Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game Where do the squirrels go?

Heaven = pan-fried young squirrel, mashed taters, biscuits and gravy, vegetables of your choice, milk/tea/adult beverage of choice.

So glad we get to hunt them in the late spring when those young are out and about.

I would hate to have to wait until fall to get after em.

I don't hunt them a whole lot in the spring but occasionally when that nice cool morning comes around I know where some Mulberry trees are and the squirrels will be after those Mulberries. I'll kill a few for the skillet then.

That's the key, mulberry trees loaded with ripe mulberries. They travel a good bit for those.

To squirrel heaven...

😂😂😂

My last great Squirrel hurrah!

My last Squirrel hunt. Times have changed.

Beautiful Auto Five! What gauge?

It’s a 1965 Belgian Auto 5, 12 ga which i took out of the box which it had been in since new. That was 2018. Handed it off to Art Isaacson, Art’s Gun Shop, at the Tulsa Gun Show which we attend twice annually. He replaced every spring in it & of course blessed it otherwise for $120, delivered. The original recoil spring was 2” shorter than the new, glad I did that before shooting it.

I purchased an Invector barrel for it for $550 & sold the original for $150. That transaction nearly turned into an assault right there in the aisle at the gun show.

So, in 2018 you might say it was brand new. That’s why it looks so good.

Very nice! Art is THE man when it comes to most things Browning. I grew up with Auto Fives around. My dad was magical with his Sweet Sixteen and Light Twelve. An uncle had a Light Twenty. I hold my Twenty near and dear.

I think they go to Reloder28’s freezer.

As would I.

Looks like those times are getting fewer by the year.

I killed most of those in the Trinity River bottom. Problem is, the river comes out of its banks and season is the month of October for me as I will be hunting WT’s in South Texas from then on. If the Trinity is out of its banks in October the waters will not recede enough to dry up before the 31st. The Duck hunting is stellar & that is a viable alternative………..if, I cared anything about Duck hunting. Last hunt in the water, a buddy lost his dog to a gator. No thanks.

I'm right now in my warm office up on the north side of Cincinnati. That's where I spend 2-3 months of winter. The place at the farm just isn't big enough for me, and I get to feeling cooped up. When I'm at the farm, we're normally crawling with squirrels. Up here, we're also up to our eyeballs with tree rats.

Squirrels generally don't go anywhere as long as there is food. From the back patio, I can see a dozen dreys. When the numbers decrease, it is usually from lack of food, and since the oaks go in approximately 10-year cycles, so do the squirrels. When I went out to sit this morning I had a gazillion squirrels moving about.

Squirrels do migrate when there are too many of them and they outstrip the local food source. #2 son, Moose, is the squirrel expert. He explained a phenomenon I was seeing a couple of years ago when the acorn crop failed. Squirrels get suicidal. They start roaming out in the middle of the street. They're not trying to kill themselves, but they start doing risky behaviors. One is searching for food in dangerous places and the other is migrating into unknown territory.

Generally speaking, the seasonal thing has to do with cover. Spring Squirrel season at the farm is usually a bust. Moose, being the expert, is the only one that seems to be able to get a shot at them. They hide up in the foliage and they're very hard to pick out. It is hard to shoot them until the leaves start to fall. Now, with all the leaves down, they are easier to see. They were there in June and September, you just couldn't see them. Now, all the food that's left is down on the ground. Moose like to hunt until the last day of season in February.

We have no AG in the area around the farm. It's all cow pastures or fallow land. If you have standing crops around, there are plenty of squirrels. The other thing is cover. Moose prefers to hunt hardwood stands with adjoining cedar thickets. The squirrels like to hid in the cedars and then come out onto the hardwood branches to feed.

When we had six wire corncribs full of ear corn, we had plenty of squirrels. One burned our transformer.

Mom talked about squirrel, and dumplings.