A Most Humble Hunt

With the sharpness of a skinning knife, my alarm cut through the crisp morning air. I fumble around on my nightstand for my phone, still on the charger. My feet hit the icy hardwood floors, waking me in an instant. The sleepwalking dogs follow me into the kitchen, where I ease open the back door.  Attention turned towards caffeine, I pour water in the reservoir, pile the grounds in a filter haphazardly, smash the buttons, and gaze into the carafe with zombie eyes. After a solemn cup in the cold kitchen, I gather my gear and throw on the clothes waiting in their neat pile on my dresser. With the old truck cranked and heating, the dogs sent back in, and my grandfather’s ancient Italian double-barreled shotgun in tow, I pull out of the driveway and point my truck north, heading directly towards the Tunica Hills Wildlife Management area, and a sky of squirrels.      

In the temperate forest in which they dwell, squirrels fill a unique niche in the biological community, as the only mammals being both diurnal and arboreal. Leaping from limb to limb like an acorn-swilling Tarzan, the tree squirrels own the canopy. Consuming a variety of seeds and nuts, as well as bugs, bark, and buds—they are also some of the forest’s most effective conservationists, acting as seed predators and agents of dispersal alike.

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

There are two species of squirrels you might find here in the Southeast. The first and most prevalent is Sciurus carolinensis, the Eastern gray squirrel. Rarely reaching a pound, the Eastern gray bounds from branch to branch like a treetop ballerina. Other than small populations of melanistic black squirrels, they’re mostly a drab gray in color. These squirrels are most widely found in hardwood bottomlands and swampy forests.

The other species of squirrel native to this area is the Sciurus niger, or the Eastern fox squirrel. These reddish-brown squirrels are much larger than the Eastern gray and prefer oak groves in deep, undisturbed forests. There are also populations of melanistic Fox squirrels spread throughout their range, producing a distinctly dark-colored rodent. Though their diet is similar to their gray cousins, fox squirrels can grow to reach up to two pounds. While the Eastern gray is more of a habitat generalist, the Fox squirrel spends much more time on the ground, using open forest floors with sparse undergrowth to its advantage.

...

It isn’t a long drive to the Tunica Hills from my home in Baton Rouge. On this particular day, it is fifty-five degrees with a breeze slightly more prevalent than you want for a squirrel hunt. The more the wind blows, the longer it takes the squirrels to leave their nests, high in the trees. If it’s too strong, they may not leave at all. At the parking lot next to the trailhead, I down the last of my coffee, fire up the GPS, and tighten the laces on my boots.

[Find the author's recipe for chicken-fried squirrel, here.]

Just down the dilapidated “hiking” trail stands a thicket of pecan and hickory trees, all encased in an oak grove. The terrain changes from upland pine forest to bottomland hardwood over a half-mile, until I finally slide down the hill beside the trail. There’s not much forage for a rodent in an upland pine habitat, but once you hit the bottomland, the acorns and pecans are spread out like a regular squirrel buffet. I check the GPS and realize I am only fifty yards away from my thicket. The sun is only just beginning to make shadows of every hanging limb. Selecting a thick red oak that had to be nearing a hundred years old, I sit down, leaning up against its massive trunk, to wait for daybreak.

...

Here in South Louisiana, hunting is often considered a rite of passage, a family sport. Neither of my parents hunt. My paternal grandfather only hunted on occasion. The .308 caliber Remington 7400 deer rifle he used now resides in my closet. It is semi-automatic, neither bolt nor lever action like the most popular choices for deer hunting. He deemed this anomaly a life-saving habit he picked up in Vietnam that followed him home and never left. My maternal grandfather hunted, too—because occasionally they were too poor to buy food, but also for tradition and comradery. He hunted raccoons late at night with his Tennessee Walker hounds, wearing a coal miners’ helmet with powerful lamps attached. But he also sought out the sporadic squirrel and bobwhite quail.

By the time I started to show interest in the tradition, my grandfathers had long since laid their guns down. The itch was scratched here and there when a friend of the family would invite my brother and I to their expensive high-fence deer leases—where I quickly learned I am ill-suited for the box blind—too impatient to sit, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Bambi’s dad to walk out in front of me. One day my friend asked if I wanted to go squirrel hunting on his family property, which was really just their giant backyard, and I agreed with trepidation. How could harvesting a mere squirrel compare to the thrill of felling a deer—the only thing I had ever heard of people hunting at the time?  I didn’t kill on my first trip, but I saw first-hand how wily these creatures were and realized the challenge of hunting a rodent. My pals bagged a few, and their grandma fried them up for us to enjoy around the table, all still wearing our camouflage coveralls. We hunted together off and on until we graduated high school, leaving those adolescent treetop scouring days for college, the Army, and then the city.

How could harvesting a mere squirrel compare to the thrill of felling a deer—the only thing I had ever heard of people hunting at the time?  I didn’t kill on my first trip, but I saw first-hand how wily these creatures were and realized the challenge of hunting a rodent.

...

After my stint in the armed forces, I went to culinary school for a few semesters on my GI Bill—exploring my long-held passion for food, borne from experience working as a short order cook through most of my teens and early twenties. Quickly realizing that the high-stress environment of haute cuisine was not my calling, I enrolled at LSU in hopes that I could learn to be a food writer.

Around this time, I discovered the infinite opportunity of public lands. Emerging from a few years as a couch potato, I started hiking again for exercise, which turned into camping, which turned into backpacking. Soon I started fishing again, and then one winter, it got too cold to fish, and I wasn’t about to sit inside until crawfish season. Some quick research revealed that it was perfectly legal to hunt on the same public lands that I had been camping on, and this opened a whole new can of worms.

[Read Terry Jones' explanation for 2022's "lackluster" squirrel season, here.]

That first year I tried to hunt every animal the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries regulation book set a season for:  deer, ducks, quail, and turkey. With nothing to show for my efforts, I started to remember those childhood romps in the oak bottoms, and the succulent taste of that first fried squirrel. I went out the next morning and, after seven and a half-miles of tracking, managed to bag one small squirrel. I took it home and fried it up in my cast iron, and ate it over the kitchen sink. Things haven’t been the same since. The next season, I dedicated myself entirely to the pursuit of the squirrel.    

...

Back in my grove, I check the watch on my wrist as I notice the tree limbs move from behind the morning mist; only five more minutes until legal shooting light. I fumble around to release my binoculars from their clunky enclosure and bring the rims up to my eyes, still adjusting to the changing light. A considerable amount of scurrying in the treetop above me keeps my ears perked. After a few minutes under the gaze of modern optics, I zone in on a large gray squirrel about fifty yards in front of me, high in a hickory. This time of year, it can be hard to see your quarry through the leaves, but that also means it is harder for them to see you. I slowly ease to my knees, then to my feet—just as the wily little guy notices me and took off. Other than primates such as ourselves, squirrels are one of the only subsets of mammalians that have color vision, making camouflage all the more important when attempting to put a stalk on one in the woods.

I went out the next morning and, after seven and a half-miles of tracking, managed to bag one small squirrel. I took it home and fried it up in my cast iron, and ate it over the kitchen sink. Things haven’t been the same since. The next season, I dedicated myself entirely to the pursuit of the squirrel.    

Already on my feet, I take three hopping steps and stop, dead still. This is the way a squirrel moves through the forest, a few bounds at a time, then stopping to check for danger. After a few minutes of silence and canopy scanning, I lock on to another one. I move my eyes first, and then my feet. I stalk for about a hundred yards, then, just as I am raising my shotgun to my shoulder, the squirrel sees me. He bounds to the top of the tree, lets out a series of warning barks to his posse, and disappears into the green of the sunlit canopy.

More often than not, this is how the typical squirrel hunt ends, especially on such a blustery day. I sit at the base of a different hardwood, and listen to the wind, watching the woods wake up. This, if nothing else, is the reward for my efforts. I pick up my things, and begin to make my way back to my truck—back to civilized society and tame squirrels that run around suburbia, feeding on stray pretzels and the bounty of garbage cans. Just as I am easing the shotgun case into the backseat, I hear a ruckus in the treetops. There, a pile of Eastern grays well within range are having a territorial dispute high in a hickory. All I can do is chuckle. If I had to choose only one creature on this Earth to spend my time in pursuit of, it will always, without a doubt, be the North American tree squirrel. 

In Louisiana, squirrel season runs from October 7, 2023—February 29, 2024.