Next to wildfowling and the occasional grouse, the focus of my sporting year centres around woodcock. There’s one place I shoot each winter, where woodcock are the primary sporting objective of the day. It was formerly a sheep farm, but in 2000 almost all of it was planted up with a variety of hardwood trees. With 20 years for the trees to grow and expand their cover, the former farm has matured like a fine wine. Surrounded on all sides by boggy pastureland, the birds not only have an abundance of cosy cover to conceal them in the woods, but plenty of access to worms under veil of darkness.
The best of the shooting usually takes
