The first woodcock I ever saw while holding a shotgun launched from near my feet to eye level in a Champaign County woodlot and flew straightaway. Since it was early November, we were focused on cottontails.
Nobody in our party of four was quite sure what it was, or if it was legal to shoot. So no one did.
It wasn’t a pheasant. It kind of looked like a snipe (the real kind). It was still years before the National Harvest Information Program had started, so we hadn’t declared we were after any migratory birds when we bought our license, or were asked if we’d be hunting woodcock.
While it hadn’t done any of the swervy acrobatic things that the woodcock I had read about were known for, and that made them difficult targets, we decided that that’s what it was.
Read the complete column, Hunters might be able to catch this migratory bird in the next few weeks
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