I had one of the most unique hunts last week that I’ve ever had. A while back Charles Allen, the owner of Knives of Alaska called and invited Ron Spomer and myself to come down to his ranch and do some deer and hog hunting and get more footage on the Knives of Alaska Professional Boning Knife that I’d helped him develop.

While there he said we’d also do some duck hunting. Charles is a fanatic duck hunter and manages part of his ranch as a primo environment for duck hunting. The Trinity River flows near to him so there are a lot of creeks, flooded timber and sloughs-the perfect duck hunting environment!

Then throw on top of these three hunts we were also going to squirrel hunt. There is a lot of thick timber in East Texas and Charles told us that he had primo squirrel hunting. I didn’t realize at the time what a fanatic squirrel hunter that he was.

Then it turned up that the national raccoon convention of the Solar System must have been convening in his pecan grove that week as well. I‘ve never seen that many coons before in my life. I also got a crow and Ron got a couple of other species so to say that we had a multi-species week long hunt is a mild understatement.

But for today, we’re going to cover squirrel hunting. You know how sometimes you do something that you haven’t done in a long time and afterwards think gee, why don’t I do that more. That’s how it was with squirrel hunting. Other than attending the first two GAMO Squirrel Master Classics I don’t think that I’ve seriously squirrel hunted since I was a kid. We had a blast.

For this hunt I took my Henry lever action .22 mag tipped off with a Vortex 6-18x44 AO scope. I wanted a high magnification scope since I’d be shooting the little tree rats 500 miles up in top of the tall trees. I’ve had good luck with Hornady ammo so I used their 30 gr. V-Max ammo.

Ron and Charles used .22’s and they’re great on squirrels but I’m glad that I took a .22 mag since we ran into the coon problem. A .22 only cruises at 1,250 fps but a .22 mag leaves the muzzle at 2,200 fps.

I guess there are multiple methods to hunt squirrels but the best/funnest way is how Charles had us hunt. We’d split up and meet a few hours later at a designated spot. He advised us to move along super slow. We‘d move along slow and then set in a likely spot for maybe 20 minutes to let them come out. Of course a lot of the mature trees had rotted out hollows for them to live in along with the numerous nest we’d see. If nothing came out I’d hit my Quaker Boy Scolder Squirrel Call to prompt them to stick their head out to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

Then a lot of times you’d see them out in front of you on the ground feeding or scampering in a tree. You’d then try to sneak in on them so as to get a shot. One day things were slow so I crawled under the fence into the thick woods surrounding the creek. I immediately saw a couple right close.

Sometimes they’ll pose for a shot but a high percentage of the time they…. well, act like squirrels and twirl around limbs and never hold still. So when they stop for a millisecond you have to be ready for a shot.

We were mostly hunting by ourselves but hunting in pairs can be beneficial. Squirrels will invariably climb up and go around to the opposite side of a limb. In those instances you can have a buddy nosily walk around to the other side of the tree so the squirrel crawls back around to your side allowing you to get a shot.

One day at the end of a squirrel hunt Besty did a little YouTube interview of Charles. He is a Master Brown Bear Guide and has hunted all over the world but in the interview he advised parents to train up their kids to be good hunters by starting them on squirrel hunting.

He went on to tell how the still hunting skills that he learned as a kid squirrel hunting prepared him for all of his later big game hunts. He learned to still hunt, be ready for a shot when the opportunity arose etc. etc. This is true for a lot of skills that we learn as a kid isn’t it? Be smart and use life’s circumstances to teach your kids skills that will benefit them for the rest of their life’s.