Squirrel war still ongoing
- Thread starter squirrel_getter
- Start date
Come on you, grey bas***turds! I have an air rifle by the bedroom window, dining room window, that covers the back yard and another by the front door and lots of Hades and Poly Mags!
I'm playing cat and mouse with one right now as I write this, cagy little fellow! I find that they are not real active right now, West Central Missouri, they'll come down from the trees and grab an acorn or two and head back up and not see them for hours and even the rest of the day.
Happy Hunting! Or should be Killing!
I'm playing cat and mouse with one right now as I write this, cagy little fellow! I find that they are not real active right now, West Central Missouri, they'll come down from the trees and grab an acorn or two and head back up and not see them for hours and even the rest of the day.
Happy Hunting! Or should be Killing!
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It's probably seen it's buddies get a lead sandwich. The squirrels around my house are so skittish that I have to open the sniper windows very quietly or they will hear it and go in hiding. They think my dog is the holy k9 terror. But... sooner or later they will "f" up.
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I know what you mean by quietly opening a window, when It's fairly warm I open and leave the storm window up so that I can quietly slide the inside window up when a shot presents itself. Like I did a minute ago, another one "f'ed"-up just before dark, my grand total for the year now stands at 2. I still have one out front to contend with.
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It has been several days now that this one had been playing hide-n-seek. Finally I caught the limb rat sitting on a limb in an oak tree. It was a slight drizzling rain. LOL I didn't have a gun with me. I went back inside and got the .22 cal Huben, trigger sticks, and rangefinder. Luckily the squirrel was still there. I hastily ranged the squirrel. It was a 63 yard shot. I did not have a good head shot so took a heart/lung shot that blew the squirrel from the tree. I was again shooting .22 cal JSB MRD's at 994 fps. LOL it is not as small as it looks but it was indeed a young squirrel. Anyway that one left a vacancy that will soon be filled. It is always addition by subtraction. I subtract one and they add several more. The squirrels have been eyeballing the ripening Japanese plums and salivating in anticipation. They like that buffet.
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LOL...Things are slow. I haven't seen hide nor hair of a squirrel today at the house. So...a little humor for AGN.
View attachment Gullible Squirrel.1643311632.wmv
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I had a good week last week. I got one on Tuesday, one Wednesday, and two Thursday. But none so far this week. I've seen what is probably the same squirrel the last two days. It runs as soon as I open a window, however. I might have to go out the side door and come around the house. I put some corn in a bowl on an old table in the area of the yard I've seen it. Maybe that will tempt into sitting still long enough for me to get a shot. My dog sees them on that side of the yard first but the wary ones will go to the backside of the tree once I show interest - even before I open the window. But it will mess up. They always do. I've shot 13 since squirrel season started in SC in October. But I didn't start getting them until the leaves fell in November. The smallest was 4 ounces and the biggest was a pound. The 4 ouncer was very unusual but I've shot several in the 8-9 ounce range. Most are 12 ounces or more, however. I use a fish scale on them before cleaning. The hide comes off the smaller ones a lot easier than the bigger ones.
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I am in maintenance mode. I retired last April and started knocking them down when they homesteaded my loft. At first it was a slaughter fest & I was killing several a week & it wasn't unusual to kill 2-3 in a day. As the months went by there were fewer and the sightings less. But at times 2-3 will move in. I may go several days without a sighting but the dog & I keep looking
.I expect the population to rise again in the spring and summer as the various fruit trees in my yard start to produce. They are an absolute magnet. I just about have to camp out in the yard to fight them off the fruit
. There is a smorgasbord of trees around my house such as pine, oak, black cherry, southern magnolia, spruce, holly, china berry, pecan, & sweet gum. So with the many varieties of fruit trees thrown in, there is no shortage of food at anytime thus the huge attraction to the pesky squirrels.They also move into the free nests (dreys) constructed & left behind by the ones I have sent to the happy hunting ground. LOL free housing.
So it took about 6-7 months for me to get to the point I am at now. As you mentioned & many of us have experienced, the squirrels in a municipal setting when subjected to continual hunting pressure or repeated predation shortly become as wild acting as the ones in the woods & maybe even more so. They don't like seeing their comrades falling dead. When the squirrels around my house see me or the dog they usually haul ass like their tail was on fire or hide for hours and sometimes even all day. Like you, I will often spot 1-2, usually at a distance of 50-125 yards but on occasion they will infiltrate close to the house. That's usually a fatal mistake on their part
. I strive to make GOOD squirrels out of those.Because I was pushing the shots to longer distances I got a few high fpe air riffles more capable of accommodating the longer shots and switched scopes for ones that I could turret dial. My goal is to keep them pushed back. It will never end
. The key is not to let up. Keep continual hunting pressure on them. In the absence of this said pressure it takes very little time for you to get back to the point where you started.On a side note, for a variety of reasons I believe there are more squirrels in municipal areas per acre than in the woods. They usually have no hunting, very limited predation, and reproduce like proverbial rats LOL.
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Well I saw the one that eluded me for 2 days again this morning. It was about 8am, the dog and I were coming in from her morning walk and I saw this little squirrel run up one of the 6 oak trees on the right side of my lot. When I opened a window the two previous days, it ran off jumping tree to tree until it was where I didn't feel good about shooting. Today, it ran further up the oak tree I saw it initially on. It moved away from me and got it's body behind the tree where I could not see it. But it's head was still visible. So I put a 20 grain 25 caliber FTT from my P35 through it's head. Dropped immediately. The skull was crushed. This picture is not very good because I left my dog alone with it for a couple minutes while I returned to the house for my gun to take a picture. While I was gone she bit the top of the skull off. So I dropped the picture idea but then when I prepared to clean her I 
got the thought of taking this picture at an angle where you pretty much don't see the brain exposed. 7 ounce female. Shot about 25 yards away and 20 to 30 feet up a good sized oak.
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You made a GOOD squirrel out of that one. Sooner or later they will be in the wrong place for them and the right place for you. It seems it is the other way around too many times. I bet that made a loud pop when the lead met the head.
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I don't remember hearing the impact. Hitting a squirrel certainly makes less noise than hitting my pellet trap. But the 25 caliber pellet really wrecks the head of the littler squirrels. I hit one below the eye and it still dropped at the shot. I think it probably damaged the brain by breaking the skull. It twitched something like a brain shot when it hit the ground.
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I bet your dog will dispatch them if they are still wiggling. If mine is in the yard he will almost catch them when they are falling. I often have to leave him in the house so he won't spook the squirrel. After I kill the squirrel I then let him out and he quickly finds and fetches the squirrel. He even mans the sniper window and raises hell when he sees one. He is staring out the window as I type. LOL. If I go to shoot one out the sniper window I have to put him in the hall before opening the window or he will growl and bark at the squirrel and it will hide or run. Funny stuff.
How do you skin the squirrels? I cut them behind the anus and carefully cut the two thread thin tendons running down the tail. I then step on the tail close to the body and pull up on the rear legs etc. My dad taught me this method when I was a kid. Before that I was cutting them in the middle of the back, etc.
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