Today was opening day of New Jersey small game season. Realizing that the easily accessible public spots would be flooded with rabbit and pheasant hunters, my friend Paul Quigley, my vizsla Gus, and I opted to hunt woodcock on some off-the-beaten-path public hunting locations. Our gamble paid off!
Gus had his all-time best woodcock day today. Paul and I each shot a limit of woodcock (3 birds each), but Gus was the true star. He found at least 20 woodcock. He pointed about 15 of them, while we inadvertently flushed about 5. We were hunting some rugged terrain with trees that made for tough shooting, so several birds lived long enough to continue their southward migration.
To test the waters, we stopped by Mad Horse WMA to try our luck on some New Jersey-public land-stocked pheasants. We could deal with the pouring rain, but the swarms of mosquitoes and even bigger swarms of other hunters made our stay short. We stayed about 20 minutes and saw one rooster and one hen pheasant (both while we were driving out of the area).
Check out the photos.