There’s more to squirrel hunting than walking into the woods. Here’s two experts’ tips for bagging a limit.
The smell of fat, homemade biscuits and Community coffee greeted us as we rolled out of bed.
My brother and I quickly dressed before heading to the table, where we drenched the steaming mounds of baked dough in butter and Steen’s syrup. Aunt Olene rounded out our breakfast by pouring two cups of her 100-proof coffee treated with enough sugar to send other children into diabetic shock.
Nothing sat on our plates long: We were going squirrel hunting with Uncle Layton, and he didn’t wait for anyone.
Grabbing our shotguns as we swilled the coffee, Allen and I hurried out the door, casting good-byes and thank-yous over our shoulders at Aunt Olene.
Uncle Layton was already outside, clad in his trademark denim, well-worn overalls and long-sleeve cotton shirt. One of his shoulder straps hung loose.
He grinned under his sagging drinker’s nose as we tramped down the rickety back steps. He led us into the woods a couple hundred yards behind the house.
A shotgun was draped over his shoulder because he finally had gotten too old to hit much with his old .22-caliber rifle.
Two dogs yipped around him, longing for the hunt.
It wasn’t long before we surrounded a tree, craning our necks to pinpoint where a squirrel was hiding. The dogs sent up a cacophony of yelps as they jumped up and down, demanding action.
“He’s up on that limb,” said Uncle Layton, pointing with his shotgun. “Look for his tail.”
Finally, Allen spotted it, lined up his shotgun and squeezed the trigger.
The squirrel tumbled to the ground.
The dead rodent was snatched from the dogs, and Uncle Layton headed off again, sending the dogs ahead to find another target.
A high-pitched bark signaled the dogs had done their jobs, and we hurried to catch up.
But the dogs kept moving: A cat squirrel had high-tailed, refusing to sit still long enough for two young boys to get a bead on it.
The squirrel moved from tree to tree with more grace than any Barnum & Bailey trapeze artist, and Allen and I did our best to hit the grey missile.
Shot after shot rang out, and still the squirrel kept running.
Uncle Layton soon was laughing hysterically, his voice echoing through the woods as he called encouragement.
“Hit ’im before he gets away,” he would yell between fits of laughter.
The poor dogs would run after the squirrel, barking wildly and looking back at their owner in confusion.
Finally, Uncle Layton choked back his laughter, shouldered his old shotgun and blasted the squirrel as it leaped from one tree to another.
We killed a few more squirrels that morning, as we hiked through hundreds of acres of woods surrounding Uncle Layton’s spread.
But I don’t think we killed even one eight-squirrel limit.
Uncle Layton could have easily filled his bag: He was just that good.
Hampered by two kids, the youngest of which could barely hold up his shotgun, he simply enjoyed the morning.
That was back in the mid ’70s, and is one of my fondest memories.
Since that time, however, I’ve learned to respect men like Uncle Layton for their abilities to limit out on squirrels day in and day out.
Squirrel hunting is an art, no matter what the common perception of small-game hunters.
Richard McMullen, a Bodcau Wildlife Management Area biologist, said his data proves that there are few accomplished hunters.
“We have a check system at the WMA, and there are a lot of hunters who consistently don’t kill anything, and some people kill six or eight squirrels every time they go,” he said.
The main reason hunters fail to kill their limits is obvious, McMullen said.
“They don’t know where to hunt,” he said.
McMullen said learning where squirrels hang out is simply a matter of preparation.
“I begin scouting in mid September,” McMullen said. “It’s real important.”
Of course, anyone can wander through the woods looking in the treetops for active squirrels, but McMullen said that doesn’t do much good.
“They might be eating pine cones then, and by the time the season opens they could be feeding on something else,” he explained.
So he’s not worried about seeing squirrels at that point in the game. Instead, he’s looking for potential sources of food.
“I take my binoculars, and I go check (trees) for mast,” McMullen said.
Fellow Department of Wildlife & Fisheries biologist Fred Kimmel said the importance of learning the lay of the land cannot be overemphasized.
“You’ve got to figure out what kind of mast is available,” he said.
On hardwoods, the two hunters check closely to pick out acorns.
“On some trees, they will have eaten them all,” McMullen said. “I’m looking for the trees that still have some acorns.”
But there are other foods that are utilized.
“A lot of times, people just hunt acorn trees, and (squirrels) might be feeding on rattan, which is a vine,” McMullen said.
So he looks for as many potential food sources as possible.
“If you’ve got a cypress stand, look for cypress balls,” he said. “Muscadines are a good fall fruit.”
He even checks pine trees, even though squirrels normally move on to more-favorable foods as soon as they are available.
“You want to check to see if there are any green cones left,” McMullen said. “You don’t want those old brown ones that are two or three years old.
“You look for those green cones right out on the ends of the branches.”
Ironwood, a smaller tree that grows in bottoms, also is a great food source.
“They have little seeds squirrels like,” McMullen said.
Beech trees can also be big producers.
“Beech can be really good, but with the timber management today, there’s not a lot of those trees left,” Kimmel said.
Such food sources will be scattered throughout the woods, but McMullen said he likes to find areas where there is a conglomeration of different species.
“The places I like to hunt are points of hills that go out into a bottom,” he said. “You’ve got a variety of plants because of the different soil types, and in the creek bottom, you have a water source.
“You have more variety to support a number of squirrels.”
While searching trees for mast, however, both hunters also are checking the ground under potential feed trees.
“You look for acorn pieces on the ground,” Kimmel said.
These cuttings, as they’re called, might seem confusing for some hunters because deer also will leave chewed-up acorns scattered about.
Kimmel, however, said it’s really not that difficult to differentiate between the left-overs of the two species.
“Deer don’t leave much behind,” he said. “With squirrels, you’ll find acorns half eaten. Sometimes you’ll find an acorn that’s just been peeled back.
“Generally, you don’t just find one or two (cuttings). There’ll be a whole bunch of them.”
McMullen said it’s even easier with willow and water oaks.
“Look for green leaves on the ground,” he said. “Squirrels will nip off twigs with the acorns, and the ground will be covered with little twigs.
“Once you know what to look for, you can see them from a distance.”
Although squirrels normally get all the water they need from dew, McMullen said scouting around potential water sources can be very productive during dry years.
“This year, it’s dry up here,” he said. “We’ve had squirrels drinking from places they normally wouldn’t.”
That makes creek bottoms particularly promising.
Kimmel also is looking for den trees, which serve as homes for whole families of bushy-tails.
“You want to focus on trees with cavities,” he explained. “A lot of times, it’ll be an older tree.”
It’s useful to make a firm mental note of such finds, Kimmel said.
“They’ll often use these trees from year to year,” he said.
He then looks for current and potential feed trees nearby.
“If you can identify feed trees around it, you can set up on those, and catch squirrels going back and forth,” he said.
Throughout the initial scouting period, the goal isn’t to see a bunch of squirrels. It’s simply to figure out where the tree rats are feeding or might feed on opening day.
A few days before the season, however, McMullen hits the woods so he can put his earlier findings to the test.
“I look for squirrels early and late,” he said. “I’m actually looking for the squirrels.”
The key is to slip through the woods quietly, just as if hunting, and watch the tops of trees.
“Wear your camo,” McMullen said. “Don’t wear your white T-shirt and spook them.”
Once comfortable with pre-season intelligence, the hunters oil their guns and wait.
Kimmel hunts with a shotgun, but McMullen is in that elite crowd that uses only small-caliber rifles.
“My ultimate goal is to kill a limit of those first-year young, those 6-inchers, with all eight head shots,” McMullen chuckled. “I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve come really close.”
Regardless of what weapon is used, Kimmel and McMullen will be in the woods as first light leaks through the trees on opening day.
The two hunters have starkly different approaches, however.
Kimmel is a much more patient hunter than McMullen.
“You can just slip through the woods real quietly and look for motion,” Kimmel said. “I generally take a few steps, stop, look around me, look behind me.
“The key is to move slow.”
Kimmel often doesn’t take this approach long, however.
“I start out hunting like that, and if I come across a tree that looks real good, I sit down,” he said. “If you sit quietly and wait for them, you can shoot them when they come to feed.
“If you’re in a place that’s not hunted hard, you can shoot multiple squirrels out of one tree.”
Even better, he said, is to find a den tree.
“They’ll be moving back and forth to that den tree,” Kimmel said. “That’s a honey hole.”
In either situation, Kimmel likes to find a spot where he stays back from the target tree.
“Generally, you’re sitting back where you can see up in the feed tree,” he said.
McMullen, on the other hand, never remains in one place very long.
“If you stay for long in a spot where there’s not enough food, they might be feeding somewhere else,” he said. “I don’t want to miss that.”
So he stays on the move, sneaking through the woods and using his ears and eyes to find squirrels.
“If you have good ears, you can hear squirrels jumping from tree to tree,” McMullen said. “That’s getting tougher the older I get.”
To compensate for that, McMullen takes steps to increase the odds of seeing the rodents moving in the trees.
“I like to hunt into the sun early and late, when you can see the movement,” he said.
By looking toward the rising or setting sun, any movement is silhouetted.
When the sun moves above the trees, the stalker turns his back and heads the other way.
“At that point, you can’t see (facing the sun) because the sun is so bright, and you’re a lot more visible to squirrels,” McMullen said. “By walking away from the sun, the squirrels can’t see you as well.”
Although he normally can put his eight squirrels on the ground before having to turn around, McMullen said it’s not unusual to be in the woods later in the morning.
“Those little fryers usually come out later,” he said. “They don’t usually come out until about 8 a.m.”
Once he sees or hears movement, McMullen wastes little time getting within range.
He’s not careless, however. Instead, he lines up with a large tree between him and the squirrel.
“I walk as fast and as quietly as I can using a tree to cover me,” he said.
If he’s still not in range when he reaches that cover tree, McMullen finds another tree that will hide is approach.
His hunting style also works best in thicker woods.
“In the more open timber, you have to be cautious,” McMullen said. “They can see you coming, and a lot of times, they feed in the tree tops where you can’t see them.”
Once he’s in range, McMullen takes a few moments to assess the situation.
If there’s a single squirrel, he will blast it from the tree.
Several squirrels feeding in a tree calls for a more scientific approach.
“Shoot the lowest one,” McMullen said. “The ones above will look at it (as it falls) and bark, but they won’t go anywhere.”
Once he picks off the lowest squirrel, McMullen waits until the other squirrels settle down before popping the next one in line.
He always moves up in order, and not down.
“If you shoot the highest one and it falls down through (the other squirrels), they’re going to scatter,” McMullen said.
If he gets a squirrel that hides and refuses to show itself, McMullen will often just wait it out.
If the animal doesn’t reappear in a few minutes, he often gives it one last try before moving on.
“I use a cat squirrel whistle,” he said. “They might stick their head out from behind the tree and give you a shot.”
Of course, there are days when even hardened veterans like McMullen struggle.
“Some days, they move real good, and sometimes, they get real spooky,” he said.
Foggy and overcast days are the worst.
“Early in the season, the owls are real active,” McMullen said. “As the season moves on and the leaves fall of of the trees, the hawks are a problem.”
The low light apparently makes it more difficult for squirrels to spot these predators.
McMullen also said it’s a matter of air temperature.
“They prefer to come out when it warms up a little,” he said.
