![]() ![]() Why would cover loving woodcock be in the open woods where they're vulnerable to avian predators? Monte believes that during particularly dry winters, the ground in young pine plantations and clearcuts becomes too dry and hard for the birds to probe. We moved between 30 and 40 woodcock, all of them in the open pine woods. Over the past 10 years, I've taken exactly one five-bird limit of woodcock, and I did it in about two hours of hunting with Monty and Temple Inland biologist Don Dietz. Most years he'll take more than a hundred birds. Austin University in Nacogdoches and one of South's foremost woodcock authorities. Monte is a professor of wildlife management at Stephen F. We joked a lot about going camping and shooting a few woodcock while we were at it. If we were particularly ambitious, we'd be in the briars by 9:30 a.m. Then, likely as not, we'd pour ourselves another cup of coffee and consider them some more. ![]() Next morning, we'd eat ourselves into a stupor and consider the hellish woodcock thickets. We'd get in just before dark, after several hours of chasing big running quail dogs through briar jungles, tend to our wounds and jangled nerves, down a few cans of chili and sit around the fire until midnight. ![]() No staggering out in the middle of the night to tighten slipped tent guy lines. No hunkering with the Coleman stove behind the dog trailer. But in the sheltered piney woods, we'd pick a secluded spot in the Davy Crockett or Angelina National forest and set up an elaborate campsite complete with a tarp covered kitchen and pig-size fire pit. The near constant wind mangles tent poles and nerves, blows cooking gear off of tailgates and, if you're not careful, will transform your campfire into a 10,000-acre conflagration. You do it to save money and to be near the hunting. ![]() Tent- camping in West Texas' bobwhite country is strictly a matter of cost and convenience. On the best days, we flushed 20 or more, although we usually heard far more birds than we actually saw, let alone shot. We had some good trips and found plenty of woodcock. On my first serious woodcock foray, I completely destroyed the shell loops on the front of my vest. Smith into the standard East Texas thicket. I'd look at the rapidly disappearing finish on my Beretta and think about carrying a carrying a Greener or L.C. I'd sweat and cuss my way toward the sound of her beeper collar, thinking all the way about Gene Hill's woodcock stories and the alleged existence of hillside apple orchard covers and perfect alder bottoms. My old shorthair, Heidi, loved woodcock and had a knack for finding them smack in the middle of 60 acres of briars and head-high pine. After spending November and December running my dogs into the ground chasing a few unapproachable, drought-honed West Texas coveys, my buddies Brad Carter and Jay Chesley and I would head for the "piney woods" for a few days of stumbling around briar-infested pine plantations. Here, Molly and Buck prove the point.įor years, I considered the woodcock a backup bird, something to hunt while suffering through Texas' infamous bobwhite busts. Woodcock can often be found even in the open woods, especially early and late in the day. Here, the forest management practices of small-scale clearcutting, thinning and burning create ideal woodcock habitat. Most of the birds light in the Pineywoods ecological region-16 million acres of second and third growth upland pine and hardwood creek bottoms in the far eastern part of the state. A few birds winter as far east as Dallas, and there are reports of woodcock as far west as Abilene. I've met very few Texans who know what a woodcock is.Īlthough most central flyway woodcock winter in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, a good number spill into East Texas. I've been hunting East Texas woodcock since the early 1990s, and I've never met another woodcock hunter in the woods. A harvest of 5,000 birds constitutes a big year. According to Roberson, only a few thousand Texas hunters bother with woodcock and most of those hunt only two days per season. "Woodcock are a very underutilized resource," says Wildlife Program Leader Jay Roberson of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Tough winters in the Midwest mean good hunting in East Texas-good hunting that's largely ignored by Texans who stay busy with quail and waterfowl. Peak buildup occurs in late December or January depending on the weather. Most years, migrating woodcock begin dropping into East Texas coverts in November. ![]()
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