Great pictures!


They are fun to hunt and tasty.

Before I was old enough to hunt, my Dad hunted rail and gallinule over a pointer. He wore hip boots and the dog waded. The dog would point standing in the water.

"Rail, any of 127 species of slender, somewhat chicken-shaped marsh birds, with short rounded wings, short tail, large feet, and long toes, of the family Rallidae (order Gruiformes). The name is sometimes used to include coots and gallinules, which belong to the same family, but coots and gallinules are far more ostentatious. Coots and gallinules flock like ducks, swim in open water, and waddle conspicuously on shore. By contrast, rails are secretive birds, hiding among reeds at the water’s edge by day and uttering their calls mostly at night.
Rails are distributed throughout the world, except in high latitudes. They vary in size from about 11 to 45 cm (4 to 18 inches) in length. Their loud calls reveal their presence in dense vegetation. Many are excellent game birds; when flushed, they take wing reluctantly, fly a short distance, and then drop to the ground. Their slender build facilitates running through reeds and marsh grasses. They are mostly dull coloured in grays and browns. Many are barred in irregular patterns. Short-billed species are often called crakes.

Rails hunted as game in the United States are the king rail (Rallus elegans), a reddish brown bird the size of a small chicken; the clapper rail (R. longirostris), a grayer form; the Virginia rail (R. limicola), reddish brown and about 25 cm (10 inches) in length; and the sora (see crake). The little yellow rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) and the American black rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) are too scarce and too small (about 15 cm [6 inches]) to be of interest to the hunter.

They are somewhat more exposed and in groups when they are migrating. Canoeing heavy shoreline reed and rice beds is the best method I have done. Timing is everything. Ours are Sora rails(often wrongly ID'd as snipe).

I think Sora Rails are more common then the Virginia’s, they tend to favor the flooded grasses here and are a little easier to find and are very vocal. Window for hunting them would be fairly short as it seems they migrate out about the time waterfowl season starts, but I do flush a few while duck hunting early in the season.
Like the Virginia’s they are difficult to photograph, very secretive birds.

2 year old grandson asked what's that calling. My response was ." What's he saying his name !"
Sora-sora-soraaa

Hunted them (Virigina Rails) when I was younger. We call them Mud Hens.

Hunted the meadows (Salt Marsh)with a partner. We would tie cans to a 25' rope ,fasten it around each of our waists, Walk across the meadow.
Also we would wear a ski belt. .With the ad of the ski belt we would be able to lay on our backs and hick our selfs across and tide water creek,that we can to.Holding our gun up out of the water.

Love it

Sounds like a young mans kind of hunt.
If I’m not mistaken typically the tidal marsh birds are Clapper Rails but I don’t know how much the other rails mix in with them.

As others have said, great pictures! Anymore they are my favorite bird to hunt, I don't have any photo's on this computer, not going to try and link video's right now but I have several on Vimeo. Most hunting you see is the boats and throwing markers, I wade with the dogs like someone mentioned above. Sora and Virginia are in different habitat, plenty of Virginia's they just don't fly as easy, harder to pin them in their habitat. Virginia's are a trophy to me, I've only seen 7 flush in about 30 seasons of hunting them. First was no shot and never got it up again, second was a friend on his first ever rail hunt, over a point by my dog! Next three I shot, including a banded bird, #6 was last year shot by a guy to my left, #7 was the last hunt this year, I was mostly hunting snipe, I was down to my last shell (I waste a lot of shells shooting at snipe), both dogs were working a track in patchy dry cat tails, I'm standing there watching them and thinking, they're working a rail. Bird gets up 20 feet out, I think, that's a Virginia, so I take my time, bear down on it, and whiff! After looking a the truck, a few hundred yards across the marsh, I briefly consider going back for more shells, then decide the bird won.