WE’RE NOT PROUD OF WHAT WE’VE ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR, BUT WE’RE NOT THAT SURPRISED, EITHER.
The first bird came twisting out of a thick mat of spicebush and Christmas fern, and the three of us missed five times. That’s a lot of shooting on a single American woodcock. We’ve driven a long way, with nine pointing dogs in tow, and set up camp by the lake and laid in three days’ worth of food and gear and to be honest we think we’re pretty good at this game, so the bitter pill is going down hard.
A half hour later, Hazel, a robust Gordon setter with a predatory tracking gait, slows to a crawl and then points a second time in the thicket. To my left, my buddy Mike Neiduski posts up in a tangle so thick it nearly obscures his silhouette. Off my right shoulder, Stephen Faust, a guide and fellow native North Carolinian, moves in on Hazel. When the bird vaults like a whirling, twittering dervish, it levels out at the top of the saplings, and Neiduski fires twice. As the shotgun’s blast echoes through the woods, no one says a word.
When bird hunting in thick cover, there’s often a moment of respectful silence as the shooter sorts through the possibilities: Did the bird shudder and fall or simply change direction in midair? Did it sail to the ground or sail over the rise? Only a goober would holler through the woodcock woods, “Hey man! You get him?” Although that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Winter’s carpet of fallen leaves seems to soak in the shotgun blasts, and then there is a fuss and flutter in the thicket, and the welcome thudding gait of a dog on the retrieve.
“Redemption,” Neiduski calls.
Only then do Faust and I share a respectful whoop and holler. The moment feels like a communal absolution, as if that one bird down atones for all the whiffs that came before. But Neiduski’s benediction seems to carry a deeper message.
The American woodcock is
