Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game Hunting Squirrel with a 12gauge

In 1975 a Remington 1100 went for round $175. We were in Carrols gun shop in Wharton Texas a few months later and saw a model 42 in the same condition of his with a $700 price tag. The price along with not having that Winchester anymore caused great remorse.

Great thread. Great story Vic, thanks for sharing.

Dirtfarmer, I love your Contender. I hunt rabbits with the same, just in the Encore platform.

My 12 gauge heirloom is a Mossberg 500. Back when I first got married I didn't have two nickels to rub together. I moved to upstate NY and at 23 found myself in shotgun country for deer. I only had a 30-30 Winchester and scoured the local gunshow for a cheap shotgun to use for deer season. paid $115 for a Mossberg 500 pump with a slug barrel and another $20 to a friend for a bird barrel for it. My neighbor took me under his wing and taught me about hound hunting and I used that gun for deer as well as all the hound hunting we did. Rabbit with beagles, fox and coyote with hounds. That was the only gun I used for YEARS!!!!

Fast forward and my son wants to use my shotgun for deer as I now use a revolver or Thompson Encore. He loves the history of the gun and has at this point taken 3 deer with that gun. Makes my heart warm to see him want to use his old mans gun and continue the tradition. I am still running beagles and he has taken a handful of cottontails and a snowshoe hare over them with it in addition to the squirrels he has taken with our Black Mouth Cur.

great thread. I learned to hunt along the Navidad River in Lavaca county. lots of fox squirrels there in the 60s and 70s. I used a Remington Model 17 that was my grandfather's main meat getter back then.

I guess I should have titled this tread "Squirrel hunting with a shotgun"

Here is My 60th birthday present. I won't assemble it until then on May 9th 2018

My first Squirrel killed was with a 12 ga. After that I tried my 20 ga, 28 ga & 410. None could reach the top of the 85' pine trees & cut thru the foliage, in deep East Texas, like that 12 ga. That was 1985. I prefer squirrel hunting to any other.





My 58th b-day presents to myself was a 1965 Browning Auto 5 still in the box. I bought it a VR 26" Invector barrel. I assembled it last October and took it on its first hunt. There is not a man in the woods more proud of his shotgun than when I pack my Auto 5 hunting.