The author with Mike Bowser's Dieter.

"Don, I've got lots of paint here." My hunting companion, Mike Bowser, was not referring to latex enamel. To the uninitiated, "paint" is woodcock droppings. When the migratory timberdoodles settle in for a few days, they leave a telltale whitewash on the russet autumn leaves. Mike was letting me know that there were woodcock nearby. I had barely digested that thought when he shouted, "Don, we've got a point."

His Small Munsterlander, Dieter, was frozen, his nose aimed at a game bird. Its protective coloring rendered the bird virtually invisible against a background of dried leaves. Mike edged in from the side. When the woodcock flushed from underfoot, it zigzagged off through the brush with a whistling of wings. I didn't have a shot but the bird fell quickly to a dose of No. 8s from Mike's 28 gauge.

Mike and I are both "long in the tooth" and we had decided that this hunt would be just a few hours. In that time, we flushed 12 woodcock and three grouse. As we neared Mike's jeep, Dieter went on point again. We slowly moved in. Then the dog broke point and circled out about 25 yards.

Mike noted, "He's got a runner, Don. He's heading it off." We heard a few clucks and two wild turkeys took flight, flapping within easy shotgun range. We both made phantom shots and smiled. It wasn't turkey season yet and, besides, it's illegal to hunt them with a dog in Pennsylvania. Still, it was a great experience.

Dieter fetches a duck--besides hunting upland game, the dogs eagerly retrieve waterfowl.

I was introduced to the Small Musterlander breed about a year ago. At the daily meeting of the "Fur and Feather Filosophical Society" at the Wellsboro Diner, Mike announced, "I got my Small Munster." Thoughts of specialty cheese rushed into my head. Then he explained that he had taken ownership of a Small Munsterlander–a hunting dog.

The day after our brief sojourn in the poplar and white pine slashings, Mike was expecting members of the Northeast Chapter of the Small Munsterlander Club of America to arrive at his place. He was hosting eight fellow Munster owners for three days. They were following the flight of the woodcock.

The American woodcock (Philohela minor), sometimes called bog-sucker, uses its long bill to feast on earthworms. Their southern migration stays ahead of the frost. While they often are found near bogs, in the mountains of north-central Pennsylvania they are more likely to drop into aspen patches or sections of clear-cut forestland. And Mike was ready for the woodcock flight and for the Munsterlander owners.

He had visited the local offices of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to find out where, within the nearby million-plus acres of state lands, clear-cuts had been made. Each area was marked out on topographic maps. The cuts were also color-coded to indicate the dates in which they were timbered. Then he made copies so that each hunter could have his own map of the timberdoodle hotspots. Mike selected only public lands as he didn't want any of his buddies to get hassled by private landowners.