Hunting may not cause sinking woodcock populations

Woodcock wrangler Jed Meunier has seen many sunsets during his research. This is because bagging birds for science usually takes place at twilight.

A graduate student in wildlife ecology at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Meunier is part of a multiyear study of woodcock in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. The project is helping to reveal the reasons underlying woodcock population declines in the upper Midwest.

A 1998 survey showed that woodcock hunting success was below long-term averages and that declines had been under way for more than a decade in the central and eastern United States. Meunier is exploring the impacts of hunting on the woodcock population. “During this process, we’ve also begun to shed light on other aspects of the woodcock’s life history, such as migration timing and landscape-scale habitat use,” Meunier says. “For example, we’ve seen how drought influences woodcock habitat use and survival.”

Meunier is studying two areas managed mainly for timber and recreation in north-central Wisconsin. One is a heavily hunted site in the Lincoln County Forest; the other is in the Tomahawk Timberlands industrial forest, which has restricted access and very little hunting pressure.

The researchers found that woodcock often “bounce” between two or three different sites, often triggered by rain. Meunier found that typical home range in this study area was about 15 acres.