Shotguns continue to produce squirrels as your eyesight and marksmanship fade, says author Tony Humeston.

When I squeezed off my first string of three zeroing shots, I knew my rifle shooting wasn’t going to cut it. Being a stubborn old coot, I blinked my eyes three times and squinted through the scope. My sight picture showed the six and seven rings of the 50-yard target. The middle of my target was a hazy red blob. I squeezed off five rounds into the center of the red blur, dismounted from the shooting table and walked downrange to inspect my working. It was bad. My shooting formed a ragged two-inch pattern. You can’t shoot squirrels that way.

Can’t shoot well enough? Don’t want to wound squirrels with poor rifle shooting.

Why not a shotgun? Miss a squirrel by two inches with a rifle and he is either spooked or wounded. Miss a squirrel by two inches from the center of your shot pattern and he is still yours.

Hunting

It’s opening day of squirrel season and the autumn day is perfect weather with a slight southern breeze. I wade in ankle-deep water through the passageway under Highway 5. I step out into a patch of shade and slip behind a sapling oak. To my front stretches my favorite squirrel woods: a 1/4-mile run of shallow creek bordered by hickory trees.

I wait five, ten minutes to become attuned with the woods.

A nearby hickory catches my attention. A cluster of nut-laden branches bounces and jerks. There has to be a squirrel in there, I think.

My cataracts impair my scanning. I cock my head, and through my peripheral vision, see a wisp of red tail below the branch. I shoulder the twenty and squeeze one off. The cluster of branches explodes. Twigs, chewed leaves, nuts and my target all rain towards the yellow sand bank. The squirrel lands with a thud and lays motionless.

Ten, fifteen minutes drag by. I neither hear nor see a trace of Mister Bushytail. My shotgun blast must have scared them. A .22 rifle crack doesn’t sound much difference than a breaking twig. Squirrels are used to that, and probably figure it’s just another woods noise. But a shotgun sends a louder, different sound; a sound they would equate with danger. Time to move on.

A slow, careful stalk down the creek, and I haven’t seen a squirrel. I wade a little further and, wait a minute, back up. I have to look twice to see the silhouette of a sleeping fox squirrel sprawled out on a limb.

It looks like an easy shot. I shoulder the Iver Johnson and ease back the hammer. Between the shadows, the bright shafts of sunlight and my poor vision, I can’t find him in my sights. Got to make him move.

I throw a heavy stick into his tree. The piece bounces off several limbs and sends a shower of hickory nuts earthward. The squirrel jumps up, chatters angrily and pops into a tree bole, probably to finish his nap. Ah, well.

I keep walking the creek, staying in the shadows, and come up to a creek bend. The water is deeper in the bend so I jump onto a sand bank.

I look up and spy a squirrel’s head sticking out from the side of shag-bark hickory. In an eye-blink of time, I mount the twenty and blaze away. The number sixes rip the tree. Ragged strips of shag bark peel away and scatter like a covey of quail. I pick up squirrel number two. It’s time to leave the creek bottom.

I take the deer path from the creek to the edge of the hickory timber. I tread easy, keeping away from noisy leaf piles of brittle branches. I take three, four steps and stop. That’s how an undisturbed deer goes through the timber. Normal woodland noises do not spook wild game. I stay on the deer trail for couple hundred yards and stop within shotgun range of an ancient white oak.

Somewhere in the oak a bushytail chatters. Another one answers, and a young squirrel jumps up on a log in front of the white oak. My twenty sends a load of number sixes his way and the squirrel lays flat on the log. I leave him, thinking he will make a fine decoy, and maybe these squirrels are not gun shy. Besides, I generally shoot four squirrels.

I see the moving shadow of a red-shouldered hawk trace its way over the ground in front of me. Almost immediately, the woods resound with the clatter of a squirrel’s alarm call. The hawk sees something interesting and circles. I decide to go get my squirrel before the hawk does. Three squirrels will have to do.

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