Squirrel Hunting


NiteRunner

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I was able to go Squirrel hunting for the first time this past Saturday. A couple deer hunting buddies asked if me and my dad were interested, so we decided to tag along. I grabbed the camera to see if I could get some action shots of the hunt, it didn’t work as well as I hoped, but I still managed to get a couple frames.

As we waited on them to pick us up I watched the sun come up. Loved It! What a way to start of the day!

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They arrived right around 8:00am and we hopped in and were headed down the road. That’s when they told us that while they were on their way over they spotted two Gray Squirrels, one Red and a Black one in someone’s yard. Sounded just like coon hunters as they talked about seeing them here and there.

We only had one shooter with us, so the limit would be 6 Squirrels. To my surprise he had a 12 Gauge shotgun, I had always thought that you used a .22 or something of small caliber for Squirrels, so that was news to me.

They had along two dogs, a young 1 ½ year old Fiest named Sally, and a 10 year old Norwegian named Molly. We had a couple inches of snow on the ground and they told me that the Norwegians don’t hunt well when the snow was on and so her owner wasn’t sure if she would even open on anything. They put an orange vest on the Norwegian, just so no one would think that she was a coyote and shoot her.

No sooner did we walk into the woods did the little Fiest strike. Sally ran around barking and was really trying to show us the Squirrel, but they figured it had holed up in the tree. So we walked them a little deeper and the Norwegian Molly went back to the front of the woods and treed on what her owner thought was the same tree. So we walked Sally a little deeper while he went to retrieve her.

We spotted a big fox squirrel running on the ground but by the time we made it over to it, it too had ran in a den tree. Did some more walking and the dogs didn’t open on anything.

We then got separated from Molly and her owner, and the next thing we knew he was calling to us and telling us that she treed. Treed? We coon hunt this woods and should be able to hear a dog treed. But I guess dogs half the size of hounds aren’t as loud. Anyway, as we were making are way up to them, Sally spotted two Fox Squirrels and got them treed! Before I could get any pics though, BOOM! BOOM! Lol Are gunner had brought them down!

As we reached the other dog, she had eight squirrels all through the trees! Old Molly proved that Norwegians certainly could hunt in the snow.

This time they let me click off a few shots before they opened up on the Fox Squirrels. After they first shot though, squirrels just started jumping and running everywhere! They ended up getting 4 of them down. That was exciting!

After this, we hunted our way back to the vehicle with no other squirrels spotted. But overall I was very pleased with the experience! I asked plenty of questions, got plenty of answers, and it was pretty neat to watch the dogs work. Saw a few similarities to coon hunting, which was neat. Very Nice! Hopefully I’ll be able to tag along again sometime and maybe it’ll be a little warmer then too!

And we’re off.

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Got a few Treed.

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It’s making a run for it!

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The young Fiest, Sally.

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The experienced Norwegian Molly.

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