by
Ken M. Blomberg
Opening day is something gun dog owners wait for all year. When the sun comes up, many will participate in a tradition that can make a grown-up weak in the knees. Opening day at bird camp, to some, ranks right up there with deer, or fish openers. It’s a day few dedicated birdhunters would miss.
Often outdoor writers complain about early season’s heavy cover, heat and mosquitoes. While it’s true that the shooting can be tough and conditions can be brutal, it’s a small price to pay for the chance to spend another day in the woods with our bird dogs.
Thirty opening days on the same hunting grounds have come and gone, yet the anticipation still draws our gang back each autumn. Some in the group will arrive a few days early. Others will pull in just before dawn. As usual, the aroma of coffee will compete with the smell of wet dogs running around camp in the morning dew.
Someone will be showing off their new over and under shotgun, while a brand new pup steals the show as the group starts organizing the day’s hunt. With five, or six in camp, planning the hunt becomes critical. Normally, woodcock hunting means two’s company, three’s a crowd, but on opening day we allow for three in a party.
The woodcock will be there. A few grouse will provide additional excitement when they explode in front of our dog’s points. The dogs will find them in numbers that only opening day can provide. On that glorious morning, we will leave many more birds than we take. Opening day woodcock tend to be local and survivors must be present to replenish the coverts next spring.
*****
More than thirty years ago, as a teenager, I watched in awe as a bird hunter and his dogs crossed my path. A pair of cocker spaniels worked a stand of alder along a creek bottom in the middle of a small, southeastern Wisconsin public hunting ground. Like a pair of rabbits fleeing a red-tailed hawk, the little spaniels dove into the cover and only appeared long enough to find another entrance to the tangled mess. Their master, with a fine double barreled shotgun cradled in his arms, walked along the edge of the cover, allowing him to keep constant track of his dogs’ whereabouts.
After carefully watching the dogs work the cover for several minutes, I heard a shot up the creek. My eyes turned quickly to the hunter, who accepted a small bird from one of his cockers. With an opportunity to approach, I wandered close enough to see what they had harvested. His extended his hand provided me with my first close-up look at an American Woodcock.
A year later, I managed what I began to think was impossible. While hunting without a dog along that very same creek, I shot my first woodcock. The bird took off from the stream bank and met its maker as it cleared some aspen treetops. It dropped like a rock in some heavy undercover. After climbing up the bank, I searched in vain for the downed bird for nearly thirty minutes. Then, off in the distance, the sound of a tinkling bell caught my attention. It got louder and louder, until out of the cover burst an energetic German wirehaired pointer, a young boy about my age and an older gentleman. After explaining my dilemma, the elder hunter assured me that his dog would point dead birds as well as live ones. Sure enough, that wonderful dog pinpointed my first woodcock in a blink of an eye. I had bagged my first “timberdoodle”!
Hunting woodcock in Wisconsin today is not much different than thirty years ago. But, without habitat management, like cutting and mowing, much of the cover has outgrown the usefulness for the bird that relies on young growth. In areas where aggressive clear-cutting of aspen and mowing of alders is occurring, woodcock are thriving. Unfortunately, not enough of that is going on these days.
Statistics maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reveal that just over 24,000 bird hunters harvested nearly 71,000 woodcock in 1999. But back in 1988, during a high in the ruffed grouse ten-year cycle, hunters harvested nearly 200,000 birds. Since they’ve kept track, that’s the single highest harvest level on record. With a reduction in the daily bag limit from five to three a few years ago and a drop in hunter numbers, lower harvest rates were bound to happen. In addition, the national population trend has shown a steady decline. The American Woodcock appears to be in trouble and wildlife biologists are studying many possible reasons why. Habitat loss leads the list, along with environmental concerns including pesticides and lead poisoning.
For the past two decades, I’ve had the good fortune to use my dogs to aid biologists in the search and banding of woodcock hens and chicks during the nesting season. We run singing-ground surveys in the spring for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and participate in walking woodcock field trials in the fall. Except for the winter months, following Wisconsin woodcock can be a year-round event.
Wisconsin’s most famous woodcock hunter ever, hands down, was Aldo Leopold. A prophet, professor, conservationist and philosopher, Leopold was also a bird hunter. He hunted woodcock in Wisconsin behind his German Shorthaired Pointers, while observing and studying their breeding, nesting, eating and migratory habits. The spring courtship display of the male woodcock drove Leopold to devote several pages of his famous book “A Sand County Almanac” to the bird.
Leopold summed it up this way, “No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one, or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.”
Only 8.2% of the hunting fraternity spends their days afield hunting woodcock. That small, select crowd needs to make sure of the sky dancer’s future. Maybe one, or two in the bag each day is enough indeed.