Woodcock’s Favor The Hours Of Darkness

Three-quarters of a century ago Frank Forester, Lewis, and other thoughtful sportsmen began to urge the greater protection of that most lovely of birds: the woodcock. These early efforts were directed mainly toward the abolition of summer and spring shooting, which caused the destruction of many young birds scarcely able to fly, or the parents of still helpless young. Gradually both summer and spring shooting were outlawed, in Rhode Island as early as 1846, and in Ohio in 1857. Iowa, in 1878, declared a bag-limit of twenty-five birds a day, and Illinois a close season of four years beginning in 1911. In 1901, A. K. Fisher, naturalist and sportsman, published a powerful appeal for legislative and voluntary reduction in shooting to save this "vanishing bird" from extinction. It is somewhat discouraging to note that at that time, more than half a century after the warning had been sounded, ten states gave absolutely no protection, and nine others still permitted summer shooting.

No outstanding remedial measures, however, resulted from this appeal, though since that time bag limits have gradually been lowered, and in many cases seasons have been shortened. The Federal Migratory Bird Law, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act have undoubtedly greatly helped the bird, but these have not sufficed to offset the effects attendant on our increasing population, and its facilities and will for destruction. In even a brief statement of the legislation affecting the woodcock two factors that contributed to its former wholesale destruction should be mentioned. The demand for its flesh resulted in seventy-five cents each being a common price for the seven or eight-ounce birds. In the days of unrestricted market-hunting this naturally led to great slaughter when large flights were encountered. Judging by the scores admitted by prominent sportsmen of those days, that class was no less culpable. The comparatively early breeding, and the consequent maturity of the birds at a date when no other shooting was permissible, resulted in an open season beginning in summer, and this practice, as has been noted, was difficult to drive from the mind.

The hours of darkness are the woodcock's delight, and so well is he able to take care of himself then, that we have yet to find a record of the capture of the bird by any species of owl, though the smaller predatory mammals probably destroy some, and cats are known to kill many. In his daylight activities also, in a state of Nature, he appears to have been very self-reliant. He moves but seldom of his own accord, and is not easily flushed. Only one woodcock, taken by a marsh hawk, appears in the records of the stomach contents of nearly a thousand hawks, representing nine species, and including large numbers of those kinds known to subsist mainly on birds. As all these hawks represented localities and seasons when woodcock were presumably present, we may acquit the birds of prey of any complicity in lessening the ranks of this species.

By: davidbunch

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