Squirrel Hunting By the Numbers

Since a boy, my idea of adventure was entering a dense stand of timber at daylight with a twenty-two, single shot rifle in hand. I did it at every opportunity between the ages of ten and seventeen. The rifle, a Winchester Boy’s Rifle, model circa 1937, belonged to my grandfather, Austin Howell. 

A box of .22 caliber long rifle shells cost me fifty cents which I gathered up every day from the deposit of discarded glass pop bottles at Hundley’s general store in Calvin. Three cents a bottle, which I gave right back to Mr. Hundley for squirrel bullets. Apparently, we both thought it a good deal, so many years did we barter. I went off to college knowing where to get my squirrel shells and very little else.

Just the thought of the adventure I found in those deep, dark woods motivates me to this day. I did not know a boy my age that did not want to be an Indian so heroic a figure did they cut. Solo trips into the squirrel woods allowed a boy to imagine whatever he wanted to imagine. So strong was the attraction of “going native” to me, that I eventually married one. An Indian, I mean. Not a squirrel.

Squirrel hunting was the first serious hunting I ever did, and may be my last.

My problem this past week pursuing that boyhood freedom was finding a stretch of hardwoods not flooded head-high. I did it, public ground near Blackburn up on the wild Arkansas River, but it wasn’t easy.

It’s a place I have hunted for years, found soon after moving into this country in the fall of ‘66. I needed a place to hunt squirrels then, about the only field sport I could afford on my teacher’s salary. A Lake Keystone public lands map put me onto it. It was a wonderful place, reminiscent of my boyhood haunts and, truthfully, probably better because of its giant river bottom trees, hard to find in the blackjack hills around Hughes County.

That first fall I found the squirrels cutting mast, pecan and hickory, all along the river bottom. I would “still” hunt them, slipping along slowly from tree to tree, sometimes slipping up on squirrels actually on the ground, but mostly spotting them out in front of me up in the trees, tails flipping, the sounds of their discarded nut shells actually coming to my ears and allowing me to zero in the source of all the “wood” chopping. On a still autumn day, no wind, you can hear nut cuttings fall to the leafy floor of a woods many yards away, if you can hear. I no longer can.

All of my squirrel hunting now is done by sight, only. I can still see. Back in the fall of ‘66, I noted well out in the river bottom the location of several mulberry trees I knew would draw squirrels like the Sirens did the Argonauts, come spring. Back in my boyhood, before I had read anything about addiction, I knew that springtime squirrels were addicted to mulberries. They just did crazy-stupid things trying to get into a mulberry tree, often passing within inches (too close to shoot) of my hiding place in the shadows.

They would swarm a mulberry tree, looking for all the world like fuzzy, grey and brown Christmas tree ornaments so thick were they. Once, I counted eight in one small mulberry at the same time. I shot one out of the swarm, momentarily scattering the crazed animals. By my watch, inside of ten minutes, two of the squirrel mob were back in the tree.

I don’t know how many spring squirrels I have taken out of those river bottom mulberries over the years. Many, many. That Indian woman and I like to eat them. I went back to one of those same trees two days ago. Its bigger now, providing shade as good as a circus tent’s, and bushels and bushels of mulberries in season. They’ll be gone by the last of June, and are disappearing as we speak, feasted on by every wild critter, feathered and furred alike, in those dark woods.

I use a hand made cane now to keep from tripping in the greenbriers. I made it (it makes me chuckle to write this) from an arrow straight young mulberry I found two years ago alongside a tributary of the Arkansas. I cut it, debarked it, and cut its bigger end at an angle to fit my thumb when leaning on it. Then I laid it up in a corner of the garage to harden and season.

I leaned my cane against the same postoak I leaned my back, in the shadows, and maybe twenty yards from the mulberry. Raspberries would look like mulberries were they purple. They’re plump, juicy and quite tasty, even if loaded down with sesame-sized seeds. I eat them all the time when they’re in season (now), and if I’m not trying to kill squirrels out of their source tree. Mulberry is the only wild fruit my grandmother would make neither jellies nor cobblers from. Too many seeds. I don’t mind spitting seeds. It’s fun.

I didn’t have long to wait, maybe fifteen minutes. I spotted the squirrel when it gave away its location by the bouncing of mulberry branches as it moved its way towards the best of the fruit load. I killed it with an old Mossberg, single-shot .410 shotgun, choked full, left me by my father-in-law, and a necessary tool for me now that my shots are no longer as steady as they once were.

When the gun went off, I’m pretty sure I saw two others fleeing through the tree tops. I had nothing better to do than watch the sun finish coming up and wait. The squirrel I had in hand was a young one, this year’s young, and would not need to be parboiled thirty minutes before frying in salt, pepper, flour, and garlic powder with mashed potatoes, cream gravy, okra and brown beans on the side.

Yeah. I could wait.

I haven’t gathered up pop bottles in years. Deposit money? I’m not sure but I don’t think they do that anymore.

Squirrel season is still the longest hunting season of the year, coming, as it has for years, between May 15 and January 31. Glory be.

I no longer get my shells at Hundley’s. He’s been gone a long, long time. Calvin is almost gone. I’m still here. Squirrels still taste good, and the woods are still deep, dark, and a good place for “Indians.”

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen