Wisconsin trip to the Scuppernong Wildlife Area
WAUKESHA COUNTY
Bells & Whistles
Woodcock hunt is music to the ears
by Dick Ellis
Reader Note: Dick Ellis took this Wisconsin trip to the Scuppernong Wildlife Area in Waukesha County in late October of 2002.
Buddy only reappeared on rare occasion from the tag alders and creek bottom of the Scuppernong Wildlife Area, as if to report a canine “Nothing yet, Boss” to Jim Laganowski before heading back to work. No real need for visual contact here anyway. This was a bells and whistles rendition of the Wisconsin Woodcock Chase.
If the bell secured to the tenacious Brittiny Spaniel’s collar stopped, the unique whistle of tiny wings in vertical escape would be the expected answer from the bird section. Hopefully, a shotgun report from conductor Laganowski would end the musical.
The woodcock migration was building toward its expected crescendo and Laganowski had it all on paper. Hunting the September 21 season opener, my friend and licensed Wisconsin fishing and hunting guide from Franklin had seen no woodcock. An October 5 hunt had produced two flushes, a hunt October 15 four flushes, and an October 19 hunt more flushes and two birds in the bag.
“The migration is just beginning down here,” he said. “We’re getting our first cold weather and bird numbers will peak when it freezes up north. During the migration peak, Buddy has pointed 20 to 25 birds in a morning. From now until November 1, we’ll put up woodcock every day we’re out.”
Making hay when the sun shines is an appropriate motivator for Wisconsin hunters targeting this night aviator. What’s here today is gone tomorrow and oh, so true when cold northern air pushes these migrating birds to warmer places south.
Woodcock travel, according to an interview last week with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Upland Wildlife Ecologist Keith Warnke, correlates closely with cold fronts signaling the approach of winter. Additional information found on websites offered by the Pennsylvania and Michigan Departments of Natural Resources instills a certain respect .for the tiny and resilient woodcock, alias timberdoodle, alias night partridge, alias big eye, bog sucker, or mud snipe.
Woodcock, Warnke said, are currently migrating through Wisconsin from Canada, and northern regions of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin to wintering homes in the south. The first good frost, usually in the first half of October, initiates the push.
“They migrate through in waves,” Warnke said, although those waves consist of individual birds motivated to move rather than flocks traveling together. “A double frost front will initiate two waves of woodcocks moving south. If we have no frost or limited frost Wisconsin can see great woodcock hunting through the last day of the season (November 4). Woodcock are very keyed into the weather. They love to travel with it.”
With the woodcock’s primary diet being earthworms travel, and survival is literally weather-dependent. At an average weight of 7.6 ounces for females and 6.2 ounces for males, a woodcock will eat its weight in worms each day. Frozen ground means no access to those worms, which are extracted from the earth with long, probing beaks, from 2-3/4 inches or larger for females to 2-1/2 inches or smaller for males.
Warnke said that because the timberdoodle needs worms, their habitat of choice is much the same as the ruffed grouse, only wetter. Rich dark soil holding those tasty worms is the key, terrain often found in stream or river-bottom areas with tag alder.
To reach supper (and breakfast, lunch and snacks), old bog sucker has been given a unique probing tool. “They can probe the ground and open the end of the bill without opening the entire bill,” Warnke said. “It works on a type of hinge.”
Sensitive nerve endings in the lower third of the bill, according to the Pennsylvania DNR, helps locate earthworms. The special bone-muscle design then allows it to open that “mandible”. “The long tongue and underside of the mandible are rough-surfaced to grasp and pull slippery prey from the ground,” the website states.
From early October on depending on weather, Mr. Night Partridge migrates at low altitude in the black, resting and feeding in secluded thickets during the day. Many are killed during night flying accidents, contributing to the birds’ life expectancy of 1.8 years. Woodcock, though, are hardy, and will often recover from injuries that would kill other birds.
Disease and hunting contribute to Big Eye’s mortality. Heading north too early after wintering in the Carolinas, Georgia, northern Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and southwest Mississippi and encountering late snows and freezes can also seal off the woodcock’s food supply, leading to an early demise.
Unlike other birds, the Mud Snipe produces only one nest annually with three or four offspring. Counter-balancing mortality challenges, nest success is a high 60 to 75 percent, and the woodcock enjoys low juvenile mortality. The overall health of the woodcock is such that hunters in the United States harvest 1.1 million birds annually. Flushing a woodcock is unique. The bird’s hearing and sight is acute, with large eyes set back and high on the sides of the head providing protection from approaching predators as it probes for food. When it is flushed, air passing through rapidly beating wing feathers produces a whistling sound as the bird flies straight up and out of cover. The woodcock then levels off to fly ten to several hundred feet in escape.
In Wisconsin, northern hunters north of Highway 10 have experienced excellent woodcock hunting through mid-October, according to Laganowski, who receives daily reports as an employee of a major Wisconsin Outdoor retail chain. Dick Henske of Manitowish Waters, highlighted recently in this column specific to grouse hunting, reports three woodcock daily over the past two weeks but believes the birds have largely exited north central Wisconsin.
This reporter managed a solo hunt near Boulder Junction October 11 and missed one woodcock. Without woodcock photos, I was happy to case the gun and follow Laganowski and Buddy with the camera Sunday, October 20 at Scuppernong and in the southern unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. A pursuit that unfortunately collided with approximately 40 truckloads of hunters and dogs within a one mile area taking advantage of the Wisconsin pheasant season opener.
“Woodcock?” said one pheasant hunter emerging from the lowlands we were heading into. “I just flushed three back there.”
In the end though, it was bells, whistles, and shotgun reports composing the story of a woodcock hunt in southern Wisconsin. But it was Laganowski’s voice that provided the real music to a reporter’s ears shortly after the second flush.
“That one is down,” he said. “I guess we’ve got your woodcock photos.”