How Many Woodcock Count As One Grouse?

I recently reviewed my hunting logs back to 1993 when I began hunting birds over flushing spaniels. I discovered that for every grouse I’ve taken in that time, I’ve taken precisely 20 woodcock.

There’s a good reason for this. My very productive home woodcock coverts lie north of the NYS Thruway (I-90) in the orchards of the “lake plain”, and so every hunt there is a woodcock hunt, possibly a woodcock and pheasant hunt, but never ever a woodcock and grouse hunt. When I searched my Filemaker database for “woodcock > 0,” none of the pinged records contained a grouse. I was astonished, and reran my search to make sure I wasn’t making a Boolean error. Nope. I’ve never taken a grouse and a woodcock on the same hunt.

If we had moved to northern NY as I’d wanted in 1980, that proportion would certainly be much different, as grouse were and are relatively abundant there compared with the coverts south of Buffalo near the Pennsylvania line. Even so, my numbers tell what we upland hunters all know: a ruffed grouse shot fairly on the wing on public land in NY is an increasingly rare prize.