Some of my favorite memories as a kid, were getting suited up and heading out hunting squirrels with my Maternal Grandfather. The Squirrel season in Kentucky came in around August back then, and the leaves and mosquitoes were thick.
The first season, he had me hunting with a Winchester 37 in .410 bore. I'd hit them and they'd run off. I did learn a valuable lesson about the usefulness of a greenbriar, while hunting with that .410.
The next season I was sufficiently grown up on soup beans and Bologna sandwiches that I pestered Papaw to carry a .12 gauge like him. He accomodated me, and traded for a Remington 1100, with a 30 inch full choke barrel. As heavy as a railroad tie, that shotgun put me in a position to play college football, I have no doubt, but when I touched off a highbrass load of SuperX no. 4 shot, squirrels were dead when they hit the ground.
I still remember the way he taught me to walk in the woods, and how to tell the trees by the bark and by the leaves. I'd give anything to be able to go squirrel hunting with him one more time.
When he was close to the end, and the cancer nearly had him, I was sitting with him one day in March, far from a squirrel season. He hadn't eaten to amount to anything in quite a while, and between his naps, he told me that he thought he could eat a mess of squirrel if he could get it.
Enough for me. I went to his gun cabinet and got a 16 gauge Remington Model 11. I picked up a pocket full of shells, and walked the ridge. In no time, I had three nice gray squirrels and I hurried back to the house. I had them cleaned and ready when Granny made it back home from her trading (Grocery shopping).
She made squirrel and dumplings, and we brought him to the kitchen table. I sat with him while he absolutely scarfed those squirrels. He could leave a shiny white pile of squirrel bones like no one I have ever seen.
When he was done, we took him back to the hospital bed he slept in, and he went back to sleep. He only made a few more weeks before he was gone, but I have never been so happy to have three squirrels in my life.
