I've heard some old timers in Wyoming talk about eating them during the depression years, but never new anyone who had done it recently.
I don't see why they wouldn't be just fine, although a bit small!
There are so many varieties of ground squirrels. I think the ones mentioned by Pope and Hill were much different than the one's I shot in Wyoming. Chet Stevenson wrote of shooting squirrels in Oregon which lived in trees and also seemed to go to ground.
I know the ground squirrels I saw while in the Marine Corps in southern California were a lot bigger than the Wyoming variety and looked a lot like our midwestern fox squirrels.
I've shot thirteen lined ground squirrels in Iowa and northern Missouri which were smaller and warier than the Richardson's of the west.
All I know is that the one's I shot were pestiferous and prolific and I've shot thousands in my life.
Now for the stories conclusion.
We stretched lunch into an hour and even thought about snoozing for a while. The music coming from that little crystal clear stream was about half rock and roll and half lullaby. The spot we’d picked to sit and eat still gave us a clear view of the meadow and the temptation to be up and back at the diggers was just too much. We sat there on the bank
cleaning arrows in the little creek. It didn’t take long in the arid air for the feathers to dry so they could be slipped back in our quivers.
Larry was ahead of me by a good dozen squirrels and I knew I was gonna have to hustle to even think about finishing with the hundred we set as our goal.
When a squirrel ran out in the grass not ten yards from us, lunch was over. All of a sudden!
I slid an arrow across the bow as I rose to one knee. The heavy bow came back to anchor with only slight complaint from my now aching shoulders and I let the shot slip when everything was lined up.
The arrow skipped off the squirrels head and left him twitching his last in the grass. I looked at Larry and smiled as if it was all just that easy and the hunt was back on.
Truth be known, I was more than a little sore after our brief rest and I didn‘t hit another shot for at least the next six attempts.
Each shot was becoming more of an effort to reach full draw and stretch back into the shot.
A hot spot had developed on the palm of my left hand just down from the web. The rough leather of the grip was wearing a blister there and it was beginning to hurt..
The bowstring, which couldn’t have been over a couple of weeks old, was showing signs of extreme wear just below the center serving.
The arrows that hung over my shoulder at my right ear were for the most part not near as neat and pretty as they should be for being so new. By now they all showed matted, stained fletch from the carnage. Whether they had been involved in any killing or not, enough gore had been transferred from one to another that I couldn’t find an arrow that didn’t give me a whiff of squirrel as the fletch came back under my nose at full draw. It was starting to get to me.
By mid afternoon Larry and I got the feeling that we were approaching our goal. We gathered up squirrels from the different piles and brought them to a more central location, getting an accurate count as we went.
As close as we could figure, we were about even and still a little shy of the goal number.
The hot spot on my palm a few hours before had long ago turned into a dime sized blister then broke and rubbed more till a bloodstained spot showed on the bow’s grip. (and still does to this day) The string had given up two strands to the chafing of my armguard and I’d cut them free with my pocket knife.
My pants reeked and my quiver reeked, my fingers were sore and altogether this had turned into some kind of obscene chore. Driven by something that I no longer understood, if in fact I ever really had. But I was intent on finishing this thing, whatever it was and I would stay until I did.
I remember it taking a lot longer than it should have to kill that last half dozen squirrels. A few times I let the string slip away before I was really ready because of the painful blister or because I was just tired or because the smell on the fletching now was making me want to hurl.
My shots went high and left and right. Seldom missing low, which might have skipped and given me a hit. No the last ones weren’t coming easy at all.
Finally, when I was sure I’d done it, when I just knew I had killed one hundred of the little diggers I went ahead and shot two more.
We got our final tally for the day. Larry had taken 120 with his compound and I had 102 with my longbow. Pictures were taken for the record and because we took pictures of everything in those days and we policed up the pile of little bodies.
We deposited them off in the brush away from the pastures that held stock and away from the road. It was obvious that they wouldn’t last long. The coyotes and skunks and buzzards would feast on them for a day or two and in the end no record of our deed would exist, except the pictures and the memories.
It took a while to shoot up all of the arrows that survived that days shooting. My jeans washed up ok and the blister on my palm eventually healed, but I didn’t shoot another ground squirrel that summer and never again would I encounter them in the numbers that we had found on that ranch.
It was obvious that we had put a dent in the rodent population there and we had free run on that ranch from that day on.
I think about that day a lot. Think about my youth and how my perspective on hunting has changed. I think about the friend who went on to become a Baptist missionary far up the Amazon River and I smile because it’s all good.
Topic: The great ground squirrel massacree!! (Read 8405 times)
