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sawmill steakhouse
I was done by 8:30 am. I hope the rest of The season goes this well!

Great job.

What are the details on the rifle, scope, and ammo?

Where are you located? I am in Georgia and our squirrel season starts again in mid August.

Southeast Missouri. Our season always starts the Saturday before Memorial Day and ends February 15. I hunt them throughout the season but my favorite time is mid-August when hickory nuts start ripening. I have previously been using Ruger 10-22s but this year I switched to a super accurate Tikka T1X. The scope is an Athlon 4X12 rimfire model. This rifle is not picky so I shoot various brands of sub-sonic ammo. This is my first year using a suppressor and I love it!

I too live in the bootheel of Missouri. Went myself opening morning, took a few but woods are thick. Itching to try my Bergara BMR but used the 20ga this time.

Nice job fellow Ozarker's! Unless we get an usual cool spell I won't get after them until about September.

I agree but but I just couldn’t let opening day come and go without celebrating!

DeWman

How are mosquitoes down your way? With all this rain, I’m afraid they are gonna be rough this year.

Very nice. Our season here opens on Saturday. I hope to get a couple of days out. I'll take my .22 for sure. I also want to try my Ruger GP100 with .38 Spl 130 grain FMJ range rounds. That Ruger is so accurate with that cheap stuff I can break clays and parts of clays on the 50 yard range.

Skinner, totally off topic but what's your affiliation with Sawmill Grill?

OGB,

I don’t have a clue. When I copied that picture thru Postimage it added that.

Here in SE Ks the season opens June 1st. We've had several squirrels in the farmyard, digging up the wifes flowers and I'm getting a running score on it pretty often. Still haven't gotten around to putting a stop to it. At nearly 70 one of the scoped 22s would be more appropriate, but I'd rather use the old family heirloom M94 Marlin 25-20 with peep sights and home cast bullets.

Sounds like fun. Gotta protect those flowers!

Sorry, spent the last week in Michigan finally putting my dad to rest. Mosquitos bad, ticks bad, no chiggars to speak of but did encounter examples of all 3 of the "bad" snakes, rattlesnake,copperhead, & cotton mouths. But I was in Mingo Swamp so I brought it on myself. Yearly get together with squirrel eating pals but I bowed out of the other 2 days. Will wait now for hickories in midAugust.

Also, your grill is making my mouth water.

Mingo Swamp is an interesting place there in the bootheel. I bowhunted there once with a couple guys a long time ago. I discovered that I am not a swamp hunter. I thoroughly disliked the experience. Just the sheer numbers of cottonmouths I saw that weekend was enough for me to not hunt that place again.

I live 5 miles from Mingo. There is no shortage of cottonmouths or mosquitoes in the swamp.

I usually hunt west of Poplar Bluff but chase deer by Arab so I could be found anyplace. Mingo is NOT my favorite place to tread. Cooler weather I like the shooting range outside Zelma on county road 708.(my favorite cartridge). Stay safe

Bowhunted there twice in the 90's. Arrowed 2 nice deer. Lost them both in the water. Enough for me. Killed a small buck during one of their muzzleloader managed hunts. (It's a draw hunt)

Yes I have lost them in the water. Killed one of my better bucks during a managed hunt in 2016. The feral hogs have had a terrible impact on the deer population in my opinion.

Curious since y'all are fairly close but the question goes out to everyone. Are y'all seeing more dogs being used to specifically hunt squirrels? Do you use them?

I have a close friend that hunts with dogs but he’s the only one I am aware of. It seems it’s just like squirrel hunting in general, there just aren’t as many hunters now days. I mostly hunt public land and rarely see any other hunters.

Where I hunt around the Current River the only squirrel hunters I know of using dogs is a group from Arkansas that makes a yearly camping trip to the area. There are several old men and their dogs that stay for about a week and hunt. I did run into another, different old feller north of there in the MTNF using a pair of dogs to squirrel hunt. Other than that most folks tend to find a mast area and sit, or slowly stalk through the woods taking them as the run across them.

MOGC,
That could have been my buddy that you saw in MTNF. He drives over occasionally real early with a couple of dogs and hunts all day then spends the night and hunts the next day.

He sticks out in my mind because I told him I was out calling coyotes and bobcats and he gave me a tip on a big Tom bobcat. His dogs had treed it and he was worried that if the dogs ever caught the cat on the ground they would get hurt. I hunted the area that year and didn't kill a bobcat there, but I did kill one the following year close enough to maybe be the same cat. Had an older green Jeep.

No it wasn’t him. He doesn’t have a jeep and I’m sure he would have told me about that.