Shooting Times & Country Magazine
A fitting end and a hardwon bag
It’s been a season like no other and, with the end drawing near, Jamie Tusting decides it’s a good time for a woodcock walkabout
The season just gone will, I’m sure, be up there as one of the strangest and most tumultuous for a very long time. So many invitations and days out were postponed or cancelled as the coming and going of restrictions chopped and changed plans up and down the country.
The season was not without its highlights though — a few sporadic days out in the field providing some sport notable enough to merit a page in the game book. And as it drew closer, I became increasingly keen to mark the conclusion with a rapturous ovation and to send the season off well.
With the last day unfortunately falling on a working one, that left the final Saturday in January to come up with the goods. Thankfully, the day dawned bright and clear with a wind freshening from the west and the snow from a few days before mostly all melted. My brother Joe and I had planned to head to a wood nearby, which extended to about 50 acres.
Our chosen wood wasn’t quite big enough to support a whole day’s sport, so we made a plan to venture out in the afternoon, giving us enough time to cover it without going over the same ground twice. The wind was due to pick up later and we thought we could dovetail our afternoon’s sport with the possibility of getting into some pigeon as the evening drew in.
The wood sits across a relatively boggy site, nestled between a road and a railway, with an eclectic array of trees planted close together and yet to be thinned. There are areas where the original planting failed to take, which gives the wood sporadic glades and open patches, unplanned, but all aiding diversity of habitat.
The ominous-looking metal post and chain link of the deer fence around the perimeter, reminiscent of an abandoned air base, has failed in places and facilitated little routes through the defences, into the bowels of the wood.
The main gate was on the opposite end of the wood from where we parked up, so we posted the dogs through one of those tight gaps and squeezed our way in after them.
Perhaps a snipe
“The earlier snow would have brought in the woodcock, our primary quarry”
The snow earlier in the week would, we were sure, have brought in the woodcock so this felt like our primary quarry, though we knew there were plenty of other beasts of interest; rabbits, grey squirrels, pheasants and even the odd snipe seen in the boggier areas.
Joe and I sent the dogs off ahead of us, allowing them to work back and forth through the woods. In many places, the unthinned wood has such a closed canopy that there is little to offer in the way of understorey, the light struggling to penetrate through to the ground. But where these barren woodland floors open out, it does make for some exciting sport when the dogs upset a rabbit, bolting it through the leafy wood.
I had the first shot at a rabbit as it bounded and jinked between the tree trunks, missing behind with both barrels. Before I could reload,
a second came through followed by my spaniel, though she was even further behind than my shots had been. I called her off and we went on.
As I pushed between two hawthorns into one of the glades, I instinctively raised my gun as I saw a shape dart overhead. The pigeon was away before I had time to properly focus but as I looked up, a second shape came flitting back the other way; a woodcock at full speed. Had the pigeon not drawn my attention skywards, there would have been no way I’d have noticed the woodcock.
It was over my head and behind me in a flash. I spun round, fired and folded the bird into some brambles. It took a little bit of finding, but within a couple of minutes, we had our first trophy in the bag.
Through numerous outings in the wood over the past few years, we have perfected the route we take. The idea is to tack back and forth, covering the ground in 70m strips. After our first out and back, we made a 90-degree turn and made our way around a thick bramble strip along the perimeter fence.
Success
Ahead of us, one of the dogs set a pheasant off squawking, and seconds later, it came rocketing back over Joe’s head. With a carefully placed shot, he brought it down at the first attempt. With two in the bag, we already felt like the outing had been a success.
As we passed a small pond, frozen solid in the icy grip of winter, we noticed a squirrel’s drey in the top of a spindly-looking ash tree. Joe gave it both barrels and three squirrels erupted from it, scattering in all directions. I managed to hit one and, with a quick reload and a little scurry across the woodland floor, found the second. I heard another pair of shots somewhere off to my left and when I caught up with Joe, he was just accepting the third squirrel from his labrador.
Woodcock were making up a relatively small proportion of our bag, so we refocused and moved into a more likely area of the wood. It wasn’t too long before we were getting a fair few opportunities, though we didn’t capitalise on many. Often the woodcock were wise to us and were getting up way ahead, so our attempts were mostly in vain.
But they weren’t all fruitless and, within a couple of minutes of each other, Joe and I both added a woodcock to our slowly growing bag. First, Joe had one get up and head straight away from him, then I had one crossing right to left. It was about 30 yards ahead of me, swooping low across the tops of some dog rose and bramble. Flicking upwards at the last second, my first shot missed, but the second retrained and I connected.
Shortly afterwards, Millie went charging off after a scent and managed to corner a cock pheasant against the chain-link boundary
“A bolting rabbit afforded Joe a clear shot as it raced across a ride”
fence. Evading the spaniel, it took off and came back over my head, at a fair height considering the little time it had to make the climb. I managed to bring it down.
Ground game
We were pleased with our bag of eight head all in and, with the afternoon beginning to think about becoming evening, the pigeon started to come in off the oilseed rape fields next to the woods. We headed for the block of conifers, where we thought we would get the best chances. On our way, a bolting rabbit afforded Joe a clear shot as it raced across a ride and he duly added it to the bag.
It didn’t take long for the pigeon to start coming in. The forecast increase in wind had been correct and they were floating in nicely. While it is terrific fun, I find it very difficult to shoot pigeon when they are flighting in. So often it is a chance shot through the high branches of a tree, or that snap shot as it flicks across the gap in the canopy. But we managed to bring a few down. By the time it was almost too dark to see, and the last of the pigeon had found a roost for the night, we had brought down 10.
It had been a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and a world away from the confines of a lockdown that has long since lost its novelty. It had been a proper little walkabout day, with a great mixture of quarries, different shots and that satisfying feeling of being made to work hard for our bag.
We had set out to find a fitting tribute to the end of the season, and as we settled into a gin and tonic in front of the fire that evening, it felt like a job well done. We raised our glasses to the season’s close and wished for a less troubled season to come.