Getting Squirrely

 

There are lots of members of the family sciuridae around the world, but I believe all of them are known by some variation of the name squirrel.  There are ground squirrels and tree squirrels and even flying squirrels, although biologists say the latter don’t actually fly.  There are gray squirrels and red squirrels and fox squirrels.  But no type of squirrel reaches the level of popularity, in my book at least, of my favorite, fried squirrel.

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I’ve eaten squirrels prepared in a lot of different ways, boiled, baked, roasted, and, of course, fried.  My dad loved to eat squirrel brains, which may be one of the reasons that I grew up hunting the rodents with a shotgun rather than the more traditional .22 rifle, although I’ve taken a few that way when they weren’t destined for any use involving Dad.

I once read that Daniel Boone hunted using a method called “barking”.  He’d locate a squirrel in a tree and, using his expert marksmanship, drive a lead ball from his blackpowder rifle into the bark of the tree underneath it.  The resulting explosion would knock the stunned critter out of the tree, allowing Boone to finish it off as needed and deposit the relatively undamaged carcass in his game pouch.

This struck me as a great way to salvage the maximum meat from a critter that often isn’t big enough to provide a full meal for one person, so I thought I’d try it if I ever hunted squirrels with a muzzle loader.

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Well, I’ve never hunted bushy-tails with a muzzle loader but I did witness the barking of a squirrel, albeit accidental.

I was in Virginia with my buddy, Jerry Tyree, and staying at his father-in-law’s cabin in the mountains.  It was the right time of the year so we went out deer hunting.  Well, he was deer hunting.  I couldn’t justify the nonresident fees so I hunted without carrying a rifle…or any other form of weapon.

We moved as quietly through the woods as two guys walking in dry freshly fallen leaves can do.  Later, after an uneventful hunt, we were heading back to the cabin when we caught sight of a big squirrel scurrying up an oak.  Jerry raised his rifle…his deer rifle.  At the angle he was shooting, whether it hit the squirrel or not, his round would safely impact the tree behind it.  Regardless, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing what a bullet fired from a high velocity deer rifle could do to a critter the size of a squirrel.

At the report, the squirrel was knocked off the tree and fell to the earth beneath it, narrowly missing my friend as it fell.  Evidently it hadn’t read the same stories I had because it wasn’t stunned.  Not at all.  Thus began what would be a short but very exciting drama.  The critter ran as fast as it could as Jerry jumped around.  Every time my friend landed the squirrel would turn and run in the other direction, effectively circling between and around his feet.

I’ll give my friend the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to kill the squirrel but he did it utilizing a method that looked a lot like a man trying to keep a rodent from climbing up inside his pants leg.  The screams didn’t help clarify that scenario, but they did add to my entertainment.

I couldn’t catch my breath, laughing uncontrollably and yelling, “Get him Tree!  Get him!”

My friend finally put an end to the battle with a well-placed butt stroke and stopped screaming, which by then was sounding a lot like cussing.  I eventually caught my breath although I was wracked by paroxysms of laughter now and then for hours after.

As we were cleaning our hard-won prey an examination showed that a little patch of fur on its belly had been shaved neatly by the exploding bark.  Jerry had barked a squirrel.

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Another squirrel hunting story may well have been even more exciting.  I witnessed the very beginning of it, but the best part happened after I left.

Annie and I took some of our boys for a walk around a neighbor’s pasture north of Centralia, Missouri, where we lived at the time.  J.B. and Scotty, our two oldest, carried one of my .22s, an Armalite AR7.  The boys and I did a bit of plinking, shooting hickory nuts floating in the creek, sticks, and things like that.

On our way home “Beezer” as we called J.B. in those days, was carrying the .22 when he saw a squirrel scurry up a tree.  Before he could get the rifle aimed the little animal took refuge on the other side of a big limb.

Beezer has always been good at anything he sets his mind to, and hunting is no exception.  He may have been carrying his first hunting license in his pocket but he instinctively understood his prey better than a lot of men many times his age.  He told the rest of us to go on toward home and he would sit quietly and watch for the squirrel to expose itself.

I was almost out of sight when I looked back and my pint-sized Davey Crockett waved for me to go on.  It was such a small movement that I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking for it.  I told you, he is sharp.

We went on toward home and, after a while I heard a shot.  About a minute later, I heard another shot.

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Here follows an example of how different a minute can feel to two different people in two different circumstances.

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When my son got home he was carrying a squirrel by its furry tail.

“Got it, huh?” I asked.

A big grin was my answer.

He eagerly told me the story.

When the critter had finally peeked out, J.B. had aimed carefully at the single eye he could see…and waited.  When he felt comfortable with the shot, Beezer pulled the trigger.  The squirrel dropped from the limb as dead as a stone.

Now is when you start your mental clock.

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At least it looked dead as it fell.  When it hit the ground it started running toward a nearby fallen tree.  The boy noticed the butt of the tree had a hollow barely big enough for a squirrel to squeeze in.  My son jockeyed for position and just as he got there, the critter got its head in the hole.

My quick-thinking son realized that even a dead squirrel can be difficult to remove from a hollow as small as that one.  A live one can be even harder.  So, quick as a wink, my little outdoorsman grabbed the critter by its bushy tail and pulled.

The tug-of-war was short and ended when the squirrel released its grasp on the log, which left Beezer holding a very alive and very angry critter with teeth sharp enough to gnaw through seasoned oak.

That’s when J.B. realized that the bullet he had fired at the critter happened to be the last one in the rifle’s magazine.  So there he was with a ticked off razor-toothed squirrel and an empty rifle to shoot it with.

A lesser man would have released the squirming critter and been satisfied to emerge unscathed.  Not my little man.  Somehow he managed to pull the bolt back on the rifle and drop a .22 cartridge into it, AFTER pulling the shell out of his pocket, WHILE holding the wiggling squirrel with his OTHER hand.

After he did all that he dispatched the bushytail and headed for home.

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Got your mental clock going?  Remember, all that took about a minute.  I’m sure it seemed like a lot longer to our intrepid hero.

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J.B. is in his thirties now and is coming in for a visit this weekend.  Squirrel season is open.  Maybe I’ll ask if he wants to go squirrel hunting with me.  We can see if his squirrel wrestling skills are still as sharp as they once were.

Then we’ll fix up some of my favorite kind of squirrel – fried.

 

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(below) One of my early digital photos of a squirrel eating a hickory nut.