though it was just as well since the afternoon and evening hunt would’ve been stopped cold by one helluva ferocious storm that came through. The next days that followed were gorgeous though. We had a couple more days of lots of walking and having about 10 woodcock contacts a day.
Even though it was a very low bird number year, it was outstanding for us. We learned a little bit about woodcocking and we wished we could’ve had more time. We will go back to the “Bahamas” in the future. Kenz sure enjoyed his first hunting trip at almost 12 years old and I know that Steve and I are both looking forward to future hunts greatly…..
