Walking quietly along a small creek flowing through a hardwood forest just awakening to a new dawn, I paused occasionally to scan for squirrels.
Seeing nothing and hearing only the twitter of distant birds, I began to move forward one step at a time.
When one foot hit a grass clump, a brown object suddenly exploded at my feet and leaped for my throat, screeching like a banshee on fire. In the dim light, I instinctively jumped back not knowing whether to drop to the ground, hide, run, climb a tree, or shoot the thing in self-defense.
After putting my heart back in its proper place, I realized that the shrieking chestnut-colored beast, only about the size of a baseball, didn’t really leap for my throat. It did vault straight up, level off at eye level, and zip through the trees like a miniature smart missile on afterburners displaying aerial skills any fighter pilot would envy.
Similar startling eruptions mark many a hunter’s first experience with woodcock. For those who don’t die of a heart attack, such exhilarating encounters imprint a lifelong love for these diminutive rockets that offer sporting challenges far above their weight class.
“When woodcock flush, they are incredibly hard to hit,” Mitchell Marks, an avid woodcock hunter, said. “They’re extremely agile in the woods. They must get through that thick understory they like, so they’re a tough target to shoot. They are difficult to hit in a place with a lot of small trees in the way when trying to swing a shotgun and shoot. It’s definitely a tough bird to hunt.”
I spent the rest of that morning trying to repeat the experience by kicking every bush and weedy clump I found. I flushed dozens of birds, but these feathered firecrackers always veered off in another direction at the last millisecond. Consequently, I bagged my share of leaves and branches while putting marks on numerous tree trunks.
When woodcock flush, they are incredibly hard to hit. They’re extremely agile in the woods. They must get through that thick understory they like, so they’re a tough target to shoot.
Woodcock thrive in hardwood bottomlands with damp, but not mucky, soils and dense underbrush that provides good cover. They use their long flexible bills to probe the dirt for their favorite food, earthworms. A woodcock can eat its weight in earthworms daily.
With their superior leaf-colored camouflage, woodcock normally hold tight in cover until someone almost steps on them. When flushed, they seldom fly far, but commonly land a short distance away. Sportsmen who watch where the birds go might get a second opportunity at them.
The small birds don’t usually attract much attention from most hunters, but an ardent few pursue them passionately. Some enthusiasts follow the birds as they migrate from Canada, the Midwest, and New England to the Gulf Coast each winter. Some birds stay in Mississippi all year long, but a hard cold front can push thousands into the state overnight.
The Mississippi woodcock season runs from Dec. 18 through Jan. 31, 2024, with a limit of three per day. Any hardwood forest with thick cover and damp soils could hold woodcock.
