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Woodcock and history

For centuries the woodcock has represented a special place in the hunting world

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  • 1526   In the "journal de Paris" of December 19, 1786 (N ° 353) an extract from the registers of the city of Harfleur in Normandy, where there is mention of a dinner given in August in 1526 to King François 1st, he is served ducks, partridges, plovers, videcoqs, rabbits, capons, and other waterfowl. The author of King Modus "Treaty of hunting" who wrote in around 1450 gave the woodcock the name of videcoq .

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  • 1759 Reasoned and universal dictionary of animals with the approval and privilege of the king.  The hunter's woodcock is a bird of passage that is very good to eat. It flies heavily and with difficulty, it is claimed that it is Aristotle's scolopax, because of its beak which resembles a stake.

  • 1767 M. Salerne, Doctor of Medicine in Orléans, correspondent of the Royal Academy of Sciences. The flesh of the woodcock is esteemed by connoisseurs, and that is why this bird is sold so dearly in the time it comes to us.

  • 1780 Buffon's presentation of the woodcock. The woodcock is perhaps of all the birds of passage the one that hunters value the most, both because of the excellence of its flesh and the ease they find in seizing this good stupid bird.

  • 1788   Extract from a book "The gun hunt". Woodcock hunting  is very amusing in a wood which is not too thickened, especially if it is pierced by several roads, which make it easy to kill them on the way.

  • 1810   Extract from a book by Englishman Thomas Smith. It is especially at this time (February) that the hunters pursue them, and that they resound the echoes of the discharge of their weapons, a single person can kill seventeen pairs in a day.

  • 1823   work dedicated to Count Girardin. The woodcock is a delicate and esteemed game, we meet it quite commonly from October until the end of March.

  • 1842  E xtract from an English work  . Of all the rifle hunts, the woodcock is the most attractive, so nothing is more pleasing to the ears of the hunter than the news that the guard gives him, than in the last fog.  the woodcock have arrived. 

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