The best way to hunt them is to spot a nest in a tree, shoot it with a 12 ga (light load) and when they come running down, pop 'em with a .22.
Back in good ole W of Va, they should have tried this. I remember people just pumping 22 shot into the nests and complaining that they couldn't harvest their "catch".
Quite true, but with such a small amount of actual meat, you have to "acquire" a dozen or so to get a decent meal. Must be a delicacy, some people actually think all this is worth the effort.
Yeah Mr. H, it's called "getting a mess of squirrels..."
And, up here in Alaska, hardly anybody hunts them because our Northern Red Squirrel is a little tiny feller. No more than eight inches from nose to the beginning of his tail...
Now back in Maryland where my dear mother still lives in the family home by herself at age 84, there are gray squirrels everywhere. But thanks to my mother who has always been against segregation, we have an abundance of black squirrels within a five block area, with the "epicenter" being my old home sweet home.
This neighborhodd, btw, is in the heart of the DC Metropolitan area, where there is nothin but miles and miles of suburbia. Nice and pretty homes amongst old oaks, weeping willows, tulip poplars and maples and such in the hilly area just north of DC, but definitely suburbia.
Ya see, my Mom, when we were younguns, got tired of how the damned squirrels were raiding her strawberry patch. And so, she used my live trap (a "Havahart"), and began to catch 'em and transport them four miles away so they wouldn't come back. She'd brush a little paint on their tails so she could see if her plan was workin. And so, it was working quite well with no "recitivism" from the offending scoundrels, at least not in our neighborhood.
But the one thing that she did which contributed to the "squirrel integration" was that whenever she caught a black squirrel, she would release it back into our yard, and the "blacks" were here to stay.
And to this day, whenever I visit my family home in Kensington, Maryland, three out of five squirrels that I see in my old neighborhood are black. Kinda cool huh? I guess we'll have to call it a successful experiment in "bussin..."
I sure love my Mom...
P.S.
Mr Ham-
If you really want to see em get greedy, give 'em som crunchy peanut butter spread on a piece of bread. They are fiends for it. They will really "love you then..."
Yep. No "sport" in it either, Trefor. I don't think I could do it, even if I was hungry.. these pair of rascals are the closest thing I can have to a pet at the moment, it'd be like, eating family, heh heh.
They already fight with birds, fiercely. I used to have some big crows come to contend with the squirrels. One day as I watched in amazement, one of the crows struck out at one of the squirrels. The squirrel was not intimidated. He (she?) dodged and parried, and bit that sucker up in the flank where the meat started- the crows give the squirrels plenty of room now, heh heh.
So, did the black squirrels leave the strawberries alone, or did your mother just like them?
The black squirrels raided the strawberries as much as the the gray ones did. She just put up with it because yes, she liked 'em. She doesn't have the strawberry patch anymore, and now it seems that she enjoys the cottontailed bunnies that have populated the neighborhood as well.
It's really quite idyllic back at the old family home. In the early morning, the bunnies hop about, and the black and gray squirrels scamper around making evreything kinda dreamy in the dewy morn. Mom is enjoying her sunset years immensely, although she misses my Dad, and recently my big brother who passed away..
At one of our old apartments we had a bunch of grey squirrels and stray cats. I enjoyed watching the squirrels mess with the cats. They would purposely make the cats chase them, then run up the side of the building. Normally, more than 2 squirrels would be involved, each on either side of the cat. The cat would run back and forth, back and forth, between the buildings. lol
We had a champion mouser, pure black kitty- she'd get anything. She was howling at the front door, after seeing squirrel in front yard. I opened the door, and the cat took off like a rocket. Still was no match for the speed of the squirrel. She got about a foot behind the squirrel and could only maintain the pace. The squirrel went across a very busy road, and cat followed. I about fainted..
Still did not get the squirrel.
Steve, maybe your cats play tag team or something..
Smurfette, wouldn't suprise me if you could hear the rascals chuckling.
When we lived in North Carolina, we had a big hollow maple tree and a pecan tree in the back yard. The durn squirrels lived in the first and considered the second to be their private pantry. So we fooled them, my cocker spaniel and I. We would wait until they shook the pecans down from the tree and scampered down on the ground to pick them up and take them home. Then the dog and I would race outside, he to chase them back up the tree and me to gather the pecans. Worked real well, as long as we were home. The pup never came close to catching one either, but they sure did like to curse at him (us?) from the safety of a limb. The little boogers would actually climb the screens on our windows and scurry up the bricks on our house. I wanted that maple tree cut down so bad, but we moved before I could persuade The Boss to make it happen.
Sometimes I play card games with kids. One daughter keeps score, and gives people distinctive names under which score is entered. Mine is "Squirrely Man" nine times out of ten..
While living in my old neighborhood briefly, but a block from our family home and during the TWI upheaval of 87/88, the funniest thing happened. I think maybe God supplied the incident as "comic relief" due to the stress of The Times...
We had a dog named Mr. Starbuck Von Der Weg, one of the German Shorthairs out of Dr. Wierwilles' "TJ". As you may know, "Von Der Weg" means "Of The Way" in German. He was a fine fellow, my dog, and he has since "gone under" back in the year 2000. He was a faithful friend and true companion. I'll always remember him and miss him. :(-->
Starbuck was only a year and a half old, lean and strong, and a fierce hunter. Very intense dog, always on the watch, yet a true teddy bear and was very affectionate as well. He'd climb right into your lap to be loved if you let him.
At any rate, we had been renting this house from an old highschool friend of mine. As a matter of fact, this was the same house whose yard had a maple tree under which I smoked my first cigarrette back in 7th grade in '69 while waiting for the bus. Anyway.... -->,
This house had a fire place, and since fall was coming on and the crispness was in the air, I decided to build a fire in it. As the burning paper began to catch the kindling on fire, a great billow of smoke came out and chased us out of the house. When I got outside, I could see that the chimney at the top had sticks and leaves in it. "Damn squirrels!" I thought. And sure enough when I climbed up there (after putting the fire out), there was a huge squirrel's nest clogging the chimney.
And as I dismantled it, I was amazed by the little buggers's inginuity. The deeper I dug to get the nest out, the bigger and bigger the material got. At first it was nice soft oak leaves, but as I dug in, it was small sticks, bigger sticks, and finally it was a branch wider than the chimney that the damned squirrell had somehow stuffed and wedged between either side of the chimney, making a foundation for his "building". Pretty cool, I thought, isn't God amazing? But I still dismantled his home, and that was the end of that. Or so I thought...
I built my fire, the kids roasted marshmallows, and life was great. But that following Saturday morning we awoke to a great racket. The first thing we heard was a sort of "poof" sound (kinda like when Wile E. Coyotee hits the canyon floor after falling off a cliff) and then a scrambling of tiny clawed feet. Then we heard the scratching and clawing of Mr Starbucks' feet as he scrambled around the oak hardwood floor trying to get traction, followed by his loud barking and growling. And then the kids (ages 3 and 5) joined in with squeals and shouting. Daughter squealing, 3 year old son shouting.
The wife and I sat bolt upright thinking; "WTF!?"
And then my brain unfogged as I realized the situation at hand. "It's that damned Squirrel!" I foggily concluded. So I jumped out of bed, threw on my sweatpants and ran to the livingroom to join in the melee, with my young wife in tow.
And there it was. The squirrel, who had come home after a "hard night on the town" (or whatever it is squirrels do at night), had apparently leaped into his warm and comfy home, only to find it gone, and fell all the way to the bottom of the fireplace into a pile of soot and ashes.
And as soon as he had scrambled around in there for a bit, getting completely covered in soot, he leaped into the living room only to be confronted by the Grandson of "TJ" in all of his canine glory, ready to finally get to chomp and devour one of these smart a$$ed squirrels who had consistently eluded and scolded him since we had moved to the land of massive oak trees, new smells, and and the elusive but ever present black squirrels!
The damned squirrel, seeing the damned dawg, leaped onto our nice new beige couch (newlyweds, don't pick light colored furniture) tracked soot all over it before climbing up the curtain and running along the curtain rod in the direction of the fireplace mantle. My wife was then squealing; Oh my God! The Couch! It's a squirrel! Catch the daog! Kids get away! What about rabies?! Quit screaming! Starbuck you idiot! Get off that F***ing couch!"
But I'm yellin "Get him Starbuck get him! Keanu open that front door! Yeah Starbuck get off that damned couch you moron! " Kids squealing, dog barking, wife squealing as the damned squirrel leaped from the curtain rod to the fireplace mantle. Total and complete and delightful chaos!
The damned squirrel, upon landing on the mantle, proceeded to race toward one end, knocking off the framed picture of VPW and the Board of Trustees, a brass SIT ornament, and all kinds of other stuff while the Dog headed him off and sent the him back toward the other end where I was. The squirrel, seeing that he couldn't jump off of either end without running into resistance, decided that the now opened door looked pretty good.
So, he stopped at mid mantle, and leaped through the air toward freedom. However, he realized in mid flight that my wife was standing right there, frozen in fear and realizing that she was about to be hit in the chest by a scrambling and airborne squirrel! She screamed bloody murder! The kids screamed out "Mom! Mom!" But it's too late. The flying black blur hits her square in the breast, runs down her leg and scrambling and scratching, sprinted for the door. "Cujo" the dog, ever alert, also scrambled, scratched, and slipped, as he tried to gain traction on the hardwood floor.
The damned squirrel made it to the door, gained traction, and raced up the trunk of my "smoking tree" (it was a Raleigh cigarrette by the way), and climbed as far up as he could to try and get away from what turned out to be the worst morning of his entire life!
Mr Starbuck was at the bottom of the tree by this time, barking furiously, and the kids and I were rolling with laughter on the dirtied couch, while my wife, not so amused, stood there in her pajamas as if she had been violated in the worst of ways. Finally she broke into a grin, and we all laughed and laughed as we thought of that "damned squirrel" and how all he wanted was to jump in bed and get a little "shut eye". Poor guy..
Meanwhile, we could hear that little bugger at the top of my smoking tree scolding a frustrated Mr. Starbuck, outwitted again by one of the black little beasties..
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excathedra
only you dear mstarokay back to reading and i never saw a black squirrel until i went to visit my brother in stuyvesant town, they're all over oh i've never seen a red one in person
Trefor Heywood
Squirrels can be amazingly tame - especially the grey ones at the White House and the Black ones in Toronto!
They eat guinea pigs in Peru but not sure a squirrel as a gastronomic item has yet reached its peak...
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Steve!
Sure, Tref, in some states, squirrels are considered a delicacy. You can even order squirrel in some restaurants in Kentucky, or so I'm told . . .
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Trefor Heywood
Makes a change from KFC I guess!
:P-->
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Ron G.
Here in Arkinsaw, we refer to it as 'prairie chicken'. We like 'em fried, in a stew and with dumplings.
The best way to hunt them is to spot a nest in a tree, shoot it with a 12 ga (light load) and when they come running down, pop 'em with a .22.
Delicious and nutritious!!
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GarthP2000
Squirrels = Arkansas' version of McNuggets.
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dmiller
Fat - free too!
:D-->
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Ham
I'd agree with that if I did not see the university squirrels around here. They can barely make it up a tree.
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Ham
Back in good ole W of Va, they should have tried this. I remember people just pumping 22 shot into the nests and complaining that they couldn't harvest their "catch".
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Ham
Quite true, but with such a small amount of actual meat, you have to "acquire" a dozen or so to get a decent meal. Must be a delicacy, some people actually think all this is worth the effort.
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J0nny Ling0
Yeah Mr. H, it's called "getting a mess of squirrels..."
And, up here in Alaska, hardly anybody hunts them because our Northern Red Squirrel is a little tiny feller. No more than eight inches from nose to the beginning of his tail...
Now back in Maryland where my dear mother still lives in the family home by herself at age 84, there are gray squirrels everywhere. But thanks to my mother who has always been against segregation, we have an abundance of black squirrels within a five block area, with the "epicenter" being my old home sweet home.
This neighborhodd, btw, is in the heart of the DC Metropolitan area, where there is nothin but miles and miles of suburbia. Nice and pretty homes amongst old oaks, weeping willows, tulip poplars and maples and such in the hilly area just north of DC, but definitely suburbia.
Ya see, my Mom, when we were younguns, got tired of how the damned squirrels were raiding her strawberry patch. And so, she used my live trap (a "Havahart"), and began to catch 'em and transport them four miles away so they wouldn't come back. She'd brush a little paint on their tails so she could see if her plan was workin. And so, it was working quite well with no "recitivism" from the offending scoundrels, at least not in our neighborhood.
But the one thing that she did which contributed to the "squirrel integration" was that whenever she caught a black squirrel, she would release it back into our yard, and the "blacks" were here to stay.
And to this day, whenever I visit my family home in Kensington, Maryland, three out of five squirrels that I see in my old neighborhood are black. Kinda cool huh? I guess we'll have to call it a successful experiment in "bussin..."
I sure love my Mom...
P.S.
Mr Ham-
If you really want to see em get greedy, give 'em som crunchy peanut butter spread on a piece of bread. They are fiends for it. They will really "love you then..."
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Trefor Heywood
Squirrels over there seem much tamer than those over here.
My friend in Toronto called to a black one and it came a running for a nut.
The grey ones of the South Lawn of the White House have no fear of humans whatsoever coming within inches and sitting and looking at you for a treat.
Somehow I didn't have the heart to catch and eat one!
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Ham
Yep. No "sport" in it either, Trefor. I don't think I could do it, even if I was hungry.. these pair of rascals are the closest thing I can have to a pet at the moment, it'd be like, eating family, heh heh.
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Ham
Johnny, I think I will try that Monday..
They already fight with birds, fiercely. I used to have some big crows come to contend with the squirrels. One day as I watched in amazement, one of the crows struck out at one of the squirrels. The squirrel was not intimidated. He (she?) dodged and parried, and bit that sucker up in the flank where the meat started- the crows give the squirrels plenty of room now, heh heh.
So, did the black squirrels leave the strawberries alone, or did your mother just like them?
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J0nny Ling0
The black squirrels raided the strawberries as much as the the gray ones did. She just put up with it because yes, she liked 'em. She doesn't have the strawberry patch anymore, and now it seems that she enjoys the cottontailed bunnies that have populated the neighborhood as well.
It's really quite idyllic back at the old family home. In the early morning, the bunnies hop about, and the black and gray squirrels scamper around making evreything kinda dreamy in the dewy morn. Mom is enjoying her sunset years immensely, although she misses my Dad, and recently my big brother who passed away..
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Steve!
I don't get it.
Is there a joke in there somewhere?
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Ham
Depends where you are from, I think..
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smurfette
At one of our old apartments we had a bunch of grey squirrels and stray cats. I enjoyed watching the squirrels mess with the cats. They would purposely make the cats chase them, then run up the side of the building. Normally, more than 2 squirrels would be involved, each on either side of the cat. The cat would run back and forth, back and forth, between the buildings. lol
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Steve!
Our cats can catch squirrels - squirrels don't mess with our cats!
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Ham
We had a champion mouser, pure black kitty- she'd get anything. She was howling at the front door, after seeing squirrel in front yard. I opened the door, and the cat took off like a rocket. Still was no match for the speed of the squirrel. She got about a foot behind the squirrel and could only maintain the pace. The squirrel went across a very busy road, and cat followed. I about fainted..
Still did not get the squirrel.
Steve, maybe your cats play tag team or something..
Smurfette, wouldn't suprise me if you could hear the rascals chuckling.
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Watered Garden
When we lived in North Carolina, we had a big hollow maple tree and a pecan tree in the back yard. The durn squirrels lived in the first and considered the second to be their private pantry. So we fooled them, my cocker spaniel and I. We would wait until they shook the pecans down from the tree and scampered down on the ground to pick them up and take them home. Then the dog and I would race outside, he to chase them back up the tree and me to gather the pecans. Worked real well, as long as we were home. The pup never came close to catching one either, but they sure did like to curse at him (us?) from the safety of a limb. The little boogers would actually climb the screens on our windows and scurry up the bricks on our house. I wanted that maple tree cut down so bad, but we moved before I could persuade The Boss to make it happen.
WG
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Ham
Sometimes I play card games with kids. One daughter keeps score, and gives people distinctive names under which score is entered. Mine is "Squirrely Man" nine times out of ten..
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Steve!
MH - our cats can catch birds in flight! Squirrels are no match for them.
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Ham
Well, you must have "super-cats". heh heh.
Either that or we have squirrels on steroids around here. Good possibility, given the location..
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J0nny Ling0
Speaking of squirrels, I have a funny story.
While living in my old neighborhood briefly, but a block from our family home and during the TWI upheaval of 87/88, the funniest thing happened. I think maybe God supplied the incident as "comic relief" due to the stress of The Times...
We had a dog named Mr. Starbuck Von Der Weg, one of the German Shorthairs out of Dr. Wierwilles' "TJ". As you may know, "Von Der Weg" means "Of The Way" in German. He was a fine fellow, my dog, and he has since "gone under" back in the year 2000. He was a faithful friend and true companion. I'll always remember him and miss him.
:(-->
Starbuck was only a year and a half old, lean and strong, and a fierce hunter. Very intense dog, always on the watch, yet a true teddy bear and was very affectionate as well. He'd climb right into your lap to be loved if you let him.
At any rate, we had been renting this house from an old highschool friend of mine. As a matter of fact, this was the same house whose yard had a maple tree under which I smoked my first cigarrette back in 7th grade in '69 while waiting for the bus. Anyway....
-->,
This house had a fire place, and since fall was coming on and the crispness was in the air, I decided to build a fire in it. As the burning paper began to catch the kindling on fire, a great billow of smoke came out and chased us out of the house. When I got outside, I could see that the chimney at the top had sticks and leaves in it. "Damn squirrels!" I thought. And sure enough when I climbed up there (after putting the fire out), there was a huge squirrel's nest clogging the chimney.
And as I dismantled it, I was amazed by the little buggers's inginuity. The deeper I dug to get the nest out, the bigger and bigger the material got. At first it was nice soft oak leaves, but as I dug in, it was small sticks, bigger sticks, and finally it was a branch wider than the chimney that the damned squirrell had somehow stuffed and wedged between either side of the chimney, making a foundation for his "building". Pretty cool, I thought, isn't God amazing? But I still dismantled his home, and that was the end of that. Or so I thought...
I built my fire, the kids roasted marshmallows, and life was great. But that following Saturday morning we awoke to a great racket. The first thing we heard was a sort of "poof" sound (kinda like when Wile E. Coyotee hits the canyon floor after falling off a cliff) and then a scrambling of tiny clawed feet. Then we heard the scratching and clawing of Mr Starbucks' feet as he scrambled around the oak hardwood floor trying to get traction, followed by his loud barking and growling. And then the kids (ages 3 and 5) joined in with squeals and shouting. Daughter squealing, 3 year old son shouting.
The wife and I sat bolt upright thinking; "WTF!?"
And then my brain unfogged as I realized the situation at hand. "It's that damned Squirrel!" I foggily concluded. So I jumped out of bed, threw on my sweatpants and ran to the livingroom to join in the melee, with my young wife in tow.
And there it was. The squirrel, who had come home after a "hard night on the town" (or whatever it is squirrels do at night), had apparently leaped into his warm and comfy home, only to find it gone, and fell all the way to the bottom of the fireplace into a pile of soot and ashes.
And as soon as he had scrambled around in there for a bit, getting completely covered in soot, he leaped into the living room only to be confronted by the Grandson of "TJ" in all of his canine glory, ready to finally get to chomp and devour one of these smart a$$ed squirrels who had consistently eluded and scolded him since we had moved to the land of massive oak trees, new smells, and and the elusive but ever present black squirrels!
The damned squirrel, seeing the damned dawg, leaped onto our nice new beige couch (newlyweds, don't pick light colored furniture) tracked soot all over it before climbing up the curtain and running along the curtain rod in the direction of the fireplace mantle. My wife was then squealing; Oh my God! The Couch! It's a squirrel! Catch the daog! Kids get away! What about rabies?! Quit screaming! Starbuck you idiot! Get off that F***ing couch!"
But I'm yellin "Get him Starbuck get him! Keanu open that front door! Yeah Starbuck get off that damned couch you moron! " Kids squealing, dog barking, wife squealing as the damned squirrel leaped from the curtain rod to the fireplace mantle. Total and complete and delightful chaos!
The damned squirrel, upon landing on the mantle, proceeded to race toward one end, knocking off the framed picture of VPW and the Board of Trustees, a brass SIT ornament, and all kinds of other stuff while the Dog headed him off and sent the him back toward the other end where I was. The squirrel, seeing that he couldn't jump off of either end without running into resistance, decided that the now opened door looked pretty good.
So, he stopped at mid mantle, and leaped through the air toward freedom. However, he realized in mid flight that my wife was standing right there, frozen in fear and realizing that she was about to be hit in the chest by a scrambling and airborne squirrel! She screamed bloody murder! The kids screamed out "Mom! Mom!" But it's too late. The flying black blur hits her square in the breast, runs down her leg and scrambling and scratching, sprinted for the door. "Cujo" the dog, ever alert, also scrambled, scratched, and slipped, as he tried to gain traction on the hardwood floor.
The damned squirrel made it to the door, gained traction, and raced up the trunk of my "smoking tree" (it was a Raleigh cigarrette by the way), and climbed as far up as he could to try and get away from what turned out to be the worst morning of his entire life!
Mr Starbuck was at the bottom of the tree by this time, barking furiously, and the kids and I were rolling with laughter on the dirtied couch, while my wife, not so amused, stood there in her pajamas as if she had been violated in the worst of ways. Finally she broke into a grin, and we all laughed and laughed as we thought of that "damned squirrel" and how all he wanted was to jump in bed and get a little "shut eye". Poor guy..
Meanwhile, we could hear that little bugger at the top of my smoking tree scolding a frustrated Mr. Starbuck, outwitted again by one of the black little beasties..
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