Woodcock Hunting Survey

D. Moreau

D. Moreau

Active member
My lil bro just got something in the mail yesterday about taking a survey for woodcocks when you hunt them, recording how many you saw, shot, and killed. The paper said that just a select number of people in the nation got to take this survey, but i remember a similar one for turkey a couple years ago...

Anyways - I was wondering if anyone DID hunt woodcock (because my lil bro is not going to) and if there has been a huge decrease or increase in the population in the past few years that has made the US fish and wildlife service nervous?

Thanks for the help - im just a bit curious about this, because he has been selected for a couple surveys in the past couple months (he got his permit in september/october) Is this something new that they are doing or is something happening with the wildlife?
 
in general the surveys are dictated by your answers to HIP, so its possible that he accidentally reported that he hunted woodcock last year. Woodcock have definitely declined, but they are still around.
 
Just read an article somewhere(senior moment) about wodcock, said numbers are down and the US & Canada are working on a plan to increase numbers. Maybe the first step is the survey?
 
I had to go to the chesapeke chalange with students work the first paart of our woodcock season . I get out about 3 or fo5 time this season an d my small munsterlander is just starting to paint good the last time we hunted woodcock she poined eight and we shoot three.she just turned two and hope to spend more time next year with her. Bill
 
THere has been a general downward trend in woodcock populations for many years now. Nobody is sure exactly why, but most indicators are loss of habitat.
Surveys, both breeding flight counts and hunter surveys, have been going on for years.
I used to hunt them alot when I was in highschool in PA. We had lots of thickets all around the house. When a flight was down from up north, there could be tons of them. Scare the crap out of you when they flush at your feet.
 
As Carl said, this survey has been going on for any years as has a breeding population survey. The. Populations in both the eastern sand central management units has shown declines but have been relatively stable over the past 10 years. All indications are that their populations are controlled by the availability of young forests. In both New England and the Lake States forests are maturing and becoming unsuitable for woodcock.
 
The most recent status report for woodcock shows that the ten-year trend in singing male counts has remained pretty steady (the same for the past seven years actually). However, if you look at the recruitment of young birds into the population (based on wing survey data from hunter-killed birds in the fall) is continuing to decline at about 2% per year for quite some time. Habitat loss via development and maturing forests is certainly a concern and something that is being looked at very seriously. My own graduate work also found that the birds are being exposed to several different contaminants that have the potential to impact their survival. There is a great deal we still don't know about woodcock and a lot more research is in the planning stages now.

The FWS can't be that concerned about the overall numbers since they expanded the season in the Eastern Management Unit from 30 to 45 days this year. A longer season is more likely to result in more harvested birds than if they had simply increased the daily bag by a bird or two. This may be especially true given the odd weather year we are seeing in the Northeast.

Brian
 
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