ShootingSquirrels.com

OK, some stuff just makes you laugh, especially when it’s first thing in the morning and has to do with wiener dogs. Frankie, over at VegPlot has a dilemma. The squirrels are eating his
Chestnuts, and his wife says she’ll divorce him if he gets a wiener dog, which Wikipedia says is the King of Squirrel Dogs. LOL

Of course, if you read the Wikipedia post, it looks like the wiener dog is actually the meat of choice.

Squirrels can often become prey to different dogs that have the speed and agility to catch them. Dachshunds are among some of these. Its light red or pink flesh has only a slight game taste.

So, Frankie is asking for other suggestions for a squirrel dog, instead of a, as he puts it, sausage dog…

My vote, of course, would be to make his wife chase the squirrels until she let him have his weenie dog. It’s hard to be depressed when you own something that’s so goofy looking that it makes you laugh just to look at it.

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Bob Rich over at Rimfirehunting.blogspot.com said I was a little hard on the DEP Biologist, so here’s my small retraction…. “Sorry” DEP Guy… (while looking down and scuffing my toe in the dust.) LOL

Bob said that:

NOTE: In all fairness, the DEP Biologist did get back to me and he has always responded to my letters. It was the Sergeant that simply didn’t believe me. Here’s what the biologist wrote:

For those of you who haven’t read Bob’s cougar story, go to http://rimfirehunting.blogspot.com/2007/09/hidden-dangers-at-roraback.html and read it.

In the post I did on Bob’s cougar story and my wolf story, I didn’t mention that the cattle rancher who gave me permission to hunt on their property told me that there had been two cougar sightings on their property the day before, within 10 minutes of each other, 3 miles apart. You might think a cougar could do 3 miles in 10 minutes, but not when one mile is straight up over a mountain, and another mile is straight down the other side. (The other issue is, “if you see one, there’s 10 more watching you”.)

She also told me that the year before, they had had a bowhunter come in all white and shaky and tell them that a cougar had been stalking him, and that he had turned around and seen it just in time to get up from where he was sitting and attack it first. (Yelling, waiving his arms etc…) He told the lady that owns the ranch that he would never bow hunt again without taking a pistol or rifle with him, even if he got a ticket for it.

I also play poker with a guy who says he has been stalked by a cougar three times in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. Twice, when elk hunting, he has followed his own trail back to camp in the snow and seen cougar tracks covering his. Another time, when he stopped to use the outhouse at Target Meadows, above the Tollgate ranger station, he came out of the outhouse to see that a cougar had walked around the outhouse three times when he was in there; it had just started to snow as he left his truck.

We also lost an elderly man, who was a diabetic, in that same area this year. He left camp to pick huckleberries, and just disappeared. One of the search guys said that he ran into a cougar 20 feet off the trail, about 100 yards from the guys trailer. He also said there was a ton of bear sign too. (The whole thing freaks me out a little since I got lost up there once when I was a kid…. Overnight! Ahhhh!)

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I love the government! No, really. (sarcasm) They are there to protect us from all the dangers that lurk in the dark and to tell us of the dangers before we can hurt ourselves. You know what I’m talking about, you’ve all seen it in action, the “Smoking Will Kill You” stickers, the “Don’t Dry Your Hair In The Tub” labels on electric hair dryers and other such crap. Why just the other day I saw a sign that said the road was “Slippery When Wet”. WOW, I didn’t know that.

But, there is another side to your friendly, “We Just Want To Protect You”, government. These are the losers that work for the Wildlife branches of government. Here are a couple of examples of what I’m talking about:

I grew up in Oregon and have been to Alaska, Canada, and every other Western state. I hunt and fish, camp in the woods and spent 3 years logging fresh out of high school. During that time, I’ve seen a ton of wildlife, including bear, dear, elk, coyote, raccoon, skunk and wolf. I added wolf in there because I saw one running down the road this year 6 miles outside Unity, Oregon. It was a big grey wolf and spent at least 10 seconds running 10 yards down the road in front of The Verminator’s truck, in which I was a passenger.

Now, I mentioned that I’ve seen coyote and bears, just so that you know, that I know, what they look like. Well, when I emailed the Oregon Department of Whatever, that is tracking the Grey Wolf migration from Idaho into Oregon, they said, “It must have been a coyote”. Did I mention that I’ve seen a coyote before? Lots of them? Well, I got pissed off, and called him, and told him I’ve lived here my whole life and wasn’t from New York. At that point, I finally got him to listen to me, but it was like pulling teeth and I never heard back from him or any of his fellow government employees.

On that note, I’ll lead into the reason I’m writing this, and that is because the same idiots who work for the Oregon State Department of Wolf Watching or Whatever, also work in Connecticut. Read this story posted by Bob Rich about how he saw a Cougar in the Roraback WMA of Connecticut, and talked to a guy who ran into a pack of coyotes the week before, but the idiot DEP biologist he talked to blew the whole thing off, even though the area is used by families with small children.

The reason I’m posting this is because, as squirrel hunters, we need to remember we aren’t the only “THINGS” hunting in the woods and fields. Just because you haven’t heard about the 22 mountain lions that live where you’re hunting, and your local government says there isn’t anything in the woods to be afraid of, doesn’t mean you don’t need to be prepared for the wolves, mountain lions and bears before they decide to snack on you while your hunting. In other words, “BE PREPARED PEOPLE”, even if you think it’s not going to happen to you.

SquirrelSniper

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It’s a rough life, but someone has to laze around smoking, drinking, eating Twinkies and drinking beer while hunting and fishing. OK, I don’t drink when I’m hunting, but I’ve been knows to pop a top or two when it comes to fishing. In other words I’m a bad example of a human being, but who would you have point at, and tell your kids not to be like, if there weren’t people like me around.

The reason I bring up hunting and fishing is because that’s what I’m doing tomorrow. Earlier today I was sitting in front of my computer minding my own business, when God spoke to me.

No, really, he spoke to me. He said “You better go kill some squirrels tomorrow, the season is about over.” I looked at my calendar to see what I needed to do tomorrow, and the date leaped off the page at me and grabbed me by the throat. Holy crap, it’s almost the end of July, tomorrow might be too late.

The ground squirrels around here tend to start hibernating sometime around the end of July, if I’m not quick, I may not get any more this year. So, I called up this guy I know, who likes to shoot squirrels from time to time, and asked him if he was willing to go? He said “yea, but we better take our fishing poles.” (The fishing poles are just in case we don’t see any squirrel; parish the thought!)

I’m not sure about the fishing thing, even though I do like to fish. The problem is, I don’t feel like paying $60.00 or more for an Oregon fishing license when I’m only going to drown a couple of worms in the whole year. I could go to the store and pick up 10 pounds of Salmon for that kind of money, and I’ve never eaten 10 pounds of Salmon in my life, let alone a year.

So, I’m going squirrel hunting, maybe fishing, tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just shoot fish with my 17 hmr, that way I can tell the Game Warden I’m hunting, so I don’t need a fishing license. Do you think that will work, or am I going to wish I’d paid the $60.00?

SquirrelSniper

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I was reading though the squirrel mail this morning and saw a post on a Wildlife Rehabilitation website about some poor squirrel that got shot with a shotgun and couldn’t be transported to their facility in time, so the local animal control officer who was called to the scene had to dispatch it. Whatever, I’m sure he was like “cool, I get to shoot something this morning”. The article then goes on to talk about how this is a life lesson and how we should learn by other’s mistakes and not shoot wildlife.

I’m all about learning from other’s mistakes, especially when it’s a hunting story, but all I get out of this is that you need to spend more time target practicing so you don’t miss. I mean, come on, who the heck misses with a shotgun? And if you do just wound it, don’t make it suffer, shoot it again and again and again until it’s dead. And, if you run out of ammunition, a shotgun makes a really good club. End of lesson. (more…)

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Mashby, over at StarkTruth.com told me we could use his cool Sniper Squirrel Picture. Here is a thumbnail, if you want to see the big one, just click on the image and it will take you over to FreakingNews.com. If you go over there, vote for his pictures while you’re there.

I’ll put together a free target in the next couple of days so that all you squirrel hunters out there can practice shooting at a squirrel that is shooting back.

SquirrelSniper

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Check out this Squirrel Sniper photo that Mashby of the Republicans built with Photoshop over at Freakingnews.com. I should see if he will let me turn this into a free squirrel hunting target. It would be cool to practice shooting a squirrel that was shooting back at you.

Think how scary it would be to face a squirrel sniper at 100 yards if he had a Bushmaster .223 or maybe a .17hmr like I have. Both of those rifles shoot .5 to .75 MOA at 100 yards, and you are probably 200 times larger than a squirrel. Since I hardly ever miss a squirrel at under 100 yards, I can pretty much guarantee that this squirrel is going to get you every time. LOL

I’m pretty sure I’m going to have squirrel nightmares tonight… Pleasant dreams squirrel hunters.

SquirrelSniper

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How come everyone thinks “redneck” when you say “squirrel hunting” or “sage rat popping” or “rat stomping”? OK, sure I burnt the back of my neck really bad last time I went squirrel hunting slash shooting, but that’s just because I’m such a great environmentalist and didn’t want to use any of those poisonous sun blockers. (Yea, I made that up.) Or maybe it’s cause some of them come in aerosol cans and I refuse to pollute the air. Or, it could be that I didn’t want the rednecks to smell it on me and think I was a city boy… whatever.

I found this “Driver Identification” page that mentions squirrels a couple of times. Here a few excerpts:

“Four wheel drive pickup truck, shotgun mounted in rear window, beer cans on floor, squirrel tails attached to antenna: West Virginia male.”

I can see squirrels in this description too, they must have accidentally left them out. “One hand on wheel, one hand on hunting rifle, alternating between both feet being on the accelerator and both on the brake, throwing a McDonald’s bag out the window: Texas City Male.”

Go read the rest, they’re funny.

SquirrelSniper

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