Category Archives: Hunting

Small Game Hunting In Winter and a Club Tournament

 The stark bare gray limbs of hardwoods right now offer the best of times and the worst of times for squirrel hunting.  Tree rats are easy to spot a long way off, but they can see you the same distance, too.  It is easier to find them but harder to get close enough for a shot.

    The population is lower than at the start of season back in August. Human hunters and natural predators have taken some of the squirrels that survived last winter.  But both have killed many more of the dumb young ones born during the spring and summer.  They are much easier targets.

    Still hunting is tougher this time of year.  Squirrels aren’t coming to an oak or hickory that is full of nuts to feed.  They are scrounging around, looking for nuts they buried earlier when they were falling, and looking for anything else edible in the winter woods.  You can’t sit under a good tree waiting on them to come to you.

    After a rain you can find them eating mushrooms in pine thickets, but that food is scattered, like everything else.  And the green needles on pines make it hard to spot a squirrel when they scurry up a tree and hide from you.

    Creeping up on a feeding squirrel is possible, but deer hunters would be impressed with the abilities of a squirrel to spot you and flee.  Any movement in their world draws instant attention and they will either flatten against a limb or tree trunk, making them very hard to see, or head for a hollow tree where they are totally protected.

One of the best tactics for me was to take off running through the woods when I spotted a squirrel in a bare tree. That usually made them freeze in place, trying to hide rather than running to a hollow.  With no leaves on the tree I could usually find the hiding critter.

A little breeze helped in several ways.  It would move bushes and limbs enough to confuse squirrels’ senses, making it easier to creep up on them. But when searching for them up in a tree a little breeze would often fluff their tail a little and the hair moving or sticking out from the tree trunk would make them easier to find.

Another trick was to scan for their ears sticking up.  Not much natural up in a tree looks like squirrel ears.  It helped that I had a good scope on my .22 to scan limbs and trunks, looking for any telltale sign.  I always carried it rather than my .410 in the winter, expecting to get shots at squirrels sitting still rather than running through the limbs when the .410 helped.

I also learned to throw a stick to the far side of a tree where a squirrel hid.  The noise and movement of it hitting a bush would make the bushy tail move to my side of the tree.  I could see him from the movement, and could usually get a good shot.

Every squirrel killed when I was growing up was eaten. I was pretty good as skinning and gutting them and mama could cook up fried squirrel with gravy, squirrel and dumplings, BBQed squirrel and squirrel stew that was delicious.  The younger squirrels were best for frying, but even tough old boar squirrels were good and tender when cooked right.

This is a great time to take a kid out and teach them gun safety and hunting skills.  Deer season is over and the woods are quiet and bare, offering fun and good food!

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Last Sunday 12 members and one guest of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our January tournament at Jackson.  After eight hours of trying, we brought 31 bass longer than 12 inches to the scales.  Only four of them were largemouth. There was one five fish limit and no one zeroed.

Wayne Teal won with the only limit and it weighed 7.72 pounds.  Second was Zane Fleck with four weighing 5.72 pounds, Billy Roberts placed third with four weighing 4.98 and Niles Murray had four weighing 4.83 pounds for fourth.  Randall Sharpton’s 3.21 pound largemouth was big fish.

I should have gone squirrel hunting!  I guess I used up all my luck at Sinclair, it was one of those days when everything was just wrong for me.  I fished hard but ended up with one keeper largemouth weighing a whopping 1.27 pounds for tenth place.

Glenn Anderson fished with me and caught a keeper spot on a crankbait the first place we stopped.  After fishing two or three more spots, I got a bite on a shaky head worm. The fish swam toward the boat and when I set the hook I pulled a keeper largemouth to the top and watched it come off the hook.

The next place we stopped I got five bites, four on a shaky head worm and one on a jig, in five casts and missed all five!  Then Glenn threw a drop shot worm to the rocks where I got the bites and landed his second keeper.

Soon after Glenn landed his third keeper, I felt a fish pick up my shaky head in a brush pile but felt the thump of it spitting out the worm just as I set the hook.  I missed several more bites during the day, finally catching my keeper with an hour left to fish. I was in such a hurry to get it in the boat I hit Glenn in the face with it as he grabbed the net!

To add insult to injury, there was a Robby’s tournament out of Berry’s Boat House the same day. It took five bass weighing 17 or 18 pounds to win it!

When I hear results like that the same day I struggle to catch a keeper, I wonder why I even bother fishing.

Till next time – Gone fishing!

February Is A Good Time for Small Game Hunting, and A January Club Tournament

I hope everyone had a good deer season and got to shoot what they wanted, either a trophy for the wall or a freezer full of meat.  Or both!! But now that it is over, it is time to turn to small game.  Many of us older folks grew up hunting squirrels, rabbits and game birds, and there is about six weeks left to hunt them.

    Learning to hunt squirrels and rabbits is great training for hunting big game.  You learn to read signs, be patient, acquire shooting skills and identify food sources that will help when hunting deer, turkey or anything else.

    This time of year is both a challenge and a blessing.  With leaves off the trees, you can spot a tree rat a long way off as it scurries from limb to limb. But they can see you just as far away and hide before you get near. And if you jump a rabbit you can get a decent shot.

    There is no food in the trees, either.  So you won’t be able to sneak up on a trembling limb where a squirrel is busy cutting pine cones or acorns and not paying enough attention for predators like you.  When they are feeding in the trees you can often get in close for an easy shot. Not with bare trees!

    Squirrels feed on the ground this time of year. When they see movement, they will run up a tree to a hidey hole and you may never see them again.  But sometimes they just flatten against the tree on the opposite side, so you can throw a stick to that side and make them move around for a shot.

    When food sources like oak trees dropping acorns are available, you can set up near one and let the squirrels come to you.  Not gonna happen after Christmas.  Now you have to still hunt, easing through the woods alert to seeing or hearing a squirrel before is hears or sees you.

    That kind of hunting will help you still hunt for deer but multiply the squirrels ability to spot you before you spot them by about a thousand times for a deer.  But it is fun, keeps you warmer than sitting still, and can be very productive.

    My good friend AT had a pack of rabbit beagles, and we ran rabbits almost every Saturday after deer season when I was in high school. Deer season was limited to the month of November and one week at Christmas back then, so we stated letting the dogs out in early December.

    I loved listening to the dogs run and figuring out where the bunny would circle back ahead of them so I could be in position for a shot.  Rabbit hunting with dogs is easy compared to without them.

    I killed my first rabbit while squirrel hunting with my .410. As I eased along a field line looking for activity in the trees, I jumped a cottontail and hit it as it bounced away.  I think daddy and mama were as proud as I was that day!

    Once after a light snow AT didn’t want to let his dogs out, so we hunted without them.  We went to a farm where the owner had cut timber a year before, so there were brush piles all over the place between his fields. We would go up to a pile and one of us would get in position while the other climbed into the brush, shaking the pile to spook the rabbit.

That’s what my friend and fellow writer Daryl Gay calls “Rabbit Stomping,” the name of one of his humorous books.

Dove season was over by Christmas, but we still hunted quail some.  Most of our quail hunting was earlier in the year, though. Daddy often said he did not like to put too much pressure on the coveys we hunted, they had a tough time just surviving in the winter without being pushed, scattered and harassed by us.

I miss those hunting days but nowadays I prefer spending time in my bass boat in the winter!

——

Last Sunday eight members of the Flint River Bass

Club fished our January tournament at Jackson Lake. After casting from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM, we brought 23 keeper bass weighing about 26 pounds to the scales. There were three five-bass limits and one fisherman did not have a keeper.

Alex Gober won it all with five weighing 7.35 pounds and had a 1.80 pounder for big fish.  Niles Murray came in second with five at 5.52 pounds and
Doug Acree was third with five weighing 4.34. Lee Hancock came in fourth with two weighing 2.50 pounds, beating my two at 2.48 pounds by .02 pounds!

    It was a tough day. Niles said he caught his five in about an hour.  This time of year there is often a “bite window,” a short time when if you are in the right place at the right time you can catch fish.

New member Will McLean fished with me and we fished hard.  But at 2:46 with five minutes left to fish I had gotten only one bite, a four-inch crappie that hit a spoon.  I found fish in many places, some of them set up under baitfish and looked like perfect places to catch one. But it did not happen for either of us.

As time ran out Will and I were working around a rocky point. I told him I would make a couple of casts across the downstream side of the point then we had to go in, even without anything to weigh.

On three casts I landed two keepers and lost one at the boat on a DT 10 crankbait. On my Panoptix I could see baitfish all over the end of the point with fish moving around under them, like in a few other places, but thew were feeding better.

I wish I could have made a few more casts but we pulled up at the ramp two minutes before being late!

Deer Camp Memories

     As I threw another log on the fire, my mind wandered over the past 40 years of deer camp here.  When I first joined, the “old” men mostly stayed in camp and didn’t hunt much.  For several years “Captain” was the old man in charge of the fire.  Now it is my “old man” job and I don’t leave camp much.

    After spending almost half my life in the club, memories are plentiful. Hundreds of nights sitting around the fire, eating parched or boiled peanuts and sharing stores, some of them mostly true, revive past experiences. And the same ones are told over and over, drawing amazed reactions from young members and smiles from us older ones.

    And we celebrate and morn lost members. Many of the young members fathers I watched grow up and become men over the years.  They pass on their traditions to their children, just as their fathers passed them on to them. The never-ending cycle of outdoor and hunting life.

    Many of the stories are funny and draw laughs every year.  Tales of cut shirt tails, stories of first blood, memories of members walking to their stand in a circle in the dark and ending back up at camp, all bring chuckles.

    One of mine is finding the perfect place for my climbing stand, easing up the tree in the dark then staring another club member in the eyes in a tree only 30 feet away.  Or the time I helped build a permanent stand with a friend, only to have him not be able to hunt it opening day. He doesn’t laugh much when I mention the big nine point I killed from that stand on opening day, but everybody else does.

    Four wheelers stuck in the creek are both funny and scary.  Turning a four-wheeler upside down on top of you in a creek is not funny until after you are safe.  It is funny now to remember the work of the six of us laboring for hours to get it out, but at the time it was only exhausting.

    Some of the scariest stories are the one or two about stands breaking and tumbling members to the ground. Fortunately, none ended up with serious injuries, just injured pride.

    Many of my memories revolve around a stand I have hunted for more than 30 years.  It is a simple stand, 2x4s nailed between two sweetgum trees about 24 inches apart 20 feet off the ground with a 16-inch piece of plywood nailed on top of them.  Spikes driven into the trees 30 years ago are sticking out barely enough for a boot hold now.

    The stand has been sweetened over the years. A small shelf is placed in the perfect position to hold my coffee cup.  Sticks cross the area above my head, placed just right for a black plastic bag to stretch over and protect me from rain.  And a nail holds my hanging rifle in position to raise it without excess movement.

    I found the place for the stand by accident.  I found a creek hillside that seemed to be perfect for a stand, near the very end of one of our roads.  I loaded materials to build it in the truck then headed to the end of the road.

    Before toting everything through the woods, I remembered hunting too close to the other club member so I walked around a little. Sure enough, there was another stand, hidden in an oak tree, looking over the same hillside.

    I went back to the truck disappointed and started driving slowly back out, watching the ground on either side of the road carefully.  When I spotted a trail crossing it, I stopped and followed the trail though some pines to where they stopped at the edge of hardwoods.  There was a slight opening along the edge from an old logging road.

    Careful inspection proved there were no other stands for at least 200 yards in any direction.  I built the stand with help from a fellow club member.  The first morning I hunted it I was shocked how close it was to Highway 18.  The bends in the road fooled me.  I could glimpse 18 wheelers traveling along the road, and their tire noise often make it hard to hear.

    Even with the noise problem I have killed more than 40 deer from that stand.

    Some of those kills I was very proud of, some not so much.  One day I glimpsed a deer facing me about 50 yards away at the very end of the old logging road.  Young pines hid part of it but I could clearly see its head and chest since it was facing me. I shot it with my 30-30 in the chest and it dropped.

    When I got to it, I was shocked how small it was.  Although it was doe day and I was hunting meat, I wanted a bigger deer since the limit was two a year back then. I was able to pick up the 40-pound yearling by its back legs and carry it over my shoulder, not drag it out.

    I quickly gutted and skinned it and took it home, since I did not want to take it back to camp and get kidded about its size. I quartered that deer, cut its backbone in half and froze it.  Each piece fit in a big crockpot!  But it was some of the most tender venison I have ever eaten!

    I was very proud of a big ten point I shot from that stand, but I really didn’t put any effort into finding it, it just happened to wander by me.  It fell near the camp road and I drove to it. As I drug it to the truck and started loading it, another member stopped on his way out of the woods and helped load it.

    He gave me a sour look and said “I have been hunting that deer all week!”

    Don’t miss a chance to make memories in a deer camp.

Till next time – Gone fishing!

Opening Day Of Squirrel Season Memories

    I missed the opening day of squirrel season bck in August.  That would never have happened when I was growing up. Opening day was almost as good to me as Christmas and the last day of school each year!

    Back then opening day was much later, usually in early October, if I remember right.  I could not wait for it to open, always on a Saturday back then. I would be up before daylight and sitting under my favorite white oak tree as it slowly got light enough to see.

    I usually carried the Remington .22 semiautomatic rifle I got for by 12th birthday and had its “high capacity” 17 round magazine full of long rifle bullets.  I prided myself on marksmanship, being able to hit a squirrel in the chest just right to not mess up any meat.

Some of my friends shot squirrels in the head, but even though I was a good shot, I knew a miss just 2 inches the wrong way would blow its jaw off, sentencing it to a slow painful death. And I would not get to eat it if I made a bad shot, so I stuck with the high percentage chest.

Later in the season when leaves were off the trees I carried my .410 shotgun. With no leaves, I could see the tree rats better and often run to them to “tree” them, but the squirrels could see me better, too. And they often would not stay treed but would run, so I wanted my shotgun to have a better chance of hitting a moving target.

We ate every tree rat I killed. Mama would cook them in a variety of ways, from country frying young ones to making squirrel stew or squirrel dumplings with older ones.  And BBQ squirrel was always good.

With the way things are going, I am glad there are lots of squirrels around my house and I know how to kill, clean and cook them!

Kids now-a-days miss out by not going squirrel hunting.  Deer hunting is exciting, but so is squirrel hunting and you can kill 12 each day, so you get a lot more shooting.  And you learn hunting and shooting skills, as well as safety, chasing them.

Take a kid squirrel hunting. You may be surprised how much fun it is for both of you.

Hunting vs Shooting

From 2018   

It is now legal to shoot deer over bait in our area.  This change from last season came because of pressure from people wanting to kill deer easier.  In meetings around the state, a fairly high majority of those attending wanted the change.  The legislature sets hunting laws but could not come to a decision, so the governor passed the decision on to the DNR.

    To make shooting deer over bait legal, the DNR changed the rules, not the law. They simply shrank the Northern Zone, where baiting is still illegal, to include only some federal lands in the area, where baiting was always illegal.  Almost all of Georgia is now considered the “Southern” Zone, where baiting has been legal for several years.

    I very intentionally said it is legal to shoot deer, not hunt them, over bait. Drawing animals and birds to you to shoot them is not hunting.  That is why we go quail hunting but to a dove shoot.  You look for quail in their habitat. You draw doves to a field to shoot them.

    There are good and bad things about shooting over bait. For young hunters, especially those seeking their first deer, they are much more likely to be successful over bait. That is also true of some of us older folks as well as those with other handicaps that keep us from really hunting.  But it does not teach hunting skills and the pride in working to take your quarry.

    Deer tend to browse while feeding, moving a lot as they seek natural food sources.  Even with food plots they will walk through them, pausing to eat but not staying in the same place for very long.  But a pile of corn makes them come to the exact same place every day and spent more time in a very small area.

    This concentration tends to make diseases spread among the deer.  And it also makes it easier to predators other than us to pattern and kill them.  There are many pictures from trail cameras set up around feeders showing coyotes and bobcats hanging around feeders, waiting on an easy meal to come to them.

    To me there is no difference between putting out a corn feeder to attract deer to you and planting a food plot to do the same, except for the amount of work involved.  Food plots have always been legal, and they do have the benefit of providing food for deer year-round, not just during hunting season.

    I try to stay legal although I do not consider myself a deer hunter. I simply want to harvest two or three deer, preferably does, each year for the freezer. I’m a meat harvester. When younger I did thrill in looking for bucks in their natural habitat, figuring out their movements and patterns, and placing a stand in exactly the right place to get a shot at a buck.

    I am proud of the first buck I killed 50 years ago this fall, a small eight pointer. I went out on public land, found signs and figured out where to put my stand, all on my own.  It was tougher back then with fewer deer and fewer open days to hunt. I have killed much bigger bucks since then around my food plots but there is no pride in taking them.

      I found out a few years ago how effective baiting is.  I have 75 acres I hunt on in Spalding County. I plant a small field with wheat, clover and winter peas each year hoping to make it easier for me to get my meat. I have also planted crab apple trees and fertilized persimmon trees.  For years I was successful.

    About four years ago I stopped seeing deer in my food plots.  They had changed their movement patterns. I was told a neighbor with less than ten acres of land had put a corn feeder and I found it. His stand was on his side of a gulley between his land and mine, but his feeder was actually on my property.

    Deer had changed their routes, going by the corn in preference to coming by my field.  I found lots of signs around the corn and trails that led to it from bedding areas, then to other areas that bypassed my field.  That was frustrating.

    Since baiting is now legal, I will put out a couple of corn feeders. I will continue to plant food plots if for no other reason than to have food available year-round for them and keep them healthier. And I will move my feeders every few months, so the deer will not stay in one small area all the time and help spread disease.  And moving them will confuse other predators, at least a little.

    Baiting is not a bad thing for some animals. Wild hogs are not game animals, they are a serious problem for farmers and the environment.  So, putting out bait and shooting or trapping as many of them as you can is a good thing.

    Baiting bears in some states has been legal a long time, but not in north Georgia.  Bait gets bears to come to where the waiting person can shoot them. In some areas it is almost impossible to actually hunt bears due to their inconsistent movement and impenetrable habitat. Still, it is bear shooting, not hunting.

    Are you a hunter or a harvester?  You can be both, but not on the same property unless it is huge.  Putting out food for deer and shooting deer over it but hunting for a quality buck is possible, but if your bait changes the bucks habits you are not really going after him on his own natural habitat. Since bait will attract deer for an area covering at least a square mile, you really need two different places to separate the two.

    What will you be this year?

Till next time – Gone fishing!

Hunting Memories – Good and Bad

I have lots of great hunting memories, some fun, some scary and many just happy.

Sometimes I shot odd things while hunting. One year Harold and I were easing along Dearing Branch headed to some oaks to set up for squirrels. Something ahead of us on a low limb caught our attention.  It was big and brown and since both of us had .410s, so we planned to shoot it together.

Somehow I misunderstood Harold when he said shoot, and I did, alone. But the great horned owl fell. I have no idea why it was active during the day; it should have been roosted high in a big tree and hidden from us. It was huge, much bigger than I ever imagined. It is the only owl I ever shot and somewhat regret killing it, but that was 60 years ago!

The first year Linda and I were married she taught school while I finished my senior year at UGA.  Money was tight and we ate anything I could kill, just like my family did growing up.  Squirrels and rabbits were the main meat de jour.

One afternoon I saw a ball of fur up in a bare oak tree. If the leaves had been on the trees I would never have seen it. But with my scope I could tell it was a big raccoon.

I shot it, the first one I ever killed, and took it back to our trailer in town and cleaned it.  I contacted the cook at my fraternity house and he told me to boil it for three hours then cover it with BBQ sauce and bake it. 

I thought it was good but Linda not so much.  Tasted like BBQ chicken thighs to me!

Years later I shot a beaver on my pond and just had to cook it.  A Google search turned up a recipe for Mississippi Baked Beaver, a legitimate recipe.  It involved boiling, sautéing and then braising it.  It was the reddest meat I have ever seen, and the beaver was almost impossible to skin. I had to cut every inch of hide between meat and skin, there was no stripping it off.

Again, I thought it tasted pretty good but Linda did not like it. It was not delicious enough for me to clean another one, though.

A few years ago on-line I told the tale of shooting a killdeer (we always called them killdees) because ai wanted to see exactly what it looked like.  They were common in our field but very spooky and I could never get near them.  A few times shooting doves one would fly near my blind, but I definitely did not want to explain to the others on the field that I knew it was a kildeer not a dove if I took a shot.

I did sneak up on one and hit it with my .22, finally getting a good look at its brown and white feathers with golden highlights. It was very pretty and I never wanted to shoot another one.

When I told this on-line, a troll in the group threatened to sent the federal wildlife folks to arrest me since killdeers are federally protected birds. I jerked the jerk around a little on-line – everyone in the group made fun of him he was so out of it – and he got madder and madder, making all kinds of threats.

When I pointed out I had said up-front I had shot the bird when I was 12 years old and that was in 1962, long before the law protecting them went into effect in 1976, he shut up and disappeared from the group for as few days.

I did not cook the killdeer but I did cook many other birds I shot as a kid.  They all tasted just like the doves we shot.  Robins, bluejays, sparrows and blackbirds all tasted about the same roasted over an open fire in the woods or in my rock fort.  And all were very tough, from my method of cooking or their age.

The only two birds I would not shoot were cardinals and bluebirds. They were off-limits, just too pretty to shoot.  But stalking all others and getting close enough to kill them with my BB gun or .22 helped me learn a lot about hunting and shooting that was useful later in life.

Hunting Quail and Rabbits Growing Up Wild In Georgia

Way back when I was a kid there were almost no deer in Georgia.  Our hunting was for small game like squirrels and rabbits and doves and quail.  My dad didn’t like fishing but he loved shooting doves and following out pointers looking for quail.

    There were a good many old farms near our house and the few planted fields and old abandoned ones had thick hedgerows and fence lines grown up with plumb bushes and briars. They were ideal for quail and our two dogs were good at finding coveys of quail living there.

    One Christmas my best present was a set of Duckback hunting clothes.  The thick jacket and pants allowed me to wade through briar patches without getting scratched.  And hunting quail consisted of a lot of wading through briars!

    My proudest day quail hunting was by myself. 
I was in high school and one afternoon after school
I wanted to go quail hunting but daddy could not go.
He let me go get the dogs and take them out by myself for the first time.

    Even better he let me take his 12-gauge bird gun, a short barrel semiautomatic hump-back Remington loaded with #9 shot. That gun no longer hunts quail, it sits by my bed loaded with #1 buckshot.  It is an ideal home protection device.

    The afternoon I went out alone I managed to find five coveys of quail, a very good day, especially since I only hunted about three hours.  I killed one bird from each covey on the flush. Although I tried to find singles from the scattered covey I just did not have the skill, even with the dogs.

    Daddy seemed real surprised but proud when I got home with the birds. We had them for dinner then next night.

    Quail season opened yesterday, as did rabbit season. But the old farms are gone and modern farms do not have hedgerows and good quail cover.  And coyotes, foxes and fire ants have taken their toll on Georgia’s state game bird. Hunting them is extremely difficult now, even if you have a lot of land and try to manage it for quail.

    Nowadays about the only quail hunting here is on plantations where you pay to go out with a guide and dogs to find planted birds.  I won a hunt on one of them a few years ago and was extremely disappointed. 
I took daddy’s old gun, again loaded with #9 shot, and killed my 12-bird limit quickly.  I did not miss a single shot, amazing since I had not shot at them in more than 30 years.

    The pen raised birds were put out in pairs and the guide knew where they were. It was fun watching the dogs work, but the quail were slow when they flushed, so slow one of the dogs managed to grab one as it took off, snatching it from the air. That would not happen with wild birds.  I was so disappointed I have no desire to do that again.

Learning Hunting Skills While Hunting Small Game Like Rabbits and Squirrels

I hope everyone had a good deer season and got to shoot what they wanted, either a trophy for the wall or a freezer full of meat.  Or both!! But now that it is over, it is time to turn to small game.  Many of us older folks grew up hunting squirrels, rabbits and game birds, and there is about six weeks left to hunt them.

    Learning to hunt squirrels and rabbits is great training for hunting big game.  You learn to read signs, be patient, acquire shooting skills and identify food sources that will help when hunting deer, turkey or anything else.

    This time of year is both a challenge and a blessing.  With leaves off the trees, you can spot a tree rat a long way off as it scurries from limb to limb. But they can see you just as far away and hide before you get near. And if you jump a rabbit you can get a decent shot.

    There is no food in the trees, either.  So you won’t be able to sneak up on a trembling limb where a squirrel is busy cutting pine cones or acorns and not paying enough attention for predators like you.  When they are feeding in the trees you can often get in close for an easy shot. Not with bare trees!

    Squirrels feed on the ground this time of year. When they see movement, they will run up a tree to a hidey hole and you may never see them again.  But sometimes they just flatten against the tree on the opposite side, so you can throw a stick to that side and make them move around for a shot.

    When food sources like oak trees dropping acorns are available, you can set up near one and let the squirrels come to you.  Not gonna happen after Christmas.  Now you have to still hunt, easing through the woods alert to seeing or hearing a squirrel before is hears or sees you.

    That kind of hunting will help you still hunt for deer but multiply the squirrels ability to spot you before you spot them by about a thousand times for a deer.  But it is fun, keeps you warmer than sitting still, and can be very productive.

    My good friend AT had a pack of rabbit beagles, and we ran rabbits almost every Saturday after deer season when I was in high school. Deer season was limited to the month of November and one week at Christmas back then, so we stated letting the dogs out in early December.

    I loved listening to the dogs run and figuring out where the bunny would circle back ahead of them so I could be in position for a shot.  Rabbit hunting with dogs is easy compared to without them.

    I killed my first rabbit while squirrel hunting with my .410. As I eased along a field line looking for activity in the trees, I jumped a cottontail and hit it as it bounced away.  I think daddy and mama were as proud as I was that day!

    Once after a light snow AT didn’t want to let his dogs out, so we hunted without them.  We went to a farm where the owner had cut timber a year before, so there were brush piles all over the place between his fields. We would go up to a pile and one of us would get in position while the other climbed into the brush, shaking the pile to spook the rabbit.

That’s what my friend and fellow writer Daryl Gay calls “Rabbit Stomping,” the name of one of his humorous books.

Dove season was over by Christmas, but we still hunted quail some.  Most of our quail hunting was earlier in the year, though. Daddy often said he did not like to put too much pressure on the coveys we hunted, they had a tough time just surviving in the winter without being pushed, scattered and harassed by us.

I miss those hunting days but nowadays I prefer spending time in my bass boat in the winter!

If You Hunt Ducks Or Are A Conservationalits Or Even An Environmentalists Join Ducks Unlimited

Are you a duck hunter?  Do you like standing in freezing water before daylight hoping to get two or three shots just as it gets legal shooting light? Are you addicted to the thrill of duck hunting?

    Or are you environmentalists, not really interested in hunting but really concerned about conserving our natural environment? Do you want our wetlands kept wild and conserved for the future? Are you rational enough to know our environment can be used while keeping it, which is conservation, rather than totally left alone with no human use like fanatical preservationist demand?

    If you can answer yes to any of those questions you should be a member of Ducks, Unlimited. 

    Ducks, Unlimited (DU) was started in 1937 and currently has about 600,000 adult members in the US, with over 125,000 more in Canada and Mexico.  And there are about 47,000 youth members in the US. There are a lot of people interested in conservation and hunting in North America!

The DU mission tells you what the organization does. It says: “Ducks Unlimited conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. These habitats also benefit other wildlife and people.” 

As of the beginning of this year Du had conserved almost 14 million acres in North America, with projects that affected another 127 million acres.  Conserved acres mean land dedicated to wildlife while affected acres may be an area with a project that does not dedicate the total area to duck habitat but improves it.

The most important factor of any organization is the percent of funds raised that actually go to their cause.  With DU it is an admirable 87 percent.  Only 13 percent of all money they get is used for administration, human resources, fund raising and development.  That is better than many other conservation organizations.

DU does not think duck hunting is only for private land owners. Here in Georgia their efforts have helped improve duck hunting in 16 WMAs and other areas open to public hunting.  These areas are spread out over the state so most Georgia hunters have easy access to one.

Some of the ones closest to us here in Griffin include Rum Creek, where a perimeter dyke and water control structures that improve 25 acres there.  Also, at West Point WMA, Glovers Creek, 90 acres of land were improved through replacement of an old water control structure that gave better use of water on the project.

And on Blanton Creek WMA on Bartletts Ferry Lake, two water controls structures were installed to conserve 50 acres.  Water controls structures like these two and others are sometimes as simple as a valve or gate on a dam that allows an area to be drained so grain can be planted then flooded to enhance it for ducks when the grain is mature.

    On some areas these devices use natural flow of water but on Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge there are big diesel pumps that drain huge fields each spring so they can be planted, then they are flooded in the fall when the grain is mature.

    All wildlife, from deer and raccoons to quail and rabbits, benefit from the habitat improvements of DU.  And nongame wildlife benefits, too.  All kinds of bird species use the same habitat as ducks.  Like bluebirds and cardinals?  They definitely benefit from the things DU does.

    The ways DU conserves includes: Restoring grasslands since many kinds of ducks nest in grasslands near wetlands and restoring them improves survival of young ducks, replanting forests because flooded bottomland forest give ideal wintering habitat for ducks, and restoring watersheds since the land around wetlands have a big effect in everything from nutrients to contaminants on the wetland.

    Other areas of conservation include: working with landowners since nearly three fourths of wetlands are in private ownership and most of those private owners are willing to manage them for wildlife, working with partners from other conservation organizations to government agencies, and outright acquiring land to dedicate to conservation, usually by getting it in government agencies control.

    Conservation easements protect land from future development, management agreements give financial incentives to private land owners to improve conservation and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enables DU to find where habitat work will be most effective. GIS includes combining satellite images with other information like wetland inventories, land use, soil type, wildlife use and other information to give a complete picture.

    If you are a duck hunter DU can help you with everything from information on waterfowl migration patterns to identifying different species of ducks.  The can help you learn the best decoy setups and how to train your retriever.  You can even get shooting tips so you hit more of your targets and calling tips so you get more targets to try to hit.

    Check out their web site for more information at http://www.ducks.org/ and consider joining DU to help conservation of all kinds. A Ducks, Unlimitd membership would be a great Christmas gift for a youth or an adult.  Its not just for the birds!

Hunting Small Game After Deer Season

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.