All my life I've been a squirrel hunter. Loved it. I used to take my vacation the first cool week of the season instead of deer hunting. 22 or shotgun it didn't matter although I preferred to still hunt rather than using a dog. Slipping along on a cool morning listening for a limb to shake or an acorn to fall or maybe the rik rik rik of them cutting a hickernut. I've had many a neck ache from looking up a big pine or a hickory, seeing bits and pieces falling but unable to see the squirrel. Loved to hunt the morning after a rain, you could catfoot thru the woods like a ghost. Sometimes it would take 30 minutes to cover 50 yds and he'd never know you were there until that 40 grain long rifle hit him. One year I had 32 kills in 32 shots, all in the head. If I didn't kill a hundred or more it was a bad season.
Loved to eat them too, momma would parboil them and fry for breakfast with gravy and biscuits...... a meal fit for a king. Sometimes she'd pressure cook a bunch of them and take the bones out, add some rabbit, venison or whatever else was handy and make a big spicy mulligan so thick your fork would stand up in it.
Then we moved out in the boondocks and I hate the destructive little bastages. First couple of years here my neighbor kept them killed out of his bird feeders so they weren't a problem, then he moved. Now the bushy tailed little demons over run the place. Last year they got every pecan off my tree in August before they were anywhere near ripe. Every single one, I didn't get the first pecan. I killed 16 and several more carried lead with them as they left. This year they're trying to eat all my pears so I'm at war with them again. Not to mention they tear up my wife's bird feeders and dig holes all over my yard. They're more destructive than termites. Add the fact that old arthritic hands struggle with cleaning them and it's much harder to gnaw off the bone now, I don't enjoy eating them as much
I kill them year round now, nothing cute about them anymore. I don't even fool with a 22, I just blow them away with a load of high brass 7 1/2's.
I hate the destructive little bastages
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