The Woodcock. 
The questions printed last autumn were these: 
L Do woodcock breed in your locality, or do you see 
them only during flight? 
2. If they breed, are they numerous or scarce in sum¬ 
mer? How many nests have you heard of in any one 
year? Give the year. 
3. If they breed, do the home-bred birds disappear be¬ 
fore the flight birds come on, and about what time do the 
home-bred birds disappear? 
4. When does the flight begin? When do you see the 
first of those which you regard as flight birds? 
6 . How long does the flight last? 
6 . When are the flight birds present in greatest num¬ 
bers? Give not only date, but weather conditions on 
which the rush so largely depends. 
7. How late do you see the birds? 
8 . How did the flights of the autumn of 1907, 190S and 
1909 compare with the flights of the three years before 
1907? 
9. Please give any views that you may have which will 
throw any light on the problems of woodcock breeding 
and migration, and the question of whether they are at 
the present time increasing or decreasing in numbers. 
10. Is the colored man of the South a woodcock 
hunter to an important degree? What are his methods 
of capture? 
11. Is the open season in most Southern States too 
long considering the scarcity of woodcock? 
In the Gulf States. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have just read communications from two of 
vour Connecticut contributors on the woodcock. 
One of these writers, J. W. N., from Cherry 
Hill, Conn., says: “If the birds were not killed 
in such immense numbers in the canebrakes of 
the South where they winter, their numbers 
would be greatly increased.” 
The second writer, signing “Woodcock,” says: 
“My knowledge of the damage done by the 
colored man of the South is limited, but when 
in Virginia I could not find out anything about 
the woodcock, whether the flight reached them, 
when it came or how numerous the birds were.” 
These two brother sportsmen of Connecticut 
appear to me to afford fair examples of the 
Northern mind filled with hearsay misinforma¬ 
tion about the South. 
One of my Connecticut brothers speaks of the 
“immense numbers” of woodcock that are killed 
in the canebrakes of the South. That gentle¬ 
man evidently never saw a Southern canebrake. 
Horace Kephart, a one-time Forest and Stream 
contributor, characterized an Arkansas canebrake 
in about these words: “He who enters an Ar¬ 
kansas canebrake is alone with his maker.” 
The idea of shooting woodcock in a canebrake 
is about as preposterous as shooting the “man in 
the moon.” However, my Connecticut friend 
may not have meant literally that the birds are 
shot in the canebrakes, but in their vicinity, 
where they are supposed by him to abound. 
But the belief expressed by him that the wood¬ 
cock is killed in large numbers in the Southern 
States appears to me to be wholly erroneous. 
The woodcock is scarcely known as a game bird 
in the Southern States, and it is probable that 
not one in several hundred of Southern sports¬ 
men has ever killed a woodcock. There is much 
to be read in Forest and Stream about shoot¬ 
ing these birds in New England, but never a 
word about the shooting of them in the South¬ 
ern States. I have lived over three-score years 
in the Gulf States, mainly in Mississippi and 
Louisiana, and before the vision of my shoot¬ 
ing eye became too much impaired to handle a 
gun effectively, I took tribute of all the varieties 
of game birds that this region affords. In my 
whole career I have killed only three or four 
woodcock—by mere chance and as a great rarity. 
The last one I saw was some fifteen years ago 
—a bird that had killed itself by flying against 
a telephone wire. A Southern negro, or a rural 
white man, if asked about woodcock will sup¬ 
pose that you mean the ivory-billed woodpecker, 
popularly called the “log cock”; that is, before 
these birds were exterminated. 
If large numbers of woodcock were killed by 
negroes, the birds would find their way into the 
markets, but there are none of them in South¬ 
ern markets, so far as I am aware, nor on the 
menus of Southern hotels. 
Many years ago there was a tradition that 
woodcock were killed in the “Louisiana low¬ 
lands” when feeding at night in the open fields 
by the light of torches, the birds being shot on 
the ground at close range with squib loads of 
small shot. I have never been able to verify 
this tradition which was prevalent forty years 
ago. 
Many woodcock do, or did, spend the winter 
months in the Gulf States in the southern half 
of Mississippi and Louisiana, but in this latitude 
they are purely nocturnal in their activities, lying 
concealed during the day in the dense canebrakes 
and thickets that border the cultivated fie’ds and 
coming out in the open to feed about dark. In 
the latter part of February I have often heard 
the woodcock late in the evening in the growing 
darkness, “betwixt the gloaming and the muk,” 
executing their peculiar aerial gyrations high up 
in the air and whistling their weird love song. 
Then suddenly they drop to the ground, where 
they continue to utter a note which may be ex¬ 
pressed by the letters b-e-a-d-e. 
But these birds, however numerous, were 
nearly always invisible to human eyes, day or 
night. Occasionally a sportsman might acc'dent- 
ally put up one in cover thin enough to bring 
him to bag, but this was a rare occurrence and 
the bird was a curiosity to most of those who 
saw it. 
If my Connecticut brothers will come down 
South and see Southern things for themselves, 
doubtless several scales shall fall from before 
their eyes, both as to the killing of woodcock 
and perhaps many other Southern matters. 
Coahoma. 
Alexandria, La., April 7. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I cannot throw any light on many of 
the questions you ask. but I can give your read¬ 
ers some reliable and no doubt interesting in¬ 
formation in reply to your question ten; namely, 
“Is the colored man of the South a woodcock 
hunter to an important degree? What are his 
methods of capture?” 
Speaking for the alluvial land section of the 
lower half of Louisiana, I reply the colored man, 
as well as the white man, is a woodcock hunter, 
or rather both were before the killing of this 
bird was forbidden by law. * Several years ago 
our Legislature passed an act making it a mis¬ 
demeanor to kill or have in possession a wood¬ 
cock for five years. This law becomes void by 
limitation Dec. 31 next. 
What is known as the sugar section of Louis¬ 
iana—the alluvial lands of the lower half of the 
State—is probably the greatest winter feeding 
ground of the woodcock in the United States. 
About the first of December they commence to 
make themselves manifest, and by Christmas they 
are generally very plentiful. I think no one ever 
sees them come; they just find them here, and 
it is supposed that they arrive in the night time. 
I do not think the law has been strictly en¬ 
forced. It is almost impossible to do so from 
the very nature of the case, but I have no doubt 
that it saved multiplied thousands that would 
otherwise have been slaughtered. 
This bird is migratory in this country and does 
not breed here at all, yet our State has protected 
him. If the States of his nativity were to pro¬ 
tect him entirely for a few years, in conjunction 
with the protection afforded by the Southern 
States, no doubt he would soon become abundant. 
The woodcock’s French name, by which he is 
more generally known in Louisiana, is becasse; 
for short, “Bee,” as may be seen in the Century 
Dictionary. 
Now for the manner of taking him and the 
reasons that may cause even sportsmen to stoop 
to the level of the pot-hunter. 
Bee spends his daylight houi*s in inaccessible- 
thickets and jungles where the sportsman cannot 
reach him. Properly prepared, they are the most 
delicious of all game birds and are therefore much 
sought for. If the sportsman gets them he has 
either to pay the pot-hunter a long price for 
them, or use the pot-hunter’s method of capture. 
This he usually does and finds it after a while a 
most seductive sport. 
I have never known the woodcock to sell for 
less than $3 per dozen in the markets and I have 
known them to bring $6. The New Orleans 
restaurants charge from $1 to $1.25 for them 
each, and the price is paid freely, so highly are 
they esteemed. This high price explains why the 
sportsman frequently becomes a pot-hunter. 
The birds are night feeders. Their favorite 
feeding grounds are old sedge fields burned off 
clean; pasture lands that have been pastured 
closely, but they can also be found in the cot¬ 
ton, corn and cane fields. They must be hunted 
on ground that is fairly clean of weeds and 
grass, else they cannot be seen. 
They are hunted with a torch. The primitive 
way was a pine torch in an old fashion fire 
basket with a long handle, extra fuel being car¬ 
ried in a sack, but the torch has been superseded 
by the kerosene lamp. A large lamp is placed 
in a tin frame with a glass front. The lamp has 
a strong reflector behind it and should illuminate 
the ground for fifty feet. It is carried by a 
