Where Did the Squirrels Go?

I always look forward to the opening of squirrel season in October. My hunting leases border Dugdemona River, and I usually get six to eight squirrels whenever I hunt its hardwood bottom.

This year, however, was different. On my first hunt in 2022, I went to my traditional opening day place but just killed two squirrels instead of limiting out. It was an odd season opener, but I assumed the squirrels just weren’t moving that morning.

I hunted several more times but each trip was disappointing. It was the worst squirrel season I have had in decades.

During the early deer season, I was telling a friend about my lack of success, and he said he had hunted his favorite spot along Dugdemona on opening morning but didn’t see a squirrel.

My friend’s two grandsons hunt all over Dugdemona swamp but they hadn’t had much luck, either. “You know,” he said, “when the young guys can’t find any squirrels, then something’s going on.”

Curious, I reached out to Mike Wood, a professional fisheries biologist and avid squirrel hunter, to see if he had noticed a drop in squirrel numbers. “The squirrel population is as low as I’ve ever seen across the state,” he declared.

Wood even had a theory on what has caused the drop in numbers. “I believe the two storms in 2021 are the cause. Ida moved up the Mississippi Valley on August 3rd. Nicholas moved up the Red River on September 17th. Both storms decimated the developing mast crop causing a severe wintertime food shortage.”

[Try your hand at making a squirrel gumbo, using this recipe from the pros.]

Wood’s theory was confirmed by Mitch McGee, the biology supervisor for the wildlife management areas (WMAs) in the Monroe district. “Yeah,” he told me, “We’re seeing a decline in the number of squirrels.”

McGee shared Wood’s theory that the two natural disasters are responsible for the low squirrel numbers. Red oak acorns have a two-year growth period and the hurricanes damaged them. White oak acorns take one year to grow and they were hit hard by what McGee calls the 2022 “February freeze apocalypse.”  “It was sort of warm and some of the buds had started, and then we had that cold weather for a week or two and it damaged them. So, we’ve had two years of poor mast.”

McGee went on to explain how the poor mast crop affected the squirrels. “They didn’t starve to death, but it definitely stressed them. Poor mast will cause reduced litter sizes or force them to not reproduce at all. This was the case the last couple of years.”

As a result of the poor mast crop, squirrel hunting on the WMAs in northeast Louisiana has suffered. “Russell Sage WMA has been pretty poor the last few years,” McGee explained. “Because it gets higher flood water, it tends to have poorer mast bearing trees, and it has had a poor mast crop the last couple of years. Big Lake WMA seems to produces year in and year out but even it’s been down this year.”

The data collected from hunters’ checkout cards show that the number of harvested squirrels has steadily dropped over the last few years.

During the 2020-2021 season on the Monroe district’s WMAs, 4,743 hunters killed 8,303 squirrels. In 2021-2022, 4,190 hunters harvested 7,625 squirrels, and as of January 2023, 1,373 hunters have taken 2,166 squirrels this season. The 2022-2023 figures are incomplete because squirrel season is open until the end of February, but they indicate this year will be disappointing, as well.

Fortunately, the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries does what it can to help restore the squirrel population, McGee explained, “We try to manage the habitat. There are certain species of trees like white oak, red oak, and cavity trees that we favor because those trees have wildlife value.” Those types of trees are spared from over-harvesting when timber is cut on the WMAs.

[Read this story from Terry Jones: A Fall Tradition: Squirrel season memories ]

McGee is confident that the squirrel population will rebound. “The squirrels are going to bounce back. If we get a good mast crop, they are going to come back fairly quickly. Their population pretty much tracks the mast production, so, if you have a good mast crop one year, you can have two squirrel litters that year with two to four squirrels per litter.”

Thankfully, this year’s mast crop was better than the previous two years, so things should be looking up come next season.

Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of Louisiana Pastimes, a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.