Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game Eating backyard Squirrel

Anyone else pop 'em for a snack. My 7 year old daughter is always on point looking for tree rats. We have killed 8 since thursday and i've gotten about 2 bites. I have 3 in the oven right now.

every now and again i will head out back and shoot a couple for breakfast.my 11 year old love him some squirrel gravy

My girls ask me to shoot every squirrel that comes to the feeder. I have held off, simply because I usually don't have time to clean them and I HATE skinning squirrels - love to eat them though!

Selmer, like cats, there is more than one way to skin a squirrel

Here are a couple of weird guys that know what they are doing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKeFHZwleNE

And here is guy that does it like I do. Pretty easy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66AVwthXgMA

I put them in brunswick stew. 3-6 young ones is good for a gallon or two of soup.

Love squirrel hunting & eating them even more. I have been banned from hunting in my back yard for over 20 years. We are over run with squirrels & living in the city I decided to use a blowgun & hunting darts. Worked very well until one day when I shot one through the neck & pinned him to the tree. It was to high to get to so I just left the carcass hang there. My five & six year old daughters saw the squirrel & screamed for mommy. That was the end of my dart gun & a happy retirement for the back yard squirrels.

Can't even shoot a pellet gun in town here, but Red Fox squirrels are plentiful and a non-native (unprotected) specie. So I got a Havahart live trap. I catch them alive, take them to the garage to "transition" them for "relocation" ( To a pan of hot butter )

Near as I can tell the backyard squirrels taste every bit as good as those from the front yard....

I could care less about killing squirrels as I don't have them in my locale, but you need to revisit your 'methodolgy' and skills, and erradicate those flea-infested bird-seed-stealing tree-poodles!

What about CB caps in a .22? Or Remington's CBee caps?

How exactly have you been able to catch squirrels? As a boy i hunted grey squirrels In Californika, and even tried to trap them with crude traps I made that never worked!

What kind of bait do you use?

If you are going to live trap squirrels, use a wire-mesh trap. They aren't as likely to go into dark boxes.

I used to trap red squirrels by tying chicken bones, or even bacon in one instance, to the trap pan of a #1 underspring.

Inspired by this thread, I now have three squirrels to go skin! I've been sitting on my couch writing Sunday's sermon and waiting for the squirrels to raid the bird feeders. I have three now, all retrieved by my Weimaraner. The last two were a challenge, they were feeding next to one another and I resolved to wait until their vitals lined up. The front one took a CB short through the head, it over-penetrated and struck the second in the shoulder and he went about 40 feet. No exit on the second, I'm excited to see what the bullet looks like! My girls (8&6) will be very pleased, they've been asking me to shoot squirrels in the backyard so they can eat them, but I haven't had time to clean them post-shooting and I don't shoot stuff just to shoot it. Worked perfectly today - squirrel's back on the menu! Picks to come...

Here's the pics - the Weim is my 2.5 y/o Lucy. She really turned onto the pheasants this fall - time to get her in the squirrel woods!

I did recover the bullet from the third squirrel. Somehow the 29 gr. pill grew to 30 gr. according to all three of my scales...great weight retention!

Of course you also weighed it before you fired it, right?

Peanuts...roasted, w/o salt

I wire both doors to the trap open and use it as a feeder, conditioning them to go in and out without trepidation, then I remove the wires and open the " Squirrel Motel" where they check in, but don't check out.....

When I lived in my college frat house I taught the boys how to snap them in a 110 Conabear trap. Quiet and effective in urban areas. Always was cooked and eaten within 30 minutes of finding it.

Ive tried catching them in rat traps baited with peanut butter but the damned birds keep setting them off first...

Can you say "PooF!"....

That is a funny story

Not allowed around the house, those are treated like pets and are spoiled rotten. Further out they are fair game. I have a couple recipes which are favorites. Both start with an overnight salt water brine followed by a seasoned parboil. At this point, the two differ. One is for smoking on the grill where I use a dry rub and a bacon wrap with jalapenos and vadalia onions, about like I grill pheasants. The second is the skillet browning followed by simmering in a wine gravy with brown sugar served over rice with buttermilk biscuits. Making the second one now as I type and it's turning out to be outstanding.

Best