Tell me about Rails

8″-10″ tai;. maybe slightly larger. Real wide spread feet. Rails can almost walk on water and love to trot on lily pads and other weeds that have laid down on the water. Bug feeders and will probe deep into mud. They can be noisy when flushed. I tried eating rails that we took off a shallow lagoon and I wasn’t too impressed with them. Seemed tough but it could have been how they were prepared. Taste wise they reminded me of dabbling ducks.

They can be challenging to hit so take plenty of ammo. Not hard to kill, just not as easy of a target as one may think.

Bout the size of a robin so unless you can harvest a bunch of them you won’t be eating anything but potato chips.

Not sure about rails. Started hunting snipe with my Dad when I was 8 yr old, carrying my B.B. gun

Got one or two bites of meat per bird, lol

Actually Suzuki, I think that I always referred to as rails is a Wilson’s Snipe. Rails, I believe, are pretty much coastal shorebirds relating to salt water shorelines and salt marshes and are larger birds than I remember shooting. After answering your post I say down this morning with the on-line bird book and sure enough, what I called rails as a kid are indeed the Wilson’s snipe. There are a ton of snipe variations but the Wilsons is the only sub specie that is wide spread across North America.

And lindyrig is spot on with meat per bird yield but my comments on tough stand.

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Definitely not that. Closest thing I’ve found is a Sora. Still not sure. I flushed one but couldn’t see enough detail.

Sora and Virginia rails are legal game in Minnesota. We used to run into a few while woodcock hunting near Cotton MN but haven’t seen any for the past 20 years. We also don’t hunt woodcock much any more, take them as a bonus bird while grouse hunting.

Well i did a lot of research and poked my pontoon into the rice fields last weekend and they are indeed Sora Rails. LOTS of them. I am intrigued but I don’t have the gear to push through the rice and from what I’ve read I probably wouldn’t like eating them. It’s neat having such an untapped hunting opportunity at my doorstep and apparently it used to be an immensely popular sport.