took tomorrow off ...now for my 2am wake up, 4hour drive...and lots o walking !! hope I at least jump one bird!!! haha

With commitment like that I hope you get a limit.

If it helps I am finding most of mine along open little drainages in the woods. If I were walking I would walk both sides and the bottom too.

thanks ...my other attempt at this i was in the big woods walking roads and skirting any brush pile i came across... was a nice walk minus birds

just an FYI: saw a lot of birds down around the Big Thicket Corridor along the Neches this past weekend in Tyler County. I wasn't out walking and flushing them but saw them out on the rds even during daylight hours.

Drive down main forest service roads. Walk and hunt the old smaller roads coming off them. Under yaupon thickets. We're finding up to 8 birds throughout big thickets.

Well, did you see any?

There was a woodcock article by Shannon Tompkins in the Houston Chronicle this morning. It was called "Agony, estasy of the hunt." I couldn't find it online. Maybe some of you could find it and post it up. I'm not very good at that.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/o...mes-4218753.php

Good eyes ! Have to be a subscriber.

What the heck. I'm not a subscriber and the entire article was visible the first time I clicked on it.

Try it now, I used the add a link instead of a cut and paste. Works for me with free access granted, but it may be dependent on the location of your IP.

Still can't do it. In Methodist Hospital Houston waiting on a surgery for my Dad. Using 4g on iPhone though. Shouldn't be filtered out.
I will try again and appreciate your efforts

it's telling me I have to be a subscriber too. Maybe they have it blacked out if you're in the Houston area.

Thanks for the link but I couldn't open it either. But I Googled "Texas woodcock hunting" and there are several really good articles. Apparently an SFA professor is an expert and is quoted a lot.

I have read most this year and they are good. Pretty amazing that one of them says the state bag lit is around 5,000 birds per year.
I bet I only got to shoot at 15-20% of what Tikka pointed or flushed - many flushed low and into the woods, some flushed totally obscured from sight , some too far in the woods to shoot at, some flew evasively and behind big trees. Think I ended up getting around 18 on 5 hunts. Some with other hunters.
One time I was kneeling in front of a 30yd wide thicket and 2 flushed from 3 yds behind me. Couldn't turn around in time to shoot.
Whole new world/experience
Can't wait to do it again next season.

Went back this afternoon. Got two shot opportunities and killed them both. I am getting better at this. Jenny flushed at least one way out of range and maybe more IDK. She kinda went on a "runabout" in a yaupon thicket and I couldn't keep up. One of them was a big rooster and by far the biggest I have gotten. I froze him for a possible mount later.

I would have sworn we covered the area I was hunting pretty good. But at dusk I sat by a big swampy area in the pasture and at least 4 birds came to that one little spot. And there are several of those spots.

IDK if we are missing a bunch or if they are coming from other spots/further away. I could have killed all 4 easily in the flashlight's beam. They were not hardly scared at all. Really neat.

That was probably it for the year as rain is on the way. I do plan to walk with Jenny "gunless" and watch waterholes at dark some though. This has been a fun discovery.

Your rooster is most likely a female. Many juvenile and all adult females are larger than the males. If it's over 6 oz and beak is equal to or longer than a 2 3/4 inch shell, ~95% probability, it's female.

Glad you've had such a good season. My dog's a little jealous too. Haven't had the same luck.

See what a rookie I am? Just assumed the bigger ones were the males. Thanks for the info.

Or, traditionally, use a dollar bill as the gauge. (Do an internet search on key words "dollar" and "woodcock".)

Anyway, congrats again on your success this season, N.Prairie.

Had to be a blast. Yep, put the dollar bill IN the beak sideways. Males beaks are always shorter than the dollar bill is wide and the females beak just hangs over the edge.
Every time.
Season over for me as well. Had a great time and....thanks to these neat little birds, my dog had her 1st hunting season. She gets it .....and gets out of the jeep after dark, runs back into the woods and tries to find more.

For those of u still hunting em, keep the posts coming in for the rest of us

I went for a long walk in the briars today and flushed 2, hit 1. Just got back up to the place about 30m ago to try to thin hogs and there were 6 in the road in a 1/4 mile stretch. I gotta get a dog

You start finding them pretty thick when you have a dog. The ones I flush are usually really close. It's really nice when you walk an old road w good cover close to the road. The dog goes in when she needs to I quit sending the dog in the woods and just left it up to her.
I've had 3 Brittany's a GSP and the Visla I have now is the first one I've had that really hunts and points.
I'm really happy w her.
It seemed like for every wc I accidentally flushed I was walking over 20. They sure sat tight.

I'm pretty sure Jenny misses her share/flushes some out of range. Plus she kind of runs hot/cold-sometimes she hunts perfectly by methodically covering ground nearby, sometimes she gets out of range and moves way too fast to be really covering everything well, and sometimes she just kind of "fakes it" and walks right by me (that's when it's time for a rest and some water). Long story short,she is not perfect but it is sure fun hunting with her.

I anticipate she will get better with years and experience.

Thanks to everybody. This was my 1st post on THF. I joined to start the thread in this forum and learn more about the Woodcock and if others were hunting them too.
It has been great fun discovering the woodcock resource available to us and to get my dog started hunting. The WC is certainly a diverse gamebird, found in many parts of our state (many states) and i am certainly just getting my feet wet.

Cant wait for next year to use some of the things i learned here.

Thanks

Thanks for posting MBK! Like you, I really enjoyed this thread and learned alot too. Certainly a fun new type of hunting to look forward to next year.

P.S. I took Jenny out one last afternoon and she was really "on her game" and hunted beautifully-covering every nook and cranny yet staying close the whole time. We didn't raise a bird. Didn't see any coming to the waterholes at dark either. I guess this little front and the rain moved them out, at least temporarily.