18 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Woodcock are so Dainty and so Frail that the Lightest Loads are Used by the Experi¬ 
enced Gunner to Bring Them to Bag. 
and these will be worked to on the abso¬ 
lute avoidance of a ground covered with 
apples ten feet on every side. 
The bird eats some of the apple as well 
as all of the seeds and it is no doubt for 
this reason he has a preference, choosing 
small apples that the seeds may be reached 
more quickly. It is a dainty piece of work¬ 
manship—if eating may be called such—as 
can be imagined. In at least ninety-nine 
times out of a hundred the blossom and 
.not the stem end is selected for the first 
bites. The flesh of the apple is picked out 
In small chunks, some of them eaten and 
the rest oftentimes carefully piled in a small 
pyramid beside the apple till the apple re¬ 
sembles a thick cup. 
The bird apparently knows that if the 
apple is opened in the manner described the 
core will be opened in such a way that the 
seeds will be revealed in a whorl and may be 
picked out at once, while if the apple were 
entered from the side more work would 
have to be performed to get all of the seeds 
which would have to be dug for separately. 
In rare instances the core will contain one 
or more seeds showing that perhaps the 
meal was disturbed and a hasty departure 
necessary. 
The bared flesh of most apples “rusts” 
rapidly when exposed and the careful part¬ 
ridge hunter deducts much regarding the 
proximity of game and his further wood¬ 
craft may lead him unerringly to the filled 
cover bordering the scene of the meal, the 
explosion of whirring wings being in 
direct ratio to the freshness of the top min¬ 
iature apple brick in the little pyramid be¬ 
side the brightest looking apple. 
W ITH the woodcock it is quite dif¬ 
ferent. Rarely indeed does the 
sportsman with the sharpest eyes 
ever see one except on wing, unless it be 
before a dog’s nose. When he does see 
one nestled in a nook littered with birch 
leaves as russet as the bird’s own breast, 
the little fellow looking as though he had 
just stepped from a bandbox, the sports¬ 
man, old or young, will freely admit he is 
looking at one of the most beautiful sights 
in nature. 
It is an uncertain sport in spite of all 
knowledge. The initiated speak wisely of 
the “native birds,” those raised in local 
covers, and the “flight birds,” those migrat¬ 
ing south and replenishing local covers 
every two or three days on their journey 
Between these birds the old hand at the 
game notes that the “flight birds” are 
larger, that they flush wilder and fly fur¬ 
ther, sometimes making off on silent so that 
a second rise may not be had, then too, 
some find the scales on the feet of the 
“flight birds” more rough than those on 
the feet of the “native birds.” It is well 
to know the one from the other, for when 
“flight birds” are noted the migration is on 
and a barren cover may be filled any morn¬ 
ing. The woodcock are winging their way 
across the country we have in mind—Longi¬ 
tude 44—in the harvest moon which lights 
the nights of the first two weeks of Octo¬ 
ber. 
Not unlike the classification in the birds 
there are two kinds of cover; the “dry 
cover” and the “wet cover” which both the 
“natives” and “flighters” use. The “dry 
cover” includes birch and poplar cover as 
well as black alder with plenty of thickets 
and but little grass. The “wet cover” is 
usually alder swamps and alder runs where 
the trout brook hesitates before taking its 
next plunge through its stony bed in the 
hardwood forest. As cover grows large it 
is abandoned for small cover—small in 
height, not in expanse. Some years the dry 
is chosen instead of the wet cover and in 
either there are nooks and signs which the 
sixth sense of the woodcock hunter notes 
that can not be expressed on paper with¬ 
out going into great length. The advice 
of farmer friends, who know what a wood¬ 
cock is and do not “see them roosting on 
the barn,” often puts one aright when he 
is constantly barking up the wrong tree. 
During the late summer and early fall, 
farmers in searching for stock cover many 
times the entire cover and if there be wood¬ 
cock, some at least will be forced to move 
about. 
It is a watchful and interesting time for 
the lover of the longbill, silken wings and 
merry whistle. Not only is the sportsman 
concerned with the flight in the sense of 
the migration but also with the flight of 
each individual bird for while they twist 
of a necessity while threading the cover, 
they often continue to do so once they top 
it and they may bend this way and that 
most provokingly when flushed in the open 
spaces, while the next rise may have the 
steady hum and even keel of a grouse. Let 
no one be deluded by the assertion that the 
flight of a flushed woodcock is always short. 
More frequently than not a “flighter” will 
fly the whole length of a normal sized cover 
and it is because the cover is usually small 
in extent that the flight is short in com¬ 
parison with a grouse. A second rise may 
be had, however, much more readily than 
the first one. It is for these reasons that 
the dyed-in-the-wool grouse hunter used 
to the steady flight and startling roar of 
the partridge finds himself in the woodcock 
cover more and more as the years slip by 
and once a convert he can not resist the 
peculiar pull of the solemn eyed, yet 
sprightly little snipe. More shells may be 
burned in an acre of woodcock cover in an 
hour than in a day’s span of grouse cover 
and still the bag will not be greater in 
numbers. 
The mixed bag made up of certain well 
known and oft tried grouse, wise old in¬ 
dividuals, and surprises in the woodcock 
cover in flight time affords a thrill that 
few of the initiated can resist. Happiness, 
smoothness and success will be the lot of 
the sportsman who maps his route care¬ 
fully, letting it take him from one small 
cover to another, for in this way he travels 
in perfect peace of mind well knowing 
there is no experimenting, no hesitation. 
By faith he sees many a little alder pocket, 
many a thicket grown apple orchard long 
