Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game Maddog's 2014 limb chicken thread........

You suck.

Yup, I had to settle for deer tenderloin, gravy, and cathead biscuits..

I made nachos....

Wonder how "limb chicken" nachos would taste......



maddog

Woah, the holidays were busy. And my annual NC squirrel camp got canceled on account of everybody else had the flu.

Best of luck to all at the start of the new year. PN, nice to hear you got out amongst them. I lost one this morning. Must have spent half an hour clambering around looking for it. I�m still scratching my head over where it got to.

MD, no kidding, squirrel nachos from a year or so back:



And the fruit of this morning�s outing:

Didn't get in a lot of hunting this afternoon, the rain came on in sooner than I had thought it would. Good thing I had a waterproof jacket on. BUT I did manage to get one. I spotted it and estimated the range to be around 35 yards or so, fired one shot and dropped it; then I headed over to where it had fallen, and it was much further than I'd guessed, over 50 yards and I was fortunate that I didn't miss it being off that far guessing distance. Had to place the bullet between two limbs, as all that was exposed was the frontal half of the body, so the bullet struck the spine just behind and over the front legs, instant death. This batch of CCI Minimags has been excellent, I'm well pleased with them. It would have been nice to get a case instead of a brick, but things ain't like dat no mo', ammo is where it is and money is when it is too. Money and ammo availability happened to coincide happily.

I got to try out something new: having been using game shears with moderate success, I was thinking that something with shorter blades would be better, to get more leverage so that the tip of the snips would be able to cut through the tailbone, negating the need to do the initial slit through the base of the tail and tailbone with a knife. These new snips worked superbly, never even got a knife out of my pocket. These are Wiss shears that I found at Marvin's Building Supply locally. There is a notch area nearer the hinge identical to typical game shears for cutting through the leg bones, and the shorter and slimmer blades slide easily between skin and flesh to do the tail flap. Quick pull, zip, hide off, rip hide off the back legs with finger pulls and then snip snip snip snip, snip, feet and head gone, flip over and start lower blade into the neck opening, slide quickly to the pelvic bones, snip, insert finger above the diaphragm, rake out guts and done. Fastest and easiest I have ever done a squirrel skin and gut. The shears were less than ten bucks too. I've stumbled onto a few things over the years that happened to turn out working very well for me, these go on the "good" list. :t

Phillip...is that a Weaver 3-9xAO on the Kimber?

nice sized gray squirrel by the way, looks as big as some of our fox squirrels.

Yerp, it's that Weaver; a really nice rimfire rifle scope. I've still had bad thoughts of swapping scopes again. All of the rifle squirrel kills I've done this year, the scope has been on 4x/50 yards AO. A Leupold M-8 or FX2 4x 33mm would work fine for the majority of my squirrel hunting.

Squirrel sizes around here vary quite a bit, I'd guess depending upon the food available around where they are living. I've not killed many fox squirrels over the years. The biggest one I ever shot was this one:

Phillip, all I have in the majority of the ground I hunt, is fox squirrels. I've shot a bunch of really big ones, this season. Out of 40 squirrels, I only shot 1 gray.


maddog

Got out a few times, shot four one day and got skunked yesterday AM. Only squirrel I saw was up a tree four feet from its den hole and closing fast. I didn't even get a shot off.

Wish we had more of those big squirrels around here. Though the little grays are tender and tasty, it takes a few to get full.

Ella

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In Oklahoma we can hunt them until January 31, so this past Saturday I decided to try a new place my father gained permission to hunt. It is a papershell pecan grove with a band of mix hardwood thick cover on the west side. I hunted the border of the pecans and the mixed hardwood. I was happy to find this bit of woods holds both greys and reds. The greys were mostly on the ground or moving fast through the trees, but I managed to catch a few when they paused. The rifle is a 20 year old Ruger 77/22 with a Weaver 3x9AO. I was shooting Winchester subsonic hollow points and they worked great. My longest shot was about 50 yards on one of the greys I had missed with the first shot and my closest was about 10 feet. I carried them on an Arkansas squirrel stringer in the way my dad taught me many years ago. Strip the toes on a back foot and feed a sharpened hickory stick under the tendons. Then slip the stick through a belt loop. Makes for bloody pants, but I wear it as a badge of a successful hunt.

Perry

PWN, nice pic. Keep up the good work. Same to Ella and Phillip, and schoolmarm. You boys keep after it. Our Indiana season ends Jan. 31. Tonight it's 2 degrees with a 15-20 mph wind. If it don't warm up, my season may be over with.


maddog

I hunted at the inlaws over the weekend, and didn't see any. Went yesterday to hunt on some TVA land in Morgan County that is floodland reserve around Flint Creek. It was flooded. SUPRISE! Guess I should have known better after all the rain we got. I left there and went up the Swan Creek WMA north of Decatur and the Tennessee River and walked around for a while, saw no squirrels or rabbits. Flushed a whitetail doe, she was a biggun! Came boiling out of a hedgerow between big fields, and she skeedaddled out of there very quickly. If I was deer hunting I'd probably have seen squirrels! Talked to the game warden, he told me about a couple of good spots for squirrels at another location on the WMA, so next time I get up that way I'll have to check them out. I was very very tired and in a lot of pain from that much walking, so I didn't try today. It was 25 degrees with strong winds, so probably would have been a waste of time anyways.

Maddog, I'm sending this yankee weather back up to yall. A couple days ago was hunting in shorts and tshirt. 9 friggin degree windchill. Going this weekend, got to get some shooting time with my new .410.

Ok, which one of youse guys are huntin' squills with this ole boy?.........






maddog

Aw Man, been needing a new hound.

I think he looks dapper in the bubba buddy.....just saying.....



maddog

Oh yeah, for those of you who may be tired of limb chicken chowder.....









maddog