Woodcock right, left and centre

It is rather fashionable to say that you don’t shoot woodcock but for many little shoots, they provide an important part of the bag and can be shot sustainably

Many years ago, in late October, creeping about the wood in the pre-dawn moonlight, a small shape fluttered down into the clearing in front of me. I felt part of a magical moment, for this was a woodcock and I was pretty confident it was arriving from its migration.

I had not seen a woodcock since high summer, when they were roding over a little chalk stream valley nearby as I fished the evening rise. A few days later, three woodcock came flighting out of the wood on the usual line and it was clear that the first autumn migrants had arrived.

Woodcock have always fascinated me, ever since the first one flushed from under my feet when I was an eight-year-old beater at Clandon Park near Guildford. There was such excitement from my fellow beaters and Guns alike, and though I did not understand it then, I do now. The combination of secrecy and elusiveness, plus the fact that they are one of the most delicious things that flies, gives them a value far above most other birds of similar size.

The late Sir Peter Scott once wrote of the fundamental difference in emotions that the sportsman feels between a skein of geese and a mere flock of rooks. For me, woodcock have a similar magic.

Golden age

These days, sadly, the woodcock no longer rode over that little west Hampshire chalk stream, but the winter numbers in the wood with the clearing stay much the same. A great deal is said about the decline in home breeding woodcock, but we should not confuse this with the numbers that visit in winter. There is nothing to suggest that these have declined in any way. However, we cannot deny the drop in the numbers that breed here; successive surveys show both range contraction eastwards and fewer birds displaying.