Now that deer season is over it is time to go after small game. You can hunt rabbits and squirrels as well as quail until the end of February. Some of my best memories growing up are of hunting those game birds and animals.
One of my best friends had a pack of beagles and we hunted rabbits almost every Saturday after Christmas until the end of season. I loved putting the dogs out and listening to them as they jumped a rabbit and chased it. And it was always a challenge to try to be in the perfect place for a shot when the dogs chased the rabbit in a circle back to us.
I got frustrated the first two times we went because I took my .410 and missed about half the rabbits I tried to shoot. I was used to shooting squirrels in trees with it and most of my shots at them were while they were sitting still. Rabbits didn’t sit still.
I started carrying a 12-gauge shotgun and seldom missed with it. It almost seemed like cheating at first, but I wanted fried rabbit for supper!
As much as I liked hunting with the dogs, one hunt without them stands out in my mind. It snowed a little that week, not enough to mess up the roads but fields and even the ground in the woods was white. My friend said it was too cold for the dogs so we played dog.
We went to a farm where we knew there were a lot of good brush piles around the fields. We took turns jumping the rabbits. One of us would stand on one side of the brush and the other one would stomp up on it and across the top. It seemed at least every other brush pile had a rabbit in it that day and we got our limits, even without the dogs.
Hunting on Sunday was illegal back then so most of our squirrel hunting was after school on week days. Dearing Elementary School I attended from 1st through 8th grade was a little less than a mile from my house. It was not unusual for me to ride to school with dad – he was the principal – and leave my .22 or .410 in his office. At the end of school I would go by and get my gun and go down to the branch near the school and hunt my way home.
Dearing was, and is, a small town in McDuffie County and it was easy to avoid houses from the school back to my house. I probably walked between two and three miles hunting from school to home but it was worth it.
My dad hunted quail and we went a good bit before he got rid of the dogs and I started rabbit hunting. He never went with me squirrel hunting but one time and that is a great memory. One afternoon as I got ready to go out he said he would come along and we went to the woods across from my house.
Most afternoons I was happy to kill three or four squirrels, and I don’t think I ever killed a limit of ten. But that day I did. Daddy never fired a shot. I realize now he actually helped me kill squirrels, by making those he spotted move toward me so I would see them. At the end of the day he bragged on my about what a good hunter I was, without letting on he helped.
This is a great time to make some memories like that. Take your kids hunting for squirrels and they will probably remember it all their lives.