Stalking the Hickory Groves of October

By Rod Davis

Rod Davis is an outdoor writer and an avid hunter and fisherman. He lives in W. Virginia and writes for U.S. Hunting Today and Maine Fishing Today.

 

I awoke rather slowly, unwilling to open my eyes against the bright light.  When I pried them open, I saw a blue-bird autumn sky, with white clouds rolling by at a rapid clip. The tree tops were swaying back and forth in the breeze that blew across that hillside in the Potomac Highlands that afternoon. 

 

Apparently, I had dozed off, and then lay down in the leaves with the warm sun in my face while hunting.  I was quite asleep when I was awakened by a weird noise: “Squaaaaacckkk!,  Squaaaaacckkk!

 

I rose up with some difficulty from my warm bed in the woods and looked immediately to my left and saw a grey tail wagging up and down to match the strange sound in cadence.

 

Slowly I raised the little CZ 20 gauge over /under shotgun to my right shoulder, “BLAM!, he ran up a tree, “BLAM!, and I saw him fall a short distance to the ground.

 

 

That evening we grilled some strip steaks and baked some cat-head biscuits that were made up and frozen by my wife, “The Warden”. Shortly after dark, fresh-air poisoning set in and we drifted off to sleep. I awoke at 5:00 AM and rousted Lee. After breakfast, we headed up river to enter the woodlot we had chosen at first light. Lee had never hunted this particular property, so we climbed the hill together for a few hundred yards, then separated. I immediately jumped two does, being trailed by a small buck that was bedded down in the pines I was walking through.

 

Squirrels, both grey and fox squirrels, have keen eyesight, so camo clothing is a huge help in this type of early season hunt. One of the finest ways to hone your stalking skills for deer season begins in the squirrel woods of October.  When you learn the art of silently slipping through the hardwoods all the while scanning the tree trunks, branches and the ground for tell-tale movement.

 

The hillside was quite steep ( about 45 degrees), so I latched onto a hint of a deer trail for a little more secure footing, as I eased slowly still-hunting around the hillside. Lee was somewhere above, in the hickory groves near the ridgeline.  I sat for a few minutes in a likely looking spot to watch for movement.  It did not take long before a nice sized grey squirrel came up a tree trunk thirty yards, straight ahead.

 

 I had purchased a new shotgun CZ 20 gauge over/under with 26” barrels with 5 choke tubes supplied.  It is quite a nice looking and functional little gun, perhaps designed with flushing quail in mind, but I thought it would serve nicely for bushy-tails.  CZ-USA recently introduced these fine side by side and over/under shotguns into the American market.  They are surprisingly high quality at a surprisingly reasonable price.  I purchased my little treasure, new, for only $749.00. With Italian made doubles starting at $1200 and the sky seeming to be the limit, this seems to me to be a bargain.  They are available in 12, 20 28, and.410 gauge and in several different grades. At 5.9 lbs, it is an elegant feeling gun with great handling characteristics.

 

You can learn more about them at www.cz-usa.com.

 

 

Traditionally most squirrel hunters use a shotgun or a .22 rifle.  Both are fun to use and have their merits, depending on the amount of foliage, time of day, etc. Squirrels are most active at dawn and dusk and tend to follow a pattern of feeding in trees in the morning and milling about and feeding on the ground, in the leaves in the late afternoon.  This is always the case, but seems to be the norm.

 

In the morning, in the early season, when there are still lots of leaves on the trees, I favor a 20 gauge shotgun, with #5 or #4 shot.  In West Virginia, where some of the timber is 100 feet tall and 30 yards down hill, I favor a high brass load, with at least 1 oz. of shot and I usually ( from force of habit ) prefer a full choke, or maybe modified.

 

This combination usually results in a quick and humane kill. The over/under I was using was quite up to the task, offering a choice of full or modified barrels, but I also brought along, for the trip, a nice little 20 gauge Remington 870 pump gun.  Great squirrel medicine!

 

There is little more challenging than stalking the squirrel woods with a .22 rimfire or .17 calibers for these furry lightning bolts. If you can get one to stay still for enough time, to find him in your scope, 75 feet up an oak tree, hidden in leaves, or peeking around the trunk at you, then you have to place that tiny chunk of lead into his head, a target slightly smaller than a tennis ball.

 

To be effective at squirrel shooting with a .22, there are many choices available. An inexpensive plinker, may meet the need, but many opt for higher quality bolt guns and semi-autos, with quality optics for this kind of sport.

 

Rugers’s 77-22, Remington’s 541T, Browning A-bolts, CZ and many

 more modern weapons fill the bill nicely. These guns often are capable of producing 1” groups and even better at 50 yards. Most shots at bushytails are taken in the 20-30 yard ranges, so whatever you are comfortable with at these ranges will do nicely.

 

Simmons, Tasco, and Leupold have made RF (rimfire) versions of their scopes that are parallax adjusted at 75yards, instead of the usual 150 yards. This will indeed cut your group size I half. I highly recommend these types of scopes.  I have a 4X Leupold Compact that I have owned for many years that has graced several different rifles. It is an RF version and has an extremely fine reticule that quarters a squirrel’s head nicely. This scope is also available in a 2-7X model that I have lusted after for many years.

 

Attached to this scope is my Browning Replica of a Model 52 Winchester, a tack-driving rifle that is NOT for sale or trade! Only a few thousand of these were made in the late 80s and it is the perfect rimfire. It boasts an adjustable trigger that has no creep or overtravel and when fires, feels like breaking glass. This trigger will make your teeth hurt, it’s so good!  The rifle is a full size sportier with a 24” barrel.

 

Head shots are preferable to save meat, but a shot in the neck or shoulder area will generally produce a squirrel dinner as well.  Any shot behind the shoulder, will generally produce a gut-shot and lost animal.

 

The 17 caliber weapons will also make great squirrel getters and at times, a .22 Magnum is handy to have, but usually it is overkill.

 

Many .22 rounds are available in hyper velocity loads with loads of hot power, but in my opinion, the sub-sonic hollow points are more accurate and nearly ballistically perfect for squirrels.

 

Back to the hunt:

 

I set the silver bead on the barrel right under the grey rodent and slapped the trigger. He immediately ran, as if unscathed. I followed up with a second trigger pull and…nothing. I opened the breech to see both barrels had fired at the same time. I am clueless why this happened, and it has not occurred since.

 

A quick reload and a quick pull on the trigger, and the squirrel fell. I walked downhill and retrieved my prize.  The clouds were rolling back and the sun was coming out and all of a sudden, the woods came alive with squirrels. Over the next two hours, both Lee and I limited out at six each, all the while never leaving a small area no more than a 100 yard circumference circle for each of us.  As we left the area, I could hear more squirrels barking down the ridge.

 

After lunch, we headed out for an afternoon on the river.  It is tradional in West Virginia that several major trout stockings occur during the first couple weeks of hunting season. We climbed over Swago Creek Mountain and made our way into the headwaters of Williams River . We caught several native brookies as well as a couple stocked browns.  We came upon a bridge where a few guys had gathered. Apparently the DNR had come by that afternoon and dropped several trout into the creek, including several brood trout, averaging 5-8 pounds. ( around 24 inches long).

 

 

 

Lee hooked and landed a nice brown trout about 18 inches and I narrowly missed two big broods in succession. We gave up after they lost interest. We vowed to return again and try them again, the next day.

 

That evening a friend of mine, Sam Vance, who also is bi-vocational, working a secular job as well as working in ministry at our church, met us at camp for another great camp dinner and a planning session for the next day. The forecast was for temperatures in the 20’s  the next day, so we opted to fish early and hunt in the afternoon.

 

Fishing that day was fair at best. The cold snap seemed to have slowed them down, but after returning to the bridge, we met a young man with an 8 pound brown in his pickup. He was a pretty proud guy!  We saw a few trout and caught even fewer that morning, so after a return to the RV, we packed off to the woodlot after lunch. We entered the woods as we did the day before, this time placing Sam between Lee and myself, since Sam was not familiar with these woods.

 

Ten minutes after sitting in the dry leaves, I was fast asleep.  That brings me back the squirrel that was barking and woke me up at the beginning of this story. As soon as I saw him fall, after my two shots, I eased a few yards in that direction to locate and retrieve him. To my left, I saw a squirrel go up a tree and stop. Was this the same squirrel? Did I miss?

 

“BLAM!” the little CZ barked again and the squirrel fell. When I got to the area, I found two squirrels lying on the leaves, one grey and one a large Fox squirrel.  Fox squirrels are not to be confused with the small red squirrels found in the north woods. A mature Fox squirrel is orange/ grey in color, and twice the size of a grey squirrel.

 

I heard a noise and looked uphill to see Sam alerting me to his presence, 30 yards up the steep grade. I continued around the hillside 60 yards or more to give Sam some space and began to see squirrels uphill and out of range. I then saw two playing on the ground and after a short stalk was able to harvest one and seriously scare the other one.

 

Within an hour or so, I killed two more and heard Lee on the ridgeline fire several times, but no shooting from Sam’s area. It was getting late so I started back towards the truck, hoping to arrive there before dusk, when I heard Sam’s 870 fire, one, two….then three times. Then a dull thud as the squirrel hit the ground. I caught up with Sam and he had been watching for this particular squirrel to make himself a target for over two hours.

 

The next morning we tried again with little success as the wind had whipped up dramatically which seems to have a detrimental effect on the squirrels activities.  The rest of the day involved some relaxing and camp-fire poking.

 

We all were quite pleased. We had 17 squirrels frozen and packed, ready for several recipes we had on file. Breaded and fried or stewed with squirrel gravy and biscuits all make a fine meal. My dear friend Tom Remington, editor of Maine Hunting Today, has questioned my sanity regarding the eating of squirrels, but he doesn’t know what he’s missing!

 

Squirrel hunting is a great training exercise for stalking and still hunting big

 game, but these little guys are no pushovers.  Grab your .22 and try them this fall.