Rodents Win the Day

In case anyone is wondering, smoked squirrel is pretty good.

I went out today for another day of rodent eradication. I didn’t want to deal with open sights, so I took my Savage A22 with a Nikon Prostaff II Rimfire.

I also decided to take my squirrel call. It’s from a company calle Primos. It’s a rubber bulb and a tube with a reed. You squeeze it, and it makes noises that are supposed to sound like squirrels.

The folding backpack chair has turned out to be a good tool, so I took it with me and set it in a likely place. After maybe 15 minutes, I decided to try the call. I made a number of noises that I intended to sound like the examples I had heard on the web. I got no response at all, Truthfully, I think the call is a joke. It’s supposed to say, “I’m a squirrel! I’m a squirrel! I’m eating tasty nuts!” I think it really says, “I’m a gullible hunter! I like fried squirrel brains!”

I didn’t see a single squirrel in that area. I did hear an owl, however. It set up behind me and hooted like crazy. Then some other type of bird of prey swooped in with a critter dangling from its beak and perched between me and the trees I was watching. I couldn’t see it well enough to identify it. The bird, I mean.

Here is my genius guess: squirrels aren’t anxious to come out and play while owls are screaming nearby and other birds are tearing up freshly killed mice or rats.

I moved farther in, and in my next spot, I saw a couple of squirrels and watched them for a very long time. If I had had a shotgun, they would be in the fridge right now, but they didn’t present safe .22 shots. I came home with nothing, except some old Nehi and Heinz ketchup bottles I found.

The day was not a total loss. I got to hunt, I learned more about what not to do, and I smoked the squirrel I shot yesterday. I brined it all night with baking soda, and today I put a little rub on it and threw it in the smoker with some St. Louis ribs. The ribs are still going, but I ate the squirrel.

The verdict? Lots of potential. The flavor was really excellent. It was dry, though, so I think it needs to be greased at least twice while it smokes, and it should be sealed in foil after an hour or so to keep the steam in. It also seems to need a lot more salt than pork.

Smoking will work, and it’s less aggravation than frying. I have a new go-to squirrel method.

I like hunting from a chair, but I think it would be worth it to get one that swivels. Squirrels can’t be counted on to pop up in front of you, and if one appears to the rear or far to one side, a stationary chair is a problem. I would need to find one that swivels quietly, though. And it would have to be light.

A wheelchair would be perfect. The big wheels would work in my woods, and I could turn it in place.

I live in an area where used wheelchairs probably sell for 10 bucks.

I plan to get in as many hunting days as possible while the season is open. I may put one of my squirrel feeders in the woods. There is no point in playing fair.

In other news, I have a big infrared illuminator on the way. This is an infrared flashlight you can attach to a scope or rifle. The purpose is to allow me to use my night vision scope. It came with an illuminator, but everyone says the stock illuminator is useless.

If I can get the scope and illuminator to work reasonably well, it may be time to bite the bullet and get a very expensive thermal monocular. This would allow me to sit outside at night, scan for coons and coyotes, and blow them to varmint perdition. The thermal monocular would also be good for security, assuming I’m still here on earth when angry statists start prancing into the well-armed meat grinder that is rural America. It’s a bizarre yet highly likely future scenario. If it happens, they will show up armed with laser pointers, pink hats, loud music, and bottles of their own drug-test-failing urine. A few may have cheap AR-15’s they don’t really know how to use. They would be met with $7000 thermal scopes and .338 Lapua. Then, of course, there would be the dogs.

Out west, they would be in really serious trouble. Because of the geography, a lot of westerners who don’t think of themselves as snipers, militia nuts, or precision shooters routinely take game from hundreds of yards away. This is normal out there, so hitting a fat elementary school teacher armed with a Kel-Tec full of .380 FMJ, while he’s 200 yards away, at your gate, still getting out of his mom’s Prius, would not be challenging.

I hate coons and coyotes, for obvious reasons. I don’t hate bobcats, but I probably should. I should also hate armadillos, because they dig dangerous holes. My farm isn’t the ideal location for a deer or turkey hunter, but there are still lots of things you can pop at night with specialized equipment, and in doing so, you would prepare yourself well for the day when Soros-sponsored buses full of goons show up to pick on what they think are soft targets.

Here’s to the day when all of God’s children have been removed to a place where everyone bathes in love and lives in harmony. Hope I get there before the entitlement posses start patrolling.