Squirrel hunting

[WRideout]

I haven't eaten a squirrel ( YET). I started a post last year here asking what they tasted like and got many responses as to the best way to prepare them. So, I plan to get a few this year on the ranch with my 1022T. It burps out the Federal bulk packs into one hole at 75 yards and maybe even at 100. I just haven't shot it for groups that far out yet. With it's factory bull barrel and target trigger, it should prove to be a good "sit down and be quiet" rig. The Leupold 3x9 lets me dial in the action, near or far, and the 36 grain Fed hollow point will really put them down for the count.

A few years ago when I lived in TN, I fixed a recipe from a cookbook by Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme, in "The Prudhomme Family Cookbook". It's called Super Squirrel, and is a potent cajun treatment for tree rats. A friend from GA said it was the best squirrel he had ever put in his mouth, which I thought high praise. The sauce is loaded with cayenne pepper. Served over rice it is wonderful stuff.

Wayne

[Arisaka99]

Cook em up in the crock pot too. Cooks.com has some recipes for squirrel stew as well. I wanna get some venison and squirrel and make stew this coming fall.

[475/480]

It has been 8-10 years but when I first got my 480 Ruger I shot a few squirrels with a 285gr and a 305gr Keith boolit from 2 different mountainmold moulds I had. The boolits shot great at 900-1000 fps but when you got above 1050 fps on either boolit, accuracy went out the door.
I assume rifling on the Ruger barrel was the culprit. A .475- Keith boolit worked pretty well


Sean

[curioushooter]

.22s are the most fun! Shotguns are the most effective at killing squirrels and the easiest to have success with, however they are costly, heavy, and really not very sporting. They are nice if you have squirrel and rabbit seasons (or some other game bird like woodcock) overlapping with the squirrel season. That way you are ready for everything with a shotgun. A good compromise would be a Savage M24 with a 20 gauge and a .22LR. Too bad they don't make these anymore, but the Russians do (check out the MP94 in 410/22LR)!

"Barking" squirrels with a 50 cal muzzleloader was fun, but I feel it is quite dangerous as you are shooting a round ball up at an angle and it may travel for some distance. Unless there is a hillside to the back and you are in a known to be unpopulated area, I wouldn't do it.

22 headshots are greatly exaggerated. Sometimes squirrels do not present their heads for shooting, but rather the sides, bottoms, etc. Are you going to pass it up? I'm not. The meat damage is almost nothing if you use standard round nose bullets, which almost always simply pass through and presumably leave little residue in the meat. Granted, you are not going to stop the squirrel in his tracks and you will need to watch him carefully since they like to run all over and crawl into a hole and expire, but this is the cheapest/best way to hunt them in my opinion. Go for the head if you can of course!

I use a Marlin 39A topped with a Leupold 3.6x "rimfire" scope for all squirrel hunting, and I do almost all of my squirrel hunting on a large state forrest near my home. I also bring a $100 set of binocs, but seldom use them. I bring about 50 rounds of CCI Blazer and several plastic grocery bags to place the squirrels in so they don't soil/bleed on my knapsack. I undress them at home with a sharp knife. I like to cut a hole in their back and cut a cross on them and open them up in quadrants then simply cut off their paws and head.

They are good if you slow cook them. The meat can be tough and is easily contaminated with hair (and squirrel hairs are extremely sticky and do not wash off easily). My wife and I make stew out the them in a crock pot and it comes out well.

[sledgehammer001]

I used a .32 flintlock back when I used to do it. No squirrels in my part of AZ and haven't made the drive to give them a try out here.

I prefer a Ruger 10/22 with scope, helps to find em in top of a 65 foot pine.
Jay, come on up and hunt anywhere between Show Low and Alpine. Bring ya a good 22.

[Arisaka99]

Usually when we clean them, there is hair stuck to it. I usually just ignore it and just make sure I cook it well.

[Bealzybub]

Nothin like roasted limb chicken

[Bealzybub]

Oh, but ya gotta boil em first.

[BAMB]

.22 when all the leaves are off the trees, 20ga before that happens.

I often have a hard time getting a descent shot with a .22 when the trees are still covered in leaves.

[whiteoak]

I will use several diffrent guns during the season. I will use a 10/22 when I want to hunt for sport. When I am hungry for squirrels I will use an 1100 with rifle sights and #5 shot. I also will use this early in the season when they are cutting on tulip poplar or soft mass and you cant hear or see them in all the folage. I also take out the Marlin 1894c with 38 semi wadcutters. It works just like a .22 but many times with less meat loss. My loads are running at about 800fps in the Marlin. The funnest way is the .44mag shot shells during bow season the little suckers that want the same tree I am in, will sometimes get a lesson from the SBH bisley. out to about 5 yards with 7.5 shot.

[Arisaka99]

Squirrels are funny creatures. I've seen them sit and look at you, once you've shot them, but they're wounded, and then you shoot them again. I saw one the last time I was our, he just came out of a holler and tore across the forest floor. Idk what his problem was haha

[Single Shot]

Oh, but ya gotta boil em first.

Brain fart. The last one I cooked up was tough. It's hell to get old. Been cooking tree rats for over 45years. Now how in the hell did I forget that.

Maybe because I zapped one under the bird feeder for a quick lunch and tried to get rid of the evidence before the wife got home.

[Single Shot]

I used a .32 flintlock back when I used to do it. No squirrels in my part of AZ and haven't made the drive to give them a try out here.

I used to use a 22 when the leaves are off the trees.

Still use a double barrel SS 12 choked full and full with #5 shot reloads.

But know when the leaves are down, I use a Mauser in 30-06 with one cast round ball. I use a cast Lee .311 RB 45gr.

Got the load from Ed Harris when we were exchanging several other ideas. I had mentioned that I wanted to get a .32 flintlock for squirrel, but it was out of my budget for now.

From Ed:

Another option is size "0" buckshot swirled in liquid alox. I have used them in .30-30 and .30-40 with 3 grains of red dot and gotten one hole groups at 30 yards. Really smack a squirrel and do not carry as far as a .22 lr.

[IMG][/IMG]

[Josh Smith]

I wish I still had the M69. It was a fun, accurate lil' rifle. Too few available parts, though, so I unloaded it.

I can currently hunt out to over 100 yards with the Savage. The trigger is now a set trigger... I really disliked that Accutrigger. It was poorly executed and the sear rounded off quite quickly. Now I either have a 5lb or 2lb pull depending on what I want.

Next will be a CZ though. Savage has gotten way cheap recently. My barrel wasn't even floated like it was supposed to be; the action was sideways in the stock!

Still, once all the flaws were worked out, it ended up being a rifle that does single-hole groups at 50 yards and sub-MOA at 100 yards.

Regards,

Josh

P.S. The rifle is not pointing at Nikki in that picture. It looks like it; it was a trick of the lighting as far as I can tell. J.S.

[Dale53]

Years ago, when I was about sixteen or so, my father, a friend and co-worker, went on a weekend hunt in South Central Ohio. The land was flat and the landowner insisted we use shotguns. The woods were full of gray squirrels. They NEVER stopped moving. It was almost like hunting rabbits and most were taken on the ground.

We slept in our carryall suburban and got up at before dawn. We hunted separately. I harvested two or three squirrels. The last one I went to pick up was playing 'possum. When I took hold of him to pick him up he struck. It was just like a buzz saw. He bit me several times on the hand and the last bit was through and through between finger and thumb. I bashed his head against a tree about nineteen times. He was NOW dead. For a long time after that, I wouldn't pick up a squirrel unless I had "finished him off" with a little Colt Bankers Special I carried with me. Lesson learned...

On that same trip, I had sat down leaning against a large tree to take a break. I fell asleep. There was a fallen tree in front of me. I heard a squirrel chattering. I opened my eyes and he was rather close giving me "what for". My shotgun was leaning against the tree. Any movement towards it and he would flee. I eased my Banker's Special out of my jacket pocket and shot him in "mid chatter"...

One shot, one kill...

Dale53

[RG_86]

generally a 22 but I love to do it with different pistols too. I have used 45colt, 45 auto, 9mm with Lyman devastators - pure awesomeness by the way, and cap and ball. All I ever make with em is tree rat stew so I dont mind if there is a little damage to the meat. I can make a good size pot with 2-4 of em.

[Arisaka99]

I like that rb idea for a .30-30. I figured out why my buddy chooses to use a shotgun. There are houses pretty close to the WMA, and he doesn't want to take the chance. Could you do the same thing with a .311 dia bore?

[catboat]

I hunt gray squirrels with 22 LR mostly. I have a Rem 540x medium weight target rifle, and a Winchester model 310 (single shot made by Kimber before it was Kimber). Both have Bushnell Banner 1" straight tubed 4x rimfire scopes on them.

I have used a .40 and .50 caliber round ball from a flintlocks. Squirrel pistols include a S&W K38 model 14 and wadcutters, a Ruger Mark II Government Target 22 LR with ultradot red dot sight, and a S&W model 41 with similar red dot sight.

I go for headshots.

I would like to get my old Marlin 336A 30-30 and my S&W Howa 1500 308 Winchester out for some cast bullet squirrel hunting.

I can remember reading an article by Don Lewis (of Penn Game News) in either Gun Digest or Pennsylvania Game news decades ago. He said he had a squirrel mount in his game room. People often would make fun of it, but he was very proud of it. His story boiled down that taking a gray squirrel by headshot out to 50 yards with an accurate 22 LR rifle (and good standard/target grade ammo)- with all it's dashing, scampering and movement- represents better marksmanship than seeing a deer/elk/moose mount. He liked to use an Anshutz model 64 medium weight 22 LR target rifle (which is why I got my Rem 540x).

It was because of that article I read growing up, that generated the interest in me to hunt squirrels with an accurate firearm, particularly with 22 LR rifle.

For the record, I agree with his "squirrel mount" theory for marksmanship.

[geargnasher]

Nothing beats a good .22 LR around here with subsonic ammo like the CCI target stuff, but most shots are under 25 yards and up in the trees, so you have to be careful where you shoot.

x101airborne and I were hunting last weekend and we stalked up a nice "fox" squirrel and took it with his 20-gauge flinter, peppered the head nicely with #6 IIRC. It made a believer out of me, I was never much on shotgunning for squirrels before because even a 2.5" .410 is a bit much, but the flinter was perfect! The old tree rat ate pretty well, too.

Gear

[GBCAPT]

Hunted squirrels for the table with a .22 since I was a kid in elementary school in south Georgia!

Family recipe calls for par boiling or pressure cooking the squirrel, pick off the meat, prepare a peppery white sauce, add the squirrel, some home-grown peas and carrots before topping with dumplings and baking till bubbly & the dumplings are done.
YUM!!