Woodcock For Breakfast

Yes, we must think carefully before we shoot woodcock, but they are such challenging, magical little birds, says Will Martin

- Will Martin

Every so often in the pages of my gamebook can be found two small pointy pin feathers held down crudely with sticky tape. There are some on page four and, as I leafed through while researching for this piece, I found another page with eight proud pairs. However, on nearly every page are the words “missed a woodcock”.

No other bird causes such furore as the woodcock. It is almost mythical, its flying glorious to behold and its flavour simply delicious. When I was much younger, a member of my father’s syndicate, Justin, and Andrew Broggio, a family friend and owner of Narracott shoot, would take me with them — if I pestered long enough— when they went woodcock flighting.

On one memorable evening, I crouched in a hedgerow by Big brook Wood. The night was clear with a big January wolf moon lying low in the sky, as the last rays of the weak winter sun made giants of the trees’ shadows.

The animals of the night were beginning to shift. The tawny owls began talking between woods and a vixen barked in the distance. Then, like magic, the woodcock came, flitting through the trees like ghosts and making only the quietest whish whish-whirr as they jinked and dived between the trees.

We stayed silent as the first few flew over unscathed and unsaluted, quite happy just to watch. Then came the crack of Justin’s gun, and again, followed by the gentle thud of a woodcock falling. The vixen went silent, too. That night, as the stars began to twinkle and the sun had set below the Devon hills, we picked-up eight woodcock and four feathers were stuck proudly in my game book. All of us had a chance at that elusive right-and-left, yet none of us succeeded that night.