By Eric Davis

Sun Outdoor Columnist

When talking to just about any hunter about how they got into hunting, the story often shifts to starting out hunting small game as a kid. Whether it was squirrels, rabbits, or upland birds, they were the start of a lifelong love of the outdoors. With deer season over, now is the perfect time to take a trip down memory lane and go small game hunting. If there is a lot of snow on the ground I usually opt for rabbit hunting and won’t bother with squirrels and if there is no snow, the rabbits get a pass and I squirrel hunt.

Before I was old enough to deer hunt, I looked forward to the Christmas season because it meant that my friends and I could start rabbit hunting on their dairy farm with the conclusion of the muzzleloader season. We hunted with a dog but she wasn’t a rabbit dog. Daisy was a small, mixed breed dog they got from the local shelter that went everywhere with Todd and Matt. We would walk up overgrown creek bottoms going from one patch of brush to the next looking for rabbits. We would set up in a triangle around the brush and someone would convince Daisy there was a rat in the brush (she loved killing barn rats). Once Daisy was in the brush, any rabbits that were hiding inside would come running out and hopefully one of us would get a shot at the fleeing rabbit. Sometimes the brush was too thick for even 10-pound Daisy to fit in so we would have two shooters on the ready and one person would go up and kick and stomp the brush to get any hiding rabbits to leave. We would have a variety of firearms between the three of us. One person carried a .22 rifle for rabbits that stopped in plain sight and the other two carried shotguns, often one 20 gauge and one .410 for running rabbits.

Squirrel hunting was often an early fall activity when I started hunting but now that I goose hunt in September, and archery season starts October 1st I don’t even think about squirrel hunting until later in the fall. Honestly, I think about squirrel hunting all fall as they make a ruckus around my treestands while I’m deer hunting. I just wait until deer season is over to hunt them. Hunting squirrels this late in the year can be tricky as they don’t move a lot since it’s cold. It sounds like late season deer hunting, you need to hunt the food. Oak flats and hickory groves are often productive as squirrels will hang around looking for any leftover nuts on the ground, or they have their stashes of nuts in the area near these trees. I like a .22 rifle with a scope for this. The woods are wide open as most low vegetation has died and all the leaves are off the trees, so a firearm that can shoot a squirrel at a distance is needed. If you want to knock back the population near your treestand, sit right in the stand. Otherwise pick a spot with a decent vantage point and sit there for half an hour, then move if you haven’t had any action. Try to stay still and move as little as possible, squirrels are almost always nervous since a lot of things will eat them and they can pick up on movement.

As with any other game species, proper care after the harvest is what leads to good meals. Rabbit stew is one of my favorites. There are very few things better than a slow cooker full of hot stew after working outside in the cold. Squirrel can also make a good stew. I’ve heard from other hunters that squirrel legs dredged in flour and deep-fried are delicious but I am yet to try this method.