Ugh. Rats with bushy tails. Cute from a distance, not so much up close...
I used to love squirrel hunting as a kid. Just walking and observing and shooting. No one in my family ever had enough patience to successfully hunt deer. My grandfather taught me to dress and clean them and my grandmother would cook them and they were spot-on delicious, as long as you were careful not to bite into a piece of shot.
50 shades? Knowing how some people think here I though there would be a discussion of gray squirrel vs. young beavers.
there are no squirrels in our neck of the woods. NADA none.
“Tree” squirrels? Is that opposed to water squirrels? Every squirrel I’ve ever seen lived in trees. You don’t need a dog. My cats are always bringing them in to show off their hunting skills.
I’m pretty partial to squirrels. We had them in the back yard where I grew up in NJ, and the feeding of them and their antics provided us with many hours of entertainment. They actually each have their own personalities, just like dogs and cats. My folks even “rescued” one - a few-day-old baby that had fallen out of its nest. We raised Fuzzy, and had him for about 6 months until he found himself the right girl squirrel and ran off.
But they ARE rats - cute ones, because of the tails, and perhaps a bit smarter (well, some of them, anyway), but their essential rat-ness cannot be denied. I wouldn’t eat a rat, so I wouldn’t eat a squirrel - unless it was an issue of survival.
Got a few of them around my house because of the bird feeder but I don’t have the heart to shoot them.....They’re not bothering anything.
My yard in Minneapolis is full of eastern grey squirrels. I could take a dozen a day from my deck.
My 75 foot tall black walnut tree is a magnet that draws them in from blocks away.
Ugh... Stringy, like rabbit. Tried it, no thanks. An old friend used to add some squirrel to his Brunswick Stew. Wasn’t so bad in there.
If you can learn discipline and how to effectively hunt squirrels, you can hunt anything.
Squirrels won’t be jumping into your lap like a city park squirrel.
Q. How is a squirrel different from a rat?
A. Designer outfit.
Sent me home with a crock-pot full of it once and my wife nearly kicked me out over it. Needless to say, my spouse won’t make any squirrel stew for me but that mans gift of appreciation still makes my mouth water. Excellent eating.
My Dad and I used to hunt squirrels when I was a kid. I had a bolt action single shot .22 rifle. I always got stuck cleaning them but they tasted great for dinner.
You don’t need a rifle to hunt those critters.
Years ago I took a vacation with a colleague to go hunting squirrels. We were not the best of shots but noticed a young man with a game bag full of squirrels. The man had no gun so I asked him how he managed to bag so many squirrels.
He said it was easy. He picked up a rock about the size of a baseball in his right hand. He whizzed the rock at a squirrel on the side of a tree braining the squirrel which fell to the ground.
My colleague looked at me as the young man retrieved the squirrel. When the young man returned, my colleague said, “You can become one of the greatest righthanded pitchers of all time!”
The young man said, “Nope!”
My colleague asked, “Why not?”
The young man responded, “’Cause I’m lefthanded.”
My colleague seemed baffled, “So why do you hunt squirrels with your right hand?”
The you man answered, “’Cause when I throw lefty it mangles the squirrels to much to be used for even stew.”
California squirrels endemically carry bubonic plague in their bodies and their fleas.
The only reason I have squirrels around my property is chili iand stew in a SHTF scenario. They are destructive to wiring and other items.
Illegal to kill them in this populous NE city, though they seem to like the rat poison i put out.