First Squirrel!

Andrew and I waiting on squirrels

10/14/2015

       Sunday afternoon my six year old son Andrew and I sat down beside a big oak on the edge of my uncle's property alongside the Alabama River.  He was determined to kill his first squirrel and I promised him that if he would be quiet and patient, an opportunity would likely present itself for that to happen.

       Typically a young hunter cuts his teeth on small game before moving up to big game, but Andrew took the opposite approach, having killed two hogs already.   But our two previous squirrel hunts had been unproductive mostly due to the limited patience of a youngster in waiting for the woods to settle down and come alive with the forest critters.  

        We had ridden through a pine plantation to the edge of the hardwoods that bordered the backwaters of the river and as we walked toward the big oak, which looked like the perfect spot to sit for a while, we saw plenty of fresh acorns on the ground.  Twenty minutes passed and we saw our first game, two turkeys that flew into a nearby tree and apparently began to find something to eat there.  It was too early for roosting and they jumped and flew from limb to limb in search of whatever suited their fancy.

        Forty five minutes passed and Andrew's patience was wearing thin as the sun was not far from setting over the water.  And then in the stillness of the afternoon I saw a branch, high in a tree, move. Then I saw the squirrel and Andrew did too.  For the next few minutes we watched the squirrel go from a tree on our left, run across a series of limbs and a few other trees to a tree on our right.  He would stop briefly and then go back in the other direction.  Andrew steadied the 410 on a small sapling and tried to get a shot but the squirrel would not stop long enough in view for the trigger to get pulled.  Eventually the squirrel darted off through the pine thicket nearby and was gone.

      A few minutes later another squirrel emerged from the treetops and began to work his way along the lower limbs of a nearby tree. We moved closer and the squirrel ran down a cypress tree to the water's edge.  Again, Andrew steadied the gun on a sapling and worked to get the little 410 pointed in position to shoot.  The squirrel stopped on the ground and then ran back up the trunk of the cypress to a height of around ten feet and stopped.  Andrew pulled the trigger and hammer fell on the little gun and so did the squirrel---dead.

      My little hunter handed me the gun and rushed forward to claim his first squirrel.  He was mighty proud.  I was too.

First squirrel!