Squirrels, Man and Boy

 

Some of the field sports carry way too much drama. Deer hunting is one of them. I like saying that because it’s true, and, of course, we’re right in the middle of the “Big Deer Season” right now. Sometimes we need to back it off a couple notches, if you catch my drift.

Hunter success on deer in Oklahoma the last time I checked is somewhere close, but still below, 50 percent. Hunter success on squirrels? Hoooo, boy. If you count success as one squirrel headed for the pan, and I do, then the success ratio is somewhere pretty close to 100 percent. “Eat more squirrels,” the deer would probably say. 

The daily limit on squirrels is 10, either fox or gray species, with 20 allowed in possession. That’s a lot of meat, in case you haven’t bagged up any squirrels lately and have forgotten how quickly 10 bushytails will overfill a gallon Ziploc bag. 

The squirrel season is the longest annual hunting season in Oklahoma, lasting from May 15 through the following January 31. Even so, we are never going to kill the last squirrel. If the Third World War is a nuclear one, squirrels will scamper over our graves after it’s over on their way to chew the insulation on what’s left of the wires that are in what’s left in the attics of what used to be our homes. 

That’s why there is no drama in hunting them: There’re so many of them. Deer? Maybe one chance, buddy. You had better be ready. You have been preparing all year for just this one moment. Thinking about that reality, brings about what is commonly referred to as “buck fever.” It’s the same drama that makes excellent NFL field goal kickers here today and gone tomorrow. You never in your life heard of anyone getting “squirrel fever,” missing wide left, and then committing suicide the next day. 

If you go squirrel hunting you’re going to get a chance, and a chance, and another. Who knows how many. Not much drama, but man is it fun! Shoot and shoot and shoot. 

And they taste good. 

Many of us grew up hunting squirrels, learned how to walk quietly in the woods because of them, learned to read sign, not just of squirrels, but of all of the other strange creatures in the woods which we were fronting for the very first times in our lives as well. So long ago. So long ago. Precious memories. 

“Can I carry one, Grandpa?” 

“Sure, son. Hold ‘ im like this,” and so a part of a family’s culture was passed just that smoothly and insignificantly. 

Only two people noticed. No ringside seats. Not much drama to it. Still, it could be the last thing thought of, just before the lights go out. 

I pretty much called Stacy Gibson at his home outside Wister the other day before the Big Deer Season and told him we were going squirrel hunting, we needed a break, and that he was taking me, and not the other way around. He was all for that. He hunts deer hard, but squirrels (since a toddler tagging along after Daddy Milo) as slow and easy as a wisp of gray smoke drifting through the flatwoods down yonder in the big Fourche Maline bottoms on the upper end of Lake Wister. 

Anybody can hunt the public hunting lands around the upper end of Wister Lake. You can hunt it, I can hunt it, our grandmothers can hunt it: No leases allowed. It’s mine, yours, and ours. Nobody can run you off. 

Because it is all bottom land, the mast bearing trees there are primarily pin oaks with a scattering of burr oaks and pecans. Do squirrels love nuts? Do fat boys love french fries?

Can you get lost in the big woods? No. You can get turned around. You can’t get lost in Oklahoma. That’s what Dwain Bland told me once years ago when I asked him the same question about another location we were hunting for turkeys. “Conrad,” he said, “anytime you think you’re lost in Oklahoma, turn around three times and you will see a beer can.” 

I got it, and never forgot it.

But down yonder is a big patch of woodsy wilderness where the leaves at this time of the year fall to the ground like showers of gold coins slithering down out of a powder blue sky. Hey, you won’t mind getting lost down there on a day like we had just the other. Take a bottle of water with you, a cheap, baloney sandwich, and let ‘er come whatever she is. You’ll find the truck by dark. 

Stacy and I split up at daylight next to his truck and angled off away from one another, his last words being, “Meet me back here about ten thirty. We ought to have a mess by then, and I’ve got a whole potful on the stove at home for lunch. We’ll warm ‘em up and fry some taters. You’ll eat, won’t you?” 

Well, look at me. Yes, I’ll eat a little bit. 

Inside of 10 minutes, I heard him shoot way off down along the river one time. Then, a short interval, and two more shots. I know Stacy well enough to say that would be three different shots at three different squirrels. I might fire three shots at one squirrel, but not Stacy. He’s too good at this game, and often the squirrels are thick enough in the Fourche Maline (pronounced foosh ma-lean) bottoms that you will catch several running around in one tree at the same time. A .22 rifle is fun for the perfectionist, but an auto-loading 12-gauge brings home the bacon. 

As the minutes of a life too busy slipped away, Stacy’s shots came from farther and farther away, way down yonder in the deep, dark flatwoods until most of the time I could only imagine I heard them. 

I slipped along noiselessly on leaves made wet from a light shower the day before, in amongst some of the biggest pin oaks I have ever seen in my life; so big their shade had erased most of the undergrowth so that you could easily see through the big bottoms a hundred yards or more in places, the same as you would expect to see in a large residential park. Quiet, cathedral-like. 

It has been a dry year for that country. They are in a drought worse than our own, but if the rains come, if the bottoms flood like they usually do, the mallards will swarm this place in December and January so thick are the pin oak acorns on the ground, tons and tons of them. 

A light wind had sprung up, the very thing that will hex a squirrel hunt quicker than anything I know. Squirrels don’t like a lot of movement where there are so many things that want to eat them. A wind makes them nervous, and they won’t move. I didn’t care. 

I was surrounded by dozens of treetop squirrel nests. They were everywhere I looked. I was where I needed to be, and not in a hurry, either. I had a bottle of water and a baloney sandwich in my vest’s game bag. 

If I picked out a giant old pin oak 10 feet in diameter, put my back up against it and fell asleep with the sun slanting in on me, and let Stacy kill all of the squirrels we were to get that day (10), you wouldn’t mind would you? 

Me neither, and that’s exactly what I did.

© 2010 Conrad M. Vollertsen