Coming home from visiting my Dad this afternoon, I noticed a woodcock pitch into a little alder swamp beside the highway. I started watching in earnest and saw three more land in there before we had driven past.
I remember sauteeing woodcock in butter over an open fire. I remember another meal when we wrapped a bunch of woodcock in bacon, then covered them in onions and bell peppers and aluminum foil. Let them sit on the fire for an hour or so and pulled them out. Wonderful.
The woodcock is a weird looking little bird. His flight patterns are distainful of shotgunning and his little twinkling call is deceptive. With dark meat breasts and white meat legs, even his musculature is strange. Aaah, but stuff him with a piece of apple, sautee him in butter, then simmer him in a red wine reduction and you have a morsel fit for the gods.
That little swamp is posted, dammit.
1 comment:
Yep, got introduced to woodcock in the Upper Peninsula of MI twenty years ago...you can hit them with a shotgun, but when you flush one, you have maybe a half-second to get on it before it hits 60 mph (a mallard will go that fast, but takes 5-6 seconds to get there), and then STARTS TO JINK! Needless to say, hitting a jinking woodcock is luck only.
Occasionally, you will flush a pair. A double in woodcock is almost unheard of, and if you do it, you'd better have a believable witness, because otherwise you'll get the Liars Award at the hunting lodge.
Rivrdog
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