Woodcock shooting over a team of spaniels is the fox-hunting of
shooting, according to Colonel Peter Hawker.
It is generally stated that woodcocks are decreasing in numbers of late
years, but this is possibly a mistake. At any rate, Lord Ardilaun has at
Ashford made the biggest bag ever known in Ireland only eleven years
ago—namely, 205 ’cock in the day; and in 1905 the record bag for
Cornwall was accomplished, but this is far from being the record for
England also. Still, there is no proof that because a big bag is made in
one day that there are as many birds as formerly killed in any one
season. Be this as it may, our method of covert shooting is now very
much in favour of the woodcocks. Formerly, when they were the principal
game of the coverts, the latter used to be beaten as often as it was
believed there were woodcocks in them. Now this is by no means the case.
Coverts are beaten once, twice, or thrice in a season, and times are
fixed with no regard whatever to the woodcocks. If it is an open season,
the inland woodcocks are likely enough to be there when the date for
pheasant shooting comes; but if hard frost has set in the birds will
have gone on to the west coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and
possibly also many may have passed on into Spain. Then we say it is a
bad season in England for woodcocks, but that is merely because we beat
our coverts after the bird has flown. Still, possibly the best season
for woodcocks in England is that which most favours the killing and also
the preservation of the birds, if that is not paradoxical. When they are
found all over the country in mild winters, they escape the guns for the
most part, because their even distribution does not favour their being
looked for of set purpose.
Comparatively few are killed in the pheasant coverts, even if many are
seen. The guns are set in the line of flight of the pheasants, and
whatever set purpose a migrant woodcock may have by night, his only
purpose by day is to have no purpose at all. You can never trust him to
go a hundred yards in any one direction, and for this reason he offers
more chances to the beaters, who have no guns, than to the sportsmen who
have them. On the contrary, when the frost comes early and drives the
birds to those shores that know the Gulf Stream, then the woodcocks
congregate in coverts, and are made the special objects of the
sportsmen’s attentions. The longer the frosts and snows last the more
’cock are killed, and sometimes it happens that a stay is made to these
exterminating proceedings by the abject poverty and weakness of the
birds. This has occasionally been the case in Ireland, and the fact that
these birds were caught by frost and snow on one side, and by the
Atlantic on the other, shows that migration is not always salvation to
the migrant. Just why the birds became so weak as not to be able to go
forward to Spain or Africa, it is difficult to say. But possibly those
that get starved in this way are the late arrivals that find themselves
weakened by much flying when they first arrive on the Irish coast, and
without food can go no farther. Probably those already there when the
food begins to get scarce do go on.
Whether the woodcock are generally increasing or not, no doubt there are
more home breeding ’cock than formerly. There is scarce a boggy birch
wood in Scotland that has not its young woodcock in August, and
obviously these birds are bred there. They are not then much good for
the table, and if sportsmen would make a rule not to shoot them they
would probably increase much faster than they do. Most of the foreign
woodcocks come to us in October and November. Then they appear to settle
to rest on the first land they see, but they are to be found there only
for a few hours, and go on and distribute themselves over their
favourite country very quickly. The sea walls and sea banks, especially
when rough fringed with grass, are favourite places for these new
arrivals, which in Lincolnshire are in good condition when they first
come in, but are said to be poor and weak on arrival on the shores of
Devon. In Ireland the first arrivals, and the majority, settle on the
extreme north. Next in proportion, lighthouse information shows, they
arrive by the west coast. The snipe also arrive mostly from the north,
but the jack snipe come in largest numbers to the south-east coast of
Ireland. This points to the conclusion that woodcock arrive mostly from
Scotland, and it is suggested that those which breed farthest north
first move south by stress of weather. It is also suggested that our
home-bred woodcock do not remain in the winter, but move late in August
or early in September. These contentions are evidently conflicting, and
it is probable that the first is right, and that our home-bred birds
remain where food and shelter is plentiful, and only move when they are
not. The absence of home-bred birds in certain coverts in September has
often been noted after they have been constantly observed in August, but
this can often be accounted for by the springs running dry in the latter
part of August, and available food being consequently scarce. The old
birds are said to moult in September, and if this is correct it is a
very good reason why they should be difficult to find then; and if this
habit is invariable, it would be clear evidence against the
home-breeding birds migrating in that month.
It appears that woodcock can be encouraged by planting in suitable
places, and that this encouragement is not only to the migrants, but
induces more birds to remain and breed here. The increase of the latter
habit has been a startling and pleasing fact in natural history. Its
originating cause is not known, but that an enormous increase has taken
place is freely admitted. As the birds themselves have started this
habit, it appears that it is only necessary to spare large numbers of
these natives to still further increase the number of home-breeding
’cock.
But no way of distinguishing them when on the wing seems to be possible,
although most useful work has been done by the Duke of Northumberland,
at Alnwick, in placing a metal ring round a leg of all young woodcock
found there. Amongst other things thus established is that the movements
of birds seem to be governed by no law capable of definition. For
instance, a bird bred at Alnwick has been shot in the Highlands of
Scotland, whereas others have been shot in the extreme south of England,
and another in Ireland. But the strangest part of the story is that most
of them do not appear to have been shot at all. Perhaps in that fact may
lie the explanation why the home breeding of woodcocks increases.
It has been said that coverts devoted to pheasants save the lives of
many ’cock, but it is also said that these birds do not like coverts in
which there are many pheasants. It is suggested that the pheasants eat
all the food, such as insects and worms, to be found under the dead
leaves. There appears to be very little in this contention. A woodcock
in covert is generally a woodcock asleep and not feeding. When flushed
he is as foolish as a daylight owl. But in hard weather, when he has
been unable to get enough food by night, and is compelled to feed in the
daytime also, and when you find him on the brook-side, he is no fool
then, and can fly as quickly as a snipe, and is as much on the alert.
The difference in manner proves that the woodcocks are very rarely
feeding when flushed by the beaters. In Ireland and the west of Scotland
the warm heather-clad hills hold the woodcock more than the coverts do,
until the birds are driven by snow or hail to the woods. Rain and mist
will afterwards drive the ’cock out of the coverts and back to the
hills, but it is thought that at Ashford fewer go back to the heather on
each occasion, so that the longer shooting is delayed in January the
more birds there are in those coverts.
Woodcocks lay four eggs; they pair, probably have two broods each
season, and they are in the habit of carrying the young birds out to the
feeding-grounds. They hold them by various methods: sometimes they clasp
them to the breast by the pressure of the bill, sometimes they clasp
them between the legs or thigh. One woodcock has been seen to carry two
young birds together, one by each of the methods described.
Probably no bird gives a more easy shot than a woodcock, and at the same
time none is so often missed. The reason may be that shooters are
inclined to shoot at twice the distance (at what they consider the
“come-by-chance”) that they fire at the game bred on and by the estate.
They are also frequently a little excited by the cry of ’cock, and
besides this, the birds have a queer habit of twisting round any tree
trunk or bush that happens to be near. These side darts are made with a
good deal of pace, even by birds that have been flying like owls. They
seem to be the outcome of sudden impulse; it would not be correct to
call them sudden resolutions, because whatever they are due to they are
liable to constant change. These twists are often at right angles to the
previous flight. The birds seldom go far in one direction, but have
often been known to take a flight of half a mile, with several of these
right-angle turns in it, and to settle after all within a few yards of
the place whence they were flushed.
The shooting of the woodcocks over setters or spaniels in the heather is
extremely pretty work, but only a dog experienced on this kind of game
is of much use. In covert the woodcock is rarely shot to spaniels,
except in South Wales. The usual plan is a party of guns and beaters,
and Lord Ardilaun hardly ever uses canine retrievers. The rocks make
marking essential, and it is found that good markers are preferable to
good dogs in ground so rough as to be difficult for the latter.
Bags of woodcock at Lord Ardilaun’s place have very frequently been
misstated. Possibly the most “authoritative” mistake is in _The Snipe
and Woodcock_, by Mr. L. H. de Visme Shaw, who says that in one day 508
’cock were obtained at Ashford. That is not so. Lord Ardilaun very
kindly informed the author that 205 ’cock was his best, but he explained
that he was away from his game book at the time he wrote, and it is very
likely, therefore, that Mr. R. J. Ussher is right in giving 209 ’cock as
the record for one day there. The 205 ’cock were killed in January 1895,
and at that time there were 508 ’cock killed in six days by seven guns.
The big day was January 25th. Although not in a day, in a season, more
’cock have been killed at Muckross, near Killarney, than even at
Ashford, or than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
Several people besides the artist Chantrey have accidentally killed two
woodcocks at a shot. Possibly it was never done by design.
Probably the best single day’s bag in England was that of 101 birds in
Swanton Wood, on Lord Hastings’ Norfolk estate.