Anybody ever hunted them? Our club has a cutover that is loaded with them. I see the season goes out Jan 31 and has a limit of 3 per day. They are fat little jokers. I wonder if they taste any good?

I have and they don't. Greasy

I've heard they taste like worms. Because I think that's mostly what they eat with those beaks. "Earthy" is how Garden & Gun would describe them.

Fine eating. Simply filet the meat off the breast bone, coat in olive oil and grill medium rare. Best way I’ve had them. You can add salt and pepper if you like. I used grill the breast like a dove but getting it off the bone is a game changer. Do that with dove too.


I know a guy that hunts timber doodles following the season down. He starts in Pennsylvania and ends up in Louisiana. They killed a limit here and flushed several dozen in a couple of hours. I was gonna hunt them but CWD changed my plans. He wears a counter to count flushes during his entire season.

[video:youtube]https://youtu.be/tf4WeiAmuD8[/video]
You could try this if you’re adventurous
https://youtu.be/tf4WeiAmuD8

I've always thought that they tasted similar to a dove, though they are much bigger than a dove. I killed one a few weeks ago and picked him and fried him along with some chicken, and he was very good. There's a lot of meat on the legs, so I wouldn't discard that.

I have a friend over in GA who hunts them several days a week during the season, using his bird dogs. They have replaced quail as something to pursue with pointing dogs. I don't have anywhere to hunt them with enough numbers to make it worthwhile now. Back when I was a kid and we had enough quail to hunt, it was normal to get one or two woodcock on a hunt, but we never went hunting them specifically.

Woodcocks taste like dove to me, too. They're fun to shoot because most of the time they'll swing out and come back after being flushed (or at least they did at our old place just south of you Rem270).

Interesting note about woodcock: there is an ongoing multi-state research project about their migratory routes and locations. The birds are in decline due to habitat changes in the last several decades -- no big news there; similar to quail and some others. They're like waterfowl, sort of, with their migration deal. They summer in the northeast woods and then migrate south for winter.

This is from a year ago but is cool. Biologists are netting the woodcock and affixing GPS trackers. Quite interesting.

https://www.outdooralabama.com/articles/woodcock-monitoring-program-tracks-migration-routes

Do they stay in pastures a lot? Theys some type of big ground birds that I jump all the time with tractor they fly 30yards n land

They like areas with wet soils to probe for worms and grubs or whatever similar stuff they eat.

From DCNR -- Woodcocks are attracted to moist, young forest and require young, dense woodlands to provide ample cover and food resources.

More info about Woodcock

Yes that’s them.

I found me a new hobby then...I'll report back on best way to cook em next week

More than likely not. Woodcock like overhead cover. A pasture is too wide open. Snipe and other shore type birds hit those places. We see snipe and doowitchers in our wet winter fields at the farm. Rarely see woodcock at the farm and if we do they’re in the young hardwoods with wet ground. I’ve been hunting them since the mid 80s and never killed them in a wide open area. In lowlight I do see them flying old roads and buzzing into young pine thickets. They’ll also hold near puddles on logging roads in low light, kinda like night hawks do but without the red eyes.

When we hunt them in WI we hunt ground by the rivers and small hardwoods that you can barely swing a gun in. It’s a workout walking thru such areas.

Likely not. They are not commonly found in pastures. What you're scaring up likely are field larks.



This link below shows where they prefer, which is forested areas with moist soil and young cutover.

From DCNR -- Woodcocks are attracted to moist, young forest and require young, dense woodlands to provide ample cover and food resources.

https://www.outdooralabama.com/shorebirds/american-woodcock#:~:text=HABITAT%3A,ample%20cover%20and%20food%20resources.&text=Courtship%20sites%20in%20spring%20consist,fields%20next%20to%20forest%20edges

Yup

I’m guessing rails. We see those at the farm too and they fly a little ways 30-50 yards and sit down or swing back around.

Field Larks, or Meadowlarks -- Meadowlarks, or field larks

Killdeer -- https://www.outdooralabama.com/shorebirds/killdeer



Great link of the common birds of Alabama -- https://alabamabirdingtrails.com/common-birds-alabama/

I've got killdeer down by the pond at my house they fun watch and smart they'll bow up on me on lawn mower protecting eggs and lead my dogs away...
I reckon it could be lark in pastures but I don't ever see yellow on em...

Snipes BE IN Th' LOW Areas with a Lil Bit of Watta'!!

^^^yep, had a lotta those in the bottom, too. They hang in groups and liked to flush right in front of the Argo going in pre-dawn! Not as exciting as a quail flush, but it”ll wake you up!