They come with the plover. That’s usually the sign. When killdeer start skittering and calling and chasing down in the winter-worn horse pasture, we can be certain woodcock will be singing at dusk.
We listen in the hayfield behind the farmhouse. We listen along the creek that runs through the Goose Pasture, east of the Barney Field. Those are our Woodcock Fields of Dreams. They have taught us faith: If we provide for them, they will come.
By “providing,” that means keeping brushy fencerows and cleared fields. Our Amish neighbors use strict organic farming practices on their land and ours to keep poisons from our soil. We have planted a couple of acres of alders to complement native pink birch and wetland scrub.
And when the first dark woodcock shape spirals into the evening sky, some cold February or March day’s end, we strain to watch him sweeping the fields in broad, twitter-tweeting gyres Aldo Leopold lovingly called “the sky dance.” Spiraling, rising higher and higher, the woodcock finally disappears in the murk, tracked only by the sweet chirping that means he's begun his slip-sliding cant back to earth.
Back on the ground, often mere feet from where he originally lifted, the woodcock begins to preen, twirl, strut, and “peeent” his buzzing brag that, for all intents and purposes, Spring has indeed sprung.
“I’m here for earthworms and love,” he seems to boast, “and we’ve just run outta worms. Hey now!”
We will come back in the morning with the young dogs – a Llewellin named Blizzard’s Huntmore Lucy, fast, wide and irrepressibly reckless; her housemate, Firelight Encore Deacon, bulling his way through cover methodically, purposefully. Each one feeds my soul, Lucy skimming over the traces of last night’s snow, the Deacon, just as fast, reaching, pushing, smooth and light-footed enough to belie his much bigger frame.
These next six weeks will be their last contact with wild birds until October and prairie grouse on the Montana plains. The difference between that future Big Sky hunt and our blank gun forays for spring woodcock is the difference between casting the dogs into an Amazon rain forest and the mountains of the moon.
But the transfer we're after is the connection between two-legged and four-legged hunters. We are almost as much after chemistry as we are bird contacts. Obviously the latter is a critical stage for derby dogs. But perhaps it’s only slightly more vital than the communication and collaboration we’re trying to establish.
The man who owned this farm before us worked his Spring woodcock from horseback, riding to likely cover before dismounting. He would drop the reins to “ground tie” Snowball, his shaggy white Walking Horse, then duck in to join Williedawg or Dinah, Cotton or Molly, ciphering the dark thickets that held early birds hustling worms.
Our outings for woodcock come strictly via "Shank’s Mare". The horses will be along later in the year when we road the dogs into prairie shape. For now, we trail the setters over thawing ground pocked with ice-rimmed tracks of deer and turkey.
We check the alder brakes for ‘cock chalk and probing holes, staying quiet to encourage the dogs to come by, check in, hunt on. As hard as we listen for dog collar bells tolling us through the overcast morning, we listen even harder for the edgy quiet of a bell gone silent, a dog on point.
We bust briar and wrestle through bare trees toward where last we heard the dog. For a second, we wish we could stand to wrestle the dogs into blaze orange cover jackets. A mud-splashed, tri-color setter blends perfectly with the shadows and snow patches of a Spring woodcock covert.
But, for us, a garish dog vest hack would be an intrusion. We keep these Spring dress rehearsals as barebones affairs – a whistle we seldom blow, starter’s pistol, a leather pouch of blanks, a short stiff checkcord coiled tight and clipped to the belt – just in case a manners tutoring session is in order. This is handler, dog, and our favorite harbinger of a new sporting year, as close to the land and game and woodscraft as we can cut it.
Later, as the afternoon light fades, while the dogs doze and twitch, sprawled over the warm kitchen floor, we will slip back out under a lowering sky. We'll stand in the gloaming listening, watching, waiting for woodcock to again dance our dreams.