had to hop on a plane monday for the west coast this week and get back home on next tuesday i hope. hopefully.
but, my cousin from florida came up last weekend and we headed up to camp to freeze our a$$'s off at my sheet-rocked propane fired non-woodsman luxury camp.
gary, my cousin, is quite the accomplished squirrel hunter. being from florida, the land of the wild and untamed bagel, he could not hunt in new york without a license so we procured an out of state license for him at the local gunshop and commenced to hunting.
i decided to use my 17 hmr with a simmons 50 mm scope. gary choose my 22 caliber rf tube feeder marlin 60 circa 1980 with about 2 bricks of ammo stuffed into teh pockets of his six layers of shirts, sweaters, pants,coats,and jackets that he was wearing. he's from florida, where 68 degrees fahrenhiet is considered freezing.
not being much of a squirrel hunter, i followed his lead. we headed out about an hour before dusk, 3:30pm or so.
squirrel are like grouse, when they see mighty hunters like me, they immediately give up all hope of seeing the sun rise again and form a line and hop into my bag. pretty much the what the cows do when they see the mcdonalds beef purchaser show up at the farm.
he was right on, gary said that the squirrels will become active a few minutes before dusk. we walked west into the sun until just started to go down and we turned around. we waited by a bunch of oak trees with nests and they started piling out and running down the tree.
i had my scope on x18 and had too narrow of a field of view to find anything moving so i backed the scope off to 6 power.
in the end, i bagged 4 and gary got 6 nice sized squirrel (8 shots for him) which he cleaned, egged, breaded, and fried up for dinner. we also had a spaghetti squash with some butter on the side. there really isnt much to eat on a squirrel so later on we fried up some sausage for sandwiches, chowed down, and relaxed for the evening in the shed.
in retrospect, i think a 17 hmr is a bit much for a squirrel. next time i 'll use the 22 caliber rimfire sportster. i need to get iron sights on it, the scope wasn't needed.
sg
