Upland Hunting First!

[fishinwrench]

41 minutes ago, BilletHead said:

                    You will never know. goes all the way back to hunter gatherers.  Anything was fair game. Anything so as not to starve. 

Well $#!t, you'd starve to death trying to find a woodcock.   Might as well eat a woodpecker. 👍

[tjm]

They seem to be a lot more common in the New England states.  Not too hard to find at all, if you walk in the right kind of woods. And there is a lot more moist dirt there than here. In the 14 years I spent there, I don't recall ever seeing completely dry dirt.

[fishinwrench]

16 minutes ago, tjm said:

They seem to be a lot more common in the New England states.  Not too hard to find at all, if you walk to New England.

🙄

[BilletHead]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

They seem to be a lot more common in the New England states.  Not too hard to find at all, if you walk in the right kind of woods. And there is a lot more moist dirt there than here. In the 14 years I spent there, I don't recall ever seeing completely dry dirt.

Habitat is everything. 

[jdmidwest]

1 hour ago, BilletHead said:

Habat is everything. 

You need a quell specker

[tjm]

Any place you can dig fishing worms with a sharp pencil and the brush is too thick to swing a shotgun  should be good habitat. 

[slabstacker]

Went out to a different spot this morning and hit them again. Just to darn much fun! I am going to try them one more time tomorrow, it’s the last day the season is open for them. We had a blast this morning, same as it was last Friday, worked just inside the draws around creek beds. Terrible picture but was in a bit of a hurry to get things loaded and head back towards the house.

[bfishn]

Cool! I remember kicking up 2 or 3 of them as a kid. First one scared the devil out of me. I think that was the same trip my dog pointed 3 turkeys in a little patch of cemetery grass.

Seems they have a cult following at woodcockmigration.org . Here's a GPS track of 6 that were tagged in Canada.

[jdmidwest]

2018-3 got turned around in Louisana and ended up back in Illinois.  They are erratic flyers.

His gps must have been using Apple maps.

[tjm]

No dates on the map, it was maybe an early return to QC.

I've seen them headed north in Feb./Mar.