It used to be a fall habit. Now we’re too busy, and too sophisticated to hunt and enjoy the taste of fried squirrel. (Press Pros File Photos)
When I was a boy it was so much a part of our family’s fall routine that we looked forward to it all summer. Now, I can truthfully say…like the rest of you, I haven’t hunted squirrels for years.
I’m being honest with you when I say, that unlike those who write to Press Pros on the ‘Reader Speaks’ page, and call hunting an “abomination on wildlife”, the greatest threat to wildlife and the natural environment as we know it is ambivalence and neglect.
Let me say it another way. It’s not casual hunters who average killing a deer once every four or five years, or a rabbit once every two years, or pay $5,000 to shoot a half dozen pheasants at an Orvis resort over a three-day weekend that threatens the environment.
No, it’s pompous people who believe that old age, and death by natural causes, is nature’s way of maintaining itself – thinking that overgrazing the range in Wyoming with too many elk is a more humane manner of population control. While science has proven that thinning the herd actually strengthens the gene pool and promotes better animal health. And if you’re one who believes in the hands-off approach…look to the example of society as it grows, and ask yourself if we haven’t come to the point of living too long, ourselves?
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The reason I bring it up is because someone recently asked me if I planned to squirrel hunt this fall, something I admit to not having done now for more than a decade. Too busy with other projects. Not a priority, compared to bigger, more attractive game species. Frankly, there’s just not enough time. And squirrel hunting is an activity that takes some time, and patience.
But there was a time when my dad, his brothers, and friends planned their September and Octobers around the pursuit of what they called ‘tree rats’, because squirrels, unknown to many, are a member of the rodent family.
They hunted them on the farms and in the hills of eastern Ohio – both reds (fox squirrels) and grays – with shotguns and rifles. And while I got to go along and participate when I turned ten years of age, it was never as exciting for me as hunting rabbits with beagles, or pheasants out West with pointers and setters.
The treat at the end…as unsavory as it may sound to some, squirrel is the best of all wild meats – delicious!
But an event last fall has changed my scheduling priorities in the coming weeks. I was invited to a wild game banquet to give a talk in northeastern Ohio, where the primary hors d’oeuvres prior to dinner, itself…was fried squirrel. I can’t share the recipe with you, but it was, in a word, delicious – spicey, flavorful, easy to enjoy, it was as good, or better, than any chicken wing you order from an unknown source.
Because…when you order chicken from a restaurant you don’t know the source of that chicken, or even what they were fed prior to processing. With squirrels that’s different, because we know that their primary source of food is nuts and grain, specifically corn. Find a woodlot with a lot of hickory trees and you’ll find squirrels.
And in many areas of Ohio, particularly in Mahoning and Guernsey counties, where I grew up, if you find a corn field alongside a woodlot or water source you’ll find even more squirrels. Squirrels are predictable about their eating habits, morning and night, and in that respect when you find a predictable food source you’ll going to have predictable success. So much so, that when they exhaust one food source they’re actually nomadic enough to move to another, en masse.
I grew up hunting them with a single barrel .20 gauge shotgun, and I still have nothing against hunting them with a scatter gun. However, in today’s sporting culture most use a .22 rifle with an accurate scope because they believe it to be more sporting.
But the irony is that few of the people that I talk to about squirrel hunting actually eat them, anymore. Instead, they donate them to a wild game feed, or banquet.
Big mistake. Learn to cook them like people who know how to cook ’em, and you’ll discover the truth about those embarrassing ‘tree rats’. They’re actually one of the best wild meats you can eat – the ultimate finger food, because all you’re eating are the legs, like frogs.
A lot of people now use dogs to hunt them, but in Ohio the favorite way is still to slip quietly into the woods before sunrise, take a seat adjacent to a good food source, and just be quiet. Before you know it you’ll hear them, jumping from limb to limb in the trees, looking for something to eat. Be patient, aim so as not to do damage to the meat on the front and hind legs, and on a typical morning within an hour you’ll have your limit of four squirrels. And in this respect hunting with a rifle is better because they make less noise than a shotgun, and the spook factor to squirrels is not as great as it is from the blast of a shotgun.
Typically, you won’t have problems in getting permission from landowners, especially if they know you. There just aren’t that many people hunting, and the reality is about squirrels…that more die from old age than they do from hunting.
It’s on my list for September, and if you grew up hunting squirrels, maybe it’s time you got back in the habit. Surprise a few people at your next dinner or cookout.
People don’t hunt, or eat, squirrels, anymore. But maybe they should.
‘Til next time…I’ve enjoyed it.
Coverage of the outdoors on Press Pros is proudly sponsored by Olde English Outfitters, in Tipp City.