This Neighborhood’s Going to the Dogs.

Actually, hunting dogs will very soon be gone from this emerging neighborhood.

I’ve been hunting on a particular piece of ground since shortly after I was married in 1978. In the 1980s, I hunted rabbits there behind my first dog beagle Jupp. Since 1994, I’ve hunted woodcock there behind flushing spaniels. One day last fall while woodcocking behind Gordie, I noticed earth moving equipment on the far side of our best hunting spots. It has not taken the developers long to bring the land to this point:

Now I have no legitimate *right* to bitch about this. First and last, I’ve never owned this land. Its owners heretofore had simply benignly neglected those of us geezers who still head out in the autumn with dog and gun hoping to bag maybe a bird or two. Further, the road in the picture, and the lots that will spring off it at 90°, is on land I haven’t hunted in years, as it’s too close to older houses that have always been sited along the main road. But the end of this road, very near a tiny flow sometimes glorified as a “creek,” will necessarily move my hunting areas 500’ back from some really good, and historically precious, thickets. So, although I have no legal basis to complain, still I’m bummed.

Best Woodcock Hunting Dates in Western New York in the Last 25 Years

After this year’s woodcock hunting started slowly, I decided to seek some historical perspective by checking the log I’ve faithfully kept since 1993, the year I started hunting birds instead of bunnies. All the woodcock counted are from the single ZIPcode that is my home hunting ground.

“Slow hunting” to me means small numbers of birds flushed rather than a low number of birds killed. There’s lots of reasons why the number of birds killed over one hunter’s dogs on a given date is not a perfect indicator of birds flushed. Local coverts become overgrown and thus tougher to gun over 25 years. When I am hunting alone, I am less likely to pull a trigger these days unless the bird will be reasonably easy for my dog to retrieve — did I mention that it’s crazy overgrown here? — and unless my shot charge is not directed at the new houses that have erupted like sores on my good old hunting grounds. I could go on, but there’s no need. My point remains that birds in bag are not a perfect indicator of birds flushed.

But since birds in bag is the only data I’ve kept, I’m going to run with it while at the same time acknowledging its imperfection.

When I looked at the aggregated data, two things jumped out at me.

First, the median date for shooting my dogs’ woodcock here is October 22, which is exactly the median day of NY’s current 45-day season. This comes as a mild surprise to me, the halfway mathematical “precision” notwithstanding. I would have bet the date would have been a bit later simply because shooting is easier after all the leaves have fallen.

Second, the days between 10/6 and 11/4 account for almost 94% of all the woodcock my dogs have flushed and retrieved. Starting next year, I’ll look for something better to pursue in the “tail” dates of the season. Maybe trout. Maybe pheasants. Heck, maybe golf if the temps are well into the 70s.

Habitat loss due to human encroachment, I fear, seriously threatens my next spaniel pup from doing as well locally as did my first two. Even so, I’ll keep looking for new spots that may become available to try.