Small game season is soon here, and upland hunters will be heading north to favored coverts in search of the ruffed grouse and a rusty-colored little bird called the American woodcock.

Nicknamed ‘timberdoodle,’ it is the woodcock that commands attention from many uplanders seeking a hunter’s challenge.

In flight, the woodcock can fool the best of hunters. Its sudden, flushing flight seems almost capable of hovering and backward motion; but when it decides to head out at full-flank speed, it can make a straight line skeedaddle like a rocket.

Related to the snipe, this shorebird-turned-forest-resident is eagerly sought when the fall season opens for gunners. The bird’s habitat overlaps that of the ruffed grouse, so most hunters go afield for both.

Hunters with pointing dogs can expect steady points–often more so for woodcocks than grouse. Woodcocks hold steady more than grouse do, much of the time. Grouse, already bumped by hunters, spooked by ground and aerial predators, and made nervous by brisk fall winds, may wild-flush more than the tight-sitting woodcock. This is one reason the woodcock is a favorite for those with pointing dogs.

A good dog is even more valuable if you are successful in downing one of these birds. Without one, you’ll have more hunting to do—this time for a fallen bird. A woodcock has coloration that makes it blend almost perfectly into fall ground cover. Many a hunter has stood directly over a downed bird, unable to separate its form from the background. So, having a bird dog is a big advantage to avoid wasting game.

Viewed close-up, hunters may wonder who designed this odd creature. Its long bill, uniquely designed for probing the soil for earthworms, has a special tip that can move, grip, and then pull up worms.

Its brain is positioned upside down, and its ears are lower in the head to help detect the movement of worms under the surface.

The bird’s eye seems larger than it is at first glance, and seems almost sad. They have a ridiculously short tail, edged with a stubby fan of white tipped feathers. The wide wings are marked with mottled brown, rusty and gray-dark and black hues that give it perfect camouflage against the ground colors. The breast is rusty brown.

Michigan is one of the major areas for hunting woodcocks in the Great Lakes region, with suitable habitat and the moist lowland soils (when there is no drought) that earthworms favor. A bit of sage advice from an old ‘timberdoodle’ hunter holds true: “If your boots don’t get a bit muddy at times, you’re hunting in the wrong places.”

Woodcock numbers have been declining, and habitat loss–not hunting–is the major reason. Like grouse, deer and other species needing young intolerant forest edges for habitat, aging forest cover, drought conditions, and human impacts such as development have made an impact on their numbers. Hunting is limited by season length and a reduced daily harvest quota, which most hunters find reasonable.

Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota still have fairly good populations of locally-reared woodcocks, but there is a time in the fall when local populations are augmented by “flights”—migrating groups of woodcocks that begin to move southward as the weather in Canada and the upper Lakes states grows colder. Hitting these flights right can give you exciting and fast-paced shooting. However, since migrating flights do not always move daily, you may find a hot covert from one day to be a bird-barren place a day later.

Hunters seek woodcocks as often as they can during flight time, for when the southbound flights are over, so is the opportunity to hunt them.

Michigan’s 2008 woodcock season, from Sept. 22 to Nov. 5, is within the federal guidelines governing migrating species.

In northern Michigan, the flights generally peak by mid-October and fizzle out about the first of November. Then, thoughts of woodcock hunting are put on hold until next year, as most hunting attention turns to deer season.

On many a cold winter evening, hunters will be warmed by remembering those halcyon days of crimson and gold leaves, dogs staunchly on point, and the rusty flash of a flushing ‘timberdoodle’ heading for deeper cover. Such memories give the term “hunting” real meaning for Michigan’s upland stalkers.