Home Forums Birds & Dogs Upland Game Snipe Hunting

Here's a picture I took today of a Wilson's Snipe hunting for worms down in NC. I thought it was a Woodcock until I enlarged the photo. I hear they are excellent eating.

If you like dark meat then you will like a snipe or woodcock. I saw a lot of woodcock and snipe when I was stationed at Fort Bragg. Obviously couldn’t shoot them with an M4.

I love to snipe hunt and love to eat them. To me they are very similiar to doves. I wrap them in bacon and throw them on the grill.

While stationed in Taiwan a group of us from the gun club would take hunting trips for dove and snipe. We'd fill a bushel basket of them and drop them at a restaurant and have them prepared. They made many fine dishes. We had to register with the local police department and would invite them to the dinner. That worked well, when we came back to that town the police would have a whole list of farms for us to hunt.

Snipe are fun and challenging to shoot as they are fast, agile, and often spooky. My preferred hunting is to walk along the edge of any low or marshy spot in a pasture. The low grazed grass is easy walking and the snipe are attracted to this type of cover. Hunting the pasture after a rain is also productive if there is standing water. Snipe will be in the flooded areas but they are often spooky and flush wild. If one stays still and waits, a flushed snipe may return to the area it was flushed. This doesn't happen every time but often enough to give it a try.

Where I grew up in CO we had a slough that held lots of snipe when they did their migration. They were fun to hunt and good on the table. When they came through they would stick around for about 3 weeks and we hunted them pretty hard. They can be hard to hit because they fly really funky, the secret was to wait until they got some elevation and steadied out. Hitting them on the jump is very very difficult. Improved cylinder choke and # 7 1/2 or 8 shot worked well.

I plan to hunt them some time, check the box. Are they usually just flushed by walking or does anyone hunt them with pointing dogs?

I’ve hunted snipe and woodcock. They like low lying wet areas. We had such a place near a Tupelo gum brake on our land and in December, the white splashes were sign the woodcock had arrived. They migrate thru on their way to Louisiana. Hard to hit, with a real hinky flight. As MAC said, best to let them get out a bit and level out. Fine eating, mostly dark meat. They probe for earthworms. Best place I found for snipe was a low lying area between two soybean fields. The snipe were there like gnats. They would flush and later swing back in. Great shooting but was hard for me as the only shotgun I owned was a Win 37 steel buildt in 12gauge full choke. This post brings back fond memories.

Never hunted snipe, always thought it would be fun.

Hunt woodcock a lot, my buddy and his family loves to eat them.

To me they taste like liver wrapped in earth worms. He can have them all.

Major Askins wrote of snipe hunting in the old days. It must have been awesome. I have shot a few.