Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast. We're in Paduka, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: How far out of Paduka? How about six miles. We're
Speaker 1: at the homestead of the gentleman who just clarified our
Speaker 1: distance from Paduka, Kevin Murphy, Um lives here, not far
Speaker 1: from what rivers down there, the Clarks River. There's so
Speaker 1: many rivers rounding you can't keep all straight lives down
Speaker 1: from the Clarks River. It's got horses, sixteen hunting dogs,
Speaker 1: a garage that in my that that I gave an
Speaker 1: organization grade of I believe a D plus. You're very generous,
Speaker 1: Steve D plus. He would have gotten f but it
Speaker 1: was at least still standing in there. Um. The dogs
Speaker 1: Kevin owns are small game dogs, and we just spent
Speaker 1: three or four We spent four days in and around
Speaker 1: western Kentucky hunting for a variety of small game with dogs.
Speaker 1: We hunted squirrels, we hunted eastern cotton tails, and today,
Speaker 1: for the first time ever in my life, we hunted
Speaker 1: swamp rabbits, which is the largest of the cotton tail family,
Speaker 1: and they are giants, five pounders. All the rabbits days,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt they would average over five pounds, and
Speaker 1: you've weighed a lot of them. Last year, we weighed
Speaker 1: twelve rabbits at the same location and they all averaged
Speaker 1: above five pounds. The smallest one was four and a half.
Speaker 1: The larger one topped just a little bit above six
Speaker 1: pounds with a digital turkeys scale. So it wasn't a
Speaker 1: bathroom scale. It wouldn't, you know, tabletop. It was a
Speaker 1: digital turkey scale. You know. My old man always would
Speaker 1: say that, Uh the heat wade. Yi are we boring you? No,
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm very interested in this book that
Speaker 1: I thought it might come into play later in the podcast.
Speaker 1: That's all. I'm just doing a little okay good. I
Speaker 1: was just curious why you're reading the book during the thing, Kevin, Uh, what,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about squirrels first, because that's what
Speaker 1: we came down here for years ago. I was at
Speaker 1: I was in St. Louis. We're trying to think of
Speaker 1: it tonight when we're eating dinner. Probably three years ago,
Speaker 1: it would be three and a half and be four
Speaker 1: years it's coming April. I'm pretty sure I was in St.
Speaker 1: Louis at the I was doing a booth appearance um
Speaker 1: at the n r A convention, and I think I
Speaker 1: was there. I think I was there for the network,
Speaker 1: I think Sportsman Channel. And I got to talk, and
Speaker 1: you know, when you're doing that, like I meet all
Speaker 1: kinds of cool people, and we talked a lot about stuff.
Speaker 1: But but Kevin, we met and got talking about squirrels,
Speaker 1: and I just sensed a tremendous amount of ashen for
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting. And not only that, but I could tell
Speaker 1: that you have that you have a very uh, almost
Speaker 1: scientific approach to squirrels. I'm used to seeing that level
Speaker 1: of detail in appreciation for the history and the management
Speaker 1: and what's going on seasonally. I'm used seeing it with
Speaker 1: turkey guys. I'm used to seeing it with dear guys,
Speaker 1: elk guys. You get like sheep fanatics, but you seldom
Speaker 1: meet someone who is a lifetime student of small game.
Speaker 1: There's a few of us around, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: brotherhood of us, but to very few here. There's a
Speaker 1: ton of them. There's a lot of local boys that
Speaker 1: you know, we liked our dogs and guns and horses
Speaker 1: and being outside and whether it squirrel, you know, any
Speaker 1: kind of small game, but the squirrel. We've kind of
Speaker 1: some squirrel fanatics here. But what was interesting when we
Speaker 1: were talking about all this, So you were born and
Speaker 1: raised here, yes, just right in the vicinity, yes, And
Speaker 1: what was interesting, as you said, it's cold times to
Speaker 1: me over the last day, as we've been hanging out
Speaker 1: hunting together, there was no option but the hunt. Like
Speaker 1: when you were a kid, there's no option but the hunt.
Speaker 1: Small game. That that was it, that was what we
Speaker 1: you know, you joined us. You couldn't wait till you
Speaker 1: got your first baby gun. Started with a baby gun
Speaker 1: and you were after you know, the barn rats and spurs,
Speaker 1: you know everything. Nothing was pretty much off limit when
Speaker 1: you're a kid there and you go you go from
Speaker 1: bb gun to twenty two and the rights of passage
Speaker 1: was to go out and take a twenty two or
Speaker 1: a shotgun on your first squirrel hunt and get your
Speaker 1: first squirrel. You know, that was the the first level
Speaker 1: of hunting there where you take something with the farm
Speaker 1: is pretty much a squirrel. Uh. Traditionally in Kentucky, Uh,
Speaker 1: squirrel season comes in the third Saturday in August and
Speaker 1: everybody hit the squirrel woods and then they it was
Speaker 1: mainly mostly deal hunters and uh yeah, still hunt hunting
Speaker 1: there not hound hunting. And uh I can remember I
Speaker 1: was probably years old. My dad was a big bird hunter.
Speaker 1: Um even back then, the birds we was getting just
Speaker 1: a little bit thinner. And he decided that he had
Speaker 1: a cousin that heat squirreld hunted all the time with
Speaker 1: when he was a kid growing up, and he took
Speaker 1: a German eight millimeter miles or I think you give
Speaker 1: about like for it back then and traded it to
Speaker 1: his cousin for a crossed uphound squirrel dog, and so
Speaker 1: that pretty much started. It was a hound type. It
Speaker 1: would bark on track and go around some kind of
Speaker 1: crossed uphound. You know. It didn't have any distinguishing marks
Speaker 1: about it, just an old red brown looking hound, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember from fifty years ago. There's not
Speaker 1: any pictures of it. Her name was Lady, and we
Speaker 1: would go out hunting. My dad would be the rifleman,
Speaker 1: and for some reason he had me to be the
Speaker 1: shotgun with a little H and R twenty gauge at
Speaker 1: full choke that shot like a rifle. And so and
Speaker 1: that's where I started my career. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I have never never looked back and and met people
Speaker 1: all over the southeast, lifelong friends that you know, twenty
Speaker 1: five thirty years I've been been hunting with. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and at the time, there was no deer, no turkey,
Speaker 1: not like really huntable numbers. You're you're you're correct, you know,
Speaker 1: small game was king, you know, people rabbit hunting. We
Speaker 1: did have quail in huntable numbers and uh and in squirrels,
Speaker 1: and that's what that's what we all pretty much much
Speaker 1: hunted around here. What's interesting about that is, you know,
Speaker 1: we've met so many people this week through Kevin that
Speaker 1: and especially Danny whose property we hunted on today. You
Speaker 1: know that he was probably the third person this week
Speaker 1: that I talked to personally that said, I can remember
Speaker 1: when I saw my first year really you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And Kevin said he remembered seeing his first
Speaker 1: turkey track. Yeah, I can take you the spot in
Speaker 1: the road right now where I saw my first turkey track.
Speaker 1: And that's like a generational thing that you know, people
Speaker 1: that we are peers, like we all just grew up
Speaker 1: with that stuff. Really dear turkeys, big game hunting opportunities.
Speaker 1: But you think about it, like being born in Michigan.
Speaker 1: They were like I grew up. Guys, you can hunt deer.
Speaker 1: There was turkey round us, but not a meet. Now
Speaker 1: it's a great turkey hunting. Like after I moved away
Speaker 1: and left home, my dad started killing turkeys in a
Speaker 1: mile or two of our house every year. You can
Speaker 1: hunt bear to the north of us. You can put
Speaker 1: it in for an elk tag to the north of us,
Speaker 1: all in that state. Now, had you rolled the clock
Speaker 1: back fifty sixty seven years, it was a very different picture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then my old man they used to hunt small
Speaker 1: game all the time. They were real serious about hunting
Speaker 1: contail rabbits. But it's just different. But you know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that thing, like you having a twenty two year
Speaker 1: old man having a shotgun. I want to talk about that,
Speaker 1: Like you're taking old prisoners approach to squirrel hunting. Right
Speaker 1: when you go out with with a dog, you know,
Speaker 1: some somebody in the party needs to take a shotgun.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, we try to kill the majority of
Speaker 1: them with the rifles. But if we have one that's
Speaker 1: timber in there, you know we're gonna shoot. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna go up there. I'm you know, very rarely. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll let anybody shoot a sating squirrel with a shotgun.
Speaker 1: I mean you're going, that's not when when you've got
Speaker 1: a twenty two rifle. I mean, if if that's the
Speaker 1: only means that you have to take it, then then
Speaker 1: that's good to do it that a way. But there's
Speaker 1: no sense to it. You know, we get into two
Speaker 1: utilizing that game. Mate. We don't want, you know, a
Speaker 1: squirrel shot up with a shotgun. There there as I've
Speaker 1: showed you guys the the tails cleaning method of cleaning
Speaker 1: the squirrel. If you've got a nice head shot squirrel,
Speaker 1: it comes right out and the meat is just pressed
Speaker 1: BEAUTI and uh yeah, and and and I'll put out
Speaker 1: Kevin's like super serious about small game cookery. And you've
Speaker 1: eaten I mean thousands of squirrels. Yes, yes, when I
Speaker 1: got when I got into squirrel hunt and squirrel Home
Speaker 1: is a big deal for us. It was in Michigan
Speaker 1: September open day of squirrel season, so later, and you
Speaker 1: guys got started, and we got onto me and our brothers,
Speaker 1: we got onto shotguns because if we wanted to go
Speaker 1: out and get a bunch of stuff. And when you're hunting,
Speaker 1: like I always divide squirrel hunting into leaves on leaves,
Speaker 1: off leaves on squirrel hunting when the deciduous trees are
Speaker 1: still carrying the leaves. It's it's a listening game as
Speaker 1: much as anything where you're out and you're just hear
Speaker 1: them up in the tree tops and we get under them,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times like you can't see them
Speaker 1: and they can't see you quite as good. You get
Speaker 1: under them and you get them moving through the tree
Speaker 1: tops and we'd blast them with shotguns and they get
Speaker 1: full of pellets, sometimes pretty bad depending um. You know.
Speaker 1: In our dad, Oh, he would never would shoot squirrels
Speaker 1: with it shotgun, you know. I remember he would do
Speaker 1: use twenty two and he insisted like two to the
Speaker 1: head because of the meat damage thing. And he hated
Speaker 1: picking shot. He didn't like the way the shot carried
Speaker 1: for into the meat. All that junk. A good trick
Speaker 1: for that, just if you're listening. If you do shoot something, birds, whatever,
Speaker 1: small game, and you get where the pellet carries fur
Speaker 1: into the meat or feathers into the meat, take it.
Speaker 1: Do you ever do that? Take a toothpick, man, You
Speaker 1: take a toothpick and poke it into the hole and
Speaker 1: twist it all the fur, all the feathers clicked around
Speaker 1: that toothpick and you pull it out. It's just clean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remember that it'll look dark like because the meat on
Speaker 1: you know, the light meat on rabbits and squirrels. It'll
Speaker 1: look dark. And you don't realize because that pellet drug
Speaker 1: a little bit of think furn there and even if
Speaker 1: it passes through, like if the pellet passes through, it'll
Speaker 1: leave all that fur and feather in there. But you
Speaker 1: take a toothpick, sire, and toilet pulls right out. That's slick.
Speaker 1: It's slick. But anyhow, I now I think you said
Speaker 1: the same thing. I would rather have one squirrel shot
Speaker 1: to the head of the twenty two then three squirrels
Speaker 1: that got shot, yes, because it's so clean and nice
Speaker 1: that way. You know, I agree with you. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to struggle when you're you know, using
Speaker 1: the tail tail cleaning method. You can clean that that
Speaker 1: one squirrel just in a flash, be done with it.
Speaker 1: If it's shotgunning there, you you know, pulling too. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you've got the gut squirting out of the thing and
Speaker 1: it's just it's just, you know, it just doesn't look
Speaker 1: that good when you get done with it. Thing there
Speaker 1: you go beat beautiful when it's all the wise? So, uh,
Speaker 1: how how does like put it to me? From from
Speaker 1: however you'd like to discuss it? How does squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: with dogs differ? I can see that it's way more
Speaker 1: effective than still hunting for squirrels. But just explain the
Speaker 1: process of squirrel hunting dogs, what kind of dogs, what
Speaker 1: the dogs responsibilities are kind of how you trained up
Speaker 1: your dog dogs, and what you expect from your dogs
Speaker 1: when you're hunting squirrels. Okay, um, you know any kind
Speaker 1: of dog can make a squirrel dog. In in people say, well,
Speaker 1: I've got a squirrel dog. But a squirrel dog to
Speaker 1: me is a dog that can use his nose, his ears,
Speaker 1: his eyes to tree a squirrel. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: dogs out there that can only just use their eyes.
Speaker 1: They have to see it before they bark at it
Speaker 1: and tree it, or they have to hear it and
Speaker 1: then see it before there or then some of them
Speaker 1: may be a hand of the hand variety can only
Speaker 1: use their smell to go in there. But if you've
Speaker 1: got a top notch what I classify as a squirrel dog,
Speaker 1: you know there's dogs that can tree pre squirrels, and
Speaker 1: you can kill a squirrel with it. And then there's
Speaker 1: squirrel dogs. And a squirrel dog has these three. It
Speaker 1: has sent in ability, hearing ability, and visual location. There
Speaker 1: those three real quick. I'll probably interrupt you a whole bunch,
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna apologies every time. But when he's
Speaker 1: saying hearing squirrels bark, yes, so there's that noise, I'll
Speaker 1: make like me, look at you know. But then what
Speaker 1: he's man talking about hearing is nails on bark, nails
Speaker 1: on bark scuffling through the uh, the leaves. That's a
Speaker 1: sure sign giveaway that some of them can hear that
Speaker 1: from a long ways, so not so they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: waiting to hear him do a squirrel noise. But he'll
Speaker 1: just decipher the sound of one running and the sound
Speaker 1: of one going through the woods, and he'll bay that
Speaker 1: noise or you know, and it may be something else
Speaker 1: running through the through the leaves or something, but he
Speaker 1: goes down in a good squirreld. I goes in there
Speaker 1: and said, well, this was a maybe a deer running
Speaker 1: through the through the woods or something, or or some
Speaker 1: other off game whatever there and he'll he'll come back,
Speaker 1: come back. You know, my terminology of running the deers
Speaker 1: when they hit a deer and they run off and
Speaker 1: they don't come back for an i or two. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, we will bounce a deer there. Maybe we
Speaker 1: got some young dogs whatever, but predominantly we have no
Speaker 1: I have no trouble with with with our dogs running
Speaker 1: a deer whatsoever, you know, just to jump away from
Speaker 1: squirrels from I'll tell you something I saw today, and
Speaker 1: we were running swamp rabbits, not with your squirrel dogs,
Speaker 1: but with your rabbit eagles. I saw those dogs trail
Speaker 1: into a thicket on a rabbit's trail, trail into a thicket.
Speaker 1: A bunch of deer went bounding out the other direction,
Speaker 1: and I thought for sure all those dogs would go
Speaker 1: off in that directed to but they didn't. They didn't care.
Speaker 1: They stayed right on and came out there side of
Speaker 1: the thicket, still on the rabbit's trail. We couldn't have
Speaker 1: cared less. Yeah, we you know, they elect the e collar.
Speaker 1: You know some people may referred as a shot collar.
Speaker 1: You know that is I'm one of the main tools
Speaker 1: of training dogs, and most of them now have electronic buzzer,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is shock your dog
Speaker 1: one or two times. When you shock it, they hear
Speaker 1: the buzzer also. Then after that pretty much they hear
Speaker 1: you can They've got a own button down there that
Speaker 1: you can use. And once you tone those dogs a
Speaker 1: couple of times, you know, they realize that they're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be running running the deers. You know, you
Speaker 1: may shock them once or twice and then have to
Speaker 1: tone them. And after that we pretty much don't have to. Now,
Speaker 1: if we bring a young dog into the pack, something
Speaker 1: that's around a year old, less than two years old,
Speaker 1: year and a half somewhere like that, sometimes we have
Speaker 1: just a little bit of difficulty with them. But with
Speaker 1: the e collars, we take care of that real quick.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, you can lose your whole pack
Speaker 1: of dogs real quick. Oh it's in the dog's own
Speaker 1: best interest, man, I don't think like I never stand
Speaker 1: being apologetic about something like that. But go way for
Speaker 1: a dog to get killed is to go chasing deer. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because the ear's gonna keep going in a straight line.
Speaker 1: He's gonna go out and roads and a lot of
Speaker 1: guys they see a deer. They see a dog running deer,
Speaker 1: the first impulse is to shoot the dog because they
Speaker 1: think it's a fer old dog. But it's just like
Speaker 1: a dog. Dogs that run deer have less chance of
Speaker 1: getting old. That's correct, a lot less of a chance
Speaker 1: of getting old than dog wearing a shot color, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So continuing about all that, So,
Speaker 1: like I said, you've got two types of dogs, a
Speaker 1: dog that ken tree, a squirrel and a squirrel dog. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the best thing to do when you get
Speaker 1: a young dog it could be, you know, try if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go out shopping for a squirrel dog. You know,
Speaker 1: look at the guy that's got it, Look at his parents, grandparents,
Speaker 1: if they're around whatever. You know. Take that. So I
Speaker 1: want to go out with these dogs, You try to
Speaker 1: get some type of dog that's got a you know,
Speaker 1: a good history of being bred to be a squirrel dog.
Speaker 1: You know. To me, there's two categories of squirrel dogs.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could say three there if you really want
Speaker 1: to get into the hand right there. But you've got
Speaker 1: the fast dog, which is Bobby Jane. Oh, he's a
Speaker 1: small dog. Fist F I E S T. And uh
Speaker 1: you know that to me, that's a dog that's usually
Speaker 1: under thirty pounds. There's an organization called the American Tree
Speaker 1: and Fast Association and they have um rules and standards.
Speaker 1: Four dogs, uh feist and it's usually like a I
Speaker 1: think a male now can be way thirty to twenty
Speaker 1: eight pounds, don't you know they're about I have to
Speaker 1: have to look at the rigs and then it could
Speaker 1: be so tall at the shoulders. Well that's where Bobby
Speaker 1: Janeo is there. And uh they're supposed to be dogs
Speaker 1: that you know have those abilities scenting, carrying and um
Speaker 1: um using their eyes. And then you have a cur
Speaker 1: dog which is like but you bad Toe, which he's
Speaker 1: a cur that's mixed in with a porner bird dog.
Speaker 1: And we like to do that to give the dog bigger.
Speaker 1: He's a little bigger curd dogs using above thirty pounds
Speaker 1: to lose his toe. You know. He was that way
Speaker 1: when I got him as a puppy, when I picked
Speaker 1: him out. But you, bad Toe was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a barbie. Bad Toe was supposed to be a girl dog.
Speaker 1: I was getting ready to go on a fishing trip
Speaker 1: to uh Ontario to fish with some walleye and that
Speaker 1: was at a friend of mine's house and he had
Speaker 1: this brown and white dog looked like a clone to
Speaker 1: to butch you. They're running around his yards. Said man,
Speaker 1: I really liked that dog. He said, well, says so
Speaker 1: and so has got some more rems that he could
Speaker 1: probably get you once is I said, what do you
Speaker 1: think he'd let me, uh keep it for two to
Speaker 1: three weeks and how I get back from Kennedy said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's just call him up. I said,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get a female, because if you have
Speaker 1: a female you can breed her to most anybody stud dog.
Speaker 1: If you have a male dog, people are real hesitants
Speaker 1: about taking your male dog and read it to their
Speaker 1: fail So that's where you know, I was wanting to
Speaker 1: get the kids. Yes, but um I went over there
Speaker 1: and picked out a dog, and for some reason I
Speaker 1: thought he was a female. And I get him home,
Speaker 1: and after like two or three days and fooding with
Speaker 1: him out of yard, all of a sudden, I was eight.
Speaker 1: I got a male dog there. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: and like I said, he just all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I looked and he had looked like he had a
Speaker 1: toll that was hung up in a gate or something
Speaker 1: and has given any problems. So he just got the
Speaker 1: butchee bad though. He said of Barbie Bead though, but
Speaker 1: he's got a real sense of of using his nose.
Speaker 1: As you saw other day this, a lot of the
Speaker 1: squirrels they tread had been there probably an I or
Speaker 1: two before, around the den trees. Lots lots of heavy
Speaker 1: scent there and uh um or um. Bobby Jango didn't
Speaker 1: treat that many that day there. He came in after
Speaker 1: Butchie had him trade and tread with him. You know,
Speaker 1: he supported him there. But like I said, the curd
Speaker 1: dogs who usually use their more more of their nose
Speaker 1: um than than a fist. And then you go into
Speaker 1: the hounds, and some sometimes people take blue tickhounds or
Speaker 1: or red ticks or whatever and try to train them
Speaker 1: on squirrels or get them started on squirrels first. But
Speaker 1: like I said, what they'll do they'll hit a track
Speaker 1: and they'll start barking immediately, and then they'll run that
Speaker 1: track to the tree or I FicT or occurred doll.
Speaker 1: Predominantly they do not bark any on track. They might
Speaker 1: bark on a hot track or after when they're chasing
Speaker 1: after a squirrel running. You know, they've got him sight
Speaker 1: chasing him. They're barking yepping it at that time. But
Speaker 1: when a hound hits a track is you've probably seen
Speaker 1: with bared dogs and in line dogs and stuff. You
Speaker 1: know they're all barking all the time when they were
Speaker 1: on the track when you we didn't, we haven't seen
Speaker 1: any of that. You don't like your dog to bark.
Speaker 1: He's like, here's the tree, the squirrel in this tree. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what the squirrel dog needs to do. Is there's
Speaker 1: no need because all he's doing is giving that squirrel.
Speaker 1: If he's barking on the way of the tree, that's
Speaker 1: giving him warning, saying, hey, he's not here yet, Now
Speaker 1: is my time to escape. If the squirrel dog runs
Speaker 1: in there and trees, the squirrel, especially younger juvenile squirrels,
Speaker 1: they'll freeze up a lot of times. They'll just stay,
Speaker 1: you know, stay there and they wait. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: keep it tree till you get there. Where If he's
Speaker 1: barking on a track, that gives a squirrel warning time
Speaker 1: to get out and say, hey, something is coming my way.
Speaker 1: Let's let's leave here now. I'll point out when when
Speaker 1: like most of the squirrel hunt. Well, I'll sit for squirrels,
Speaker 1: and I'll still hunt for squirrels. But what I generally
Speaker 1: do as a combination of the two. So the way
Speaker 1: I would go out with a non dog hunter, we'll
Speaker 1: go out for squirrels is like on the perfect day,
Speaker 1: when everything gets planned out right, I would go out
Speaker 1: just before like because the squirrels don't move like you'll
Speaker 1: see deer before you see squirrels in the morning. Like deer,
Speaker 1: you'll be active before squirrels, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: squirrels will be it'll still be kind of gray, you know,
Speaker 1: when you'll see squirrels coming around. But I'll go on
Speaker 1: the woods, and the first thing I like to do
Speaker 1: is just go sit somewhere. Just pick a great spot, sit,
Speaker 1: give it fifteen twenty minutes. Am I seeing anything around.
Speaker 1: If I'm not um, I might move all the ways.
Speaker 1: It might be twenty yards, might be a hundred yards,
Speaker 1: two h yards, kind of sitting watch again, move real
Speaker 1: slow or just trying to keep my movements still and
Speaker 1: just hunt like that. If I see a squirrel close
Speaker 1: but it's just out of range, I'll sometimes wait or
Speaker 1: all wait for a good opportunity to sneak up and
Speaker 1: get them. But it's quiet. You know, you don't talk
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But hunting squirrels the dogs, it's
Speaker 1: like it's just like walking through the woods of your buddies. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot of camaraderie. Think you can go on,
Speaker 1: you can tell stories, talk whatever you yeah, pretty much blowhorns.
Speaker 1: You know. The only time that that you might need
Speaker 1: to be be quiet just a little bit is when
Speaker 1: you're in there the tree and getting ready to shoot.
Speaker 1: And you've seen how the squirrels move around if somebody's talking.
Speaker 1: You're over there getting ready to get a shot, and
Speaker 1: somebody talks right there. All of a sudden, the squirrel,
Speaker 1: I've got this perfect shot. Now he's moved over here,
Speaker 1: and um, like I said, slight movement, hearing whatever there though,
Speaker 1: that's the only time you have to be quiet is
Speaker 1: when you're getting ready to put them put the keel
Speaker 1: shot on it. Pretty much. The other day we went out,
Speaker 1: we met up that is cool area near here Land
Speaker 1: between the lakes was what's the Tennessee and Cumberland River
Speaker 1: right Tennessee and Combing River. So it used to be
Speaker 1: a big isthmus between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. People
Speaker 1: called it land between the rivers, like a big what's
Speaker 1: about a hundred and seventy thousand acre block where the
Speaker 1: two rivers come within how many miles of each other.
Speaker 1: I'm just guessing across there five miles, not even not
Speaker 1: even maybe not even that far. So you've got two
Speaker 1: big gas rivers that flowing to the Ohio and at
Speaker 1: the time, they're flowing north parallel, and they got this
Speaker 1: chunk of land and people folks used to call land
Speaker 1: between the rivers or between between the rivers. They shortened
Speaker 1: but both whites between the rivers between the rivers or
Speaker 1: land between the rivers. And then for reasons of flood
Speaker 1: control and hydro electricity and otherwise, just like are great
Speaker 1: fervor to build a lot of dams in the In
Speaker 1: the mid nine they damned up first the Tennessee River,
Speaker 1: first the Tennessee. After the thirties, we had a tremendous
Speaker 1: flood here nineteen thirty seven. I talked to some of
Speaker 1: the old timers. They said they could remember seeing whole
Speaker 1: houses floating down the river. I forgot it rained for
Speaker 1: like twenty eight days in a row or something here.
Speaker 1: Instruction very much, very much. Um. Like I was reading
Speaker 1: this book, you had just like unidentified children that were
Speaker 1: never identified, founding back eddies and just devastaates. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they damned the river, and yes, the flood control is
Speaker 1: a big part of it. Inspired by that. By that flood,
Speaker 1: then they damned the other river and it became instead
Speaker 1: of land between the lakes or land between the river,
Speaker 1: was land between the lakes because these are two impoundments
Speaker 1: that both these rivers are impounded before they flow into
Speaker 1: the Ohio, which of course goes down to flow into
Speaker 1: the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico. Um. They
Speaker 1: had this big chunk of land, and then the UH
Speaker 1: the federal government started a long and and sometimes contentious
Speaker 1: process I gather of buying out people in this area, residents.
Speaker 1: There was far It was very sparsely populated, but still
Speaker 1: people there. Many people sold out willingly. We're glad to
Speaker 1: go to areas that offered more opportunity, different kind of jobs,
Speaker 1: better land. Some people were very much in love with
Speaker 1: where they live and didn't want to move. But as
Speaker 1: it went, it was turned into a wonderful hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy thousand acre right. Yes, National Recreation are administered by
Speaker 1: National Forest Um. That's one of the biggest contiguous chunks
Speaker 1: of public land anywhere in this region. Open three miles
Speaker 1: of shoreline on major rivers and reservoirs. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like a gym. I'd always heard about the place,
Speaker 1: but I've never visited. But it's kind of amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just this giant block of land that you just
Speaker 1: will take a lifetime to to see it all thoroughly.
Speaker 1: And you've done that fifty years of it. So we
Speaker 1: went out here to hunt squirrels. Access is easy, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good access, a lot of good roles,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of nice big chunks of woods
Speaker 1: that don't have a road running into them. But you
Speaker 1: it's it's a really well run spot, well thought out spot.
Speaker 1: But we went out, parked trucks like kind of drove
Speaker 1: down a paved road, turned on new dirt road, drove
Speaker 1: down the dirt road, pulled off, cut the dogs loose.
Speaker 1: There was a foggy no heavily overcast grade A caught
Speaker 1: the dogs loose, and uh, we were hunting. You wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt more thicker stuff. Yeah, explain that thinking a
Speaker 1: little bit. Two reasons um, one are mass. We had
Speaker 1: a mass figure this year. It takes about fifty pounds
Speaker 1: per aker of mass to ride the wildlife through the wintertime,
Speaker 1: and we were way below that this year with a
Speaker 1: bumper crop of squirrels. So what that meant was they
Speaker 1: were gonna eat everything up in the woods and when
Speaker 1: it gets wintertime, they're not gonna have anything no mast
Speaker 1: to eat. So squirrel the mast is the acron's uh
Speaker 1: mainly out there. I don't think they figured the hickory
Speaker 1: nuts any at all. We had a We had a
Speaker 1: very limited amount of hickory nuts. To give any example
Speaker 1: here at my house on fourteen acres, I've got to
Speaker 1: four pacun trees a front yard, several h hickory trees
Speaker 1: um produced nuts um um. They ripened early. Uh first,
Speaker 1: did you August? Traditionally when a squirrel season comes in.
Speaker 1: The squirrels came in. They wiped though the hickory nuts
Speaker 1: out the first and the next thing they attacked was
Speaker 1: my bacon trees. They cleaned those and we didn't have
Speaker 1: that strong a crop of them. Do to we had
Speaker 1: a two severe winters back to back and um, my
Speaker 1: fruit fruit trees guys to blueberries, uh, blackberries. Um, it
Speaker 1: killed the BlackBerry vines all the way back down to
Speaker 1: the roots. And I had very limited The year before last,
Speaker 1: I picked fourteen gallons of blackberries. I was lucky to
Speaker 1: get two gallons this year. Real bad, real bad year
Speaker 1: for production of fruits and nuts for this season. Um.
Speaker 1: Things that limited nut production. Uh. In the springtime, a
Speaker 1: late frost can can kill the buds of the trees
Speaker 1: there that produced the akrons. Um. Red oaks produce acrons
Speaker 1: every two years. White oaks produce acrons every year. So
Speaker 1: and and you know, not all the trees are lined
Speaker 1: up in cycle. That doesn't mean that, you know, you
Speaker 1: go two years and don't have any any acrons. They
Speaker 1: are all different sinks there. But it takes two years
Speaker 1: to produce a red oak acren one year to produce
Speaker 1: a white oak acron. Um. Getting back to our was
Speaker 1: that they ate the hickron hickores first, they ate the bacons,
Speaker 1: they hit the akrons, and after they hit the acrons,
Speaker 1: they went into there's a little pine thicket as you
Speaker 1: come down my drive. They started eating the pine cones.
Speaker 1: So you know, they wiped out that food source here
Speaker 1: before the first of November, so they've got nothing to eat.
Speaker 1: And I was just talking to to Jodie, the squirrel
Speaker 1: hunter that that went with us today. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: earlier sas you know, we had all kinds of squirrels
Speaker 1: at the house. We got none now, he said, my
Speaker 1: neighbor right down the road killed twenty five squirrels out
Speaker 1: of these para trees. So you know there they were
Speaker 1: outfraiding other all the sources there. So you know, in
Speaker 1: the woods now there's not any feeds, so they're going
Speaker 1: to the to the thickets to get whatever we'd seed.
Speaker 1: Mushrooms might be growing there, digging around for grubs. You know.
Speaker 1: The squirrel take advantage about any kind of food source
Speaker 1: that's out there. Yes, So rather than hunting like that.
Speaker 1: That was the thing I learned, because if I was
Speaker 1: going out to look for uh, squirrels, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: paying like I wouldn't until now. I wouldn't think about
Speaker 1: where those trees were in production. My assumption would just
Speaker 1: be like, oh, going to the big oaks because of
Speaker 1: course there's acorns, but walking around we didn't see shipfre acorns.
Speaker 1: You didn't see if you'll remember, Steve, anywhere where you
Speaker 1: saw turkey scratching or the deer in there, we had
Speaker 1: squirrels because there was still just a little bit of fade.
Speaker 1: You know. Some of the trees did make some some
Speaker 1: some nut acrons, but but the big, the big part
Speaker 1: of the forest, there's there's just not you know, we
Speaker 1: saw one or two little logs there with a another ship.
Speaker 1: Sure sign that we have squirrels and vicinity is they'll
Speaker 1: pack acrons up to logs and at them there and
Speaker 1: you'll see the holes from the acorns. We saw very
Speaker 1: very little little of that. Another good point you had
Speaker 1: about hunting thickets. There's a lot of vines and those thickets.
Speaker 1: And as you get on and on in the year,
Speaker 1: you get fewer and fewer squirrels. Yes, like squirrels have
Speaker 1: they don't have a friend in the world, Like everybody's
Speaker 1: out trying to kill them and eat them. You get
Speaker 1: fewer and fewer squirrels. And you're kind of now getting
Speaker 1: into the part of the year up until early spring,
Speaker 1: like when they're gonna have more where you got the
Speaker 1: die hards right now are the ones left in the woods,
Speaker 1: and there's more security in those areas where you have
Speaker 1: some thickets and vines where they can get in there
Speaker 1: and have protection from avian predators, that protection from kyotes
Speaker 1: all the other stuff is trying to kill them. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's new purposes. A little bit of fade in
Speaker 1: there and plus protection. They they feel protected. You know,
Speaker 1: they're out in the big woods, then they're pretty much
Speaker 1: open prey for for anything they can. The prey can
Speaker 1: say them from long distance, can stalk them that away.
Speaker 1: Like I said, if they're in the thickets and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, they were kind of little ravines and hidding.
Speaker 1: They're not great big places, so you know, they had
Speaker 1: some pretty tight quarters, so it would be hard for
Speaker 1: you know, the predators to get inner to see him
Speaker 1: from from a distance. And like you said, the birds
Speaker 1: of prey, the owls, the hawks and stuff have a
Speaker 1: little bit more difficulty in those there's areas than the
Speaker 1: open forest. Yeah, and we got out and we started
Speaker 1: hunting up a what I would call draining, like just
Speaker 1: small drainages you guys call hollows hollows. Yeah, that's a local,
Speaker 1: local term. But I always heard that. I never knew
Speaker 1: what the hell of meant. I thought they somehow meant like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what, like a little low pond area,
Speaker 1: because like like a hollow I think of like a
Speaker 1: bold depression. But you guys call a creek bottom of
Speaker 1: Howel hollow. Yes, yeah, I mean, I mean just that's
Speaker 1: what you grow up. And we're gonna go up the
Speaker 1: hollow here. And I don't know where it came from,
Speaker 1: term of cooley Cooley. Yes, I've heard of that out west.
Speaker 1: And then when I was bear hunting down in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: they called him bays. I said, where's the bay? I
Speaker 1: don't see any water out there, so we're gonna go
Speaker 1: up there. If you any of you guys ever heard
Speaker 1: heard that term, Well, that was the first time I've heard.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go over here and hunt this bay. You know,
Speaker 1: we call them like we had vians, but we think
Speaker 1: of it like a little bit steeper. But when I
Speaker 1: went out west, I discovered coolie. What are you talking about? Coolies?
Speaker 1: But yeah, coolie CEO U L E. S would be
Speaker 1: like a It's a type of all these different names
Speaker 1: for drainages. If anyone's interested in law, draw gut Callahan
Speaker 1: calls them guts, go up that gut anyone interested in
Speaker 1: landscape terms. There's a phenomenal book. It belongs on your shelf, Kevin,
Speaker 1: because you're a great collector of books that have uh,
Speaker 1: you know, very dangerous arcane information and interesting bits of
Speaker 1: information that no one knows. There's a book called by
Speaker 1: it was it was compiled by Barry Lopez, called home
Speaker 1: Ground Homeland. Looked it up on your phone, Yannie, I
Speaker 1: have it at home. Home Ground. Anyways, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a glossary. It's a big book. It's a glossary of
Speaker 1: landscape terminology. But it's all built out of great passages
Speaker 1: from literature and other stuff where you and you can
Speaker 1: look up any term, like I guarantee you look up
Speaker 1: a hollow, it'll probably like Faulkner and other people talking
Speaker 1: about what a hollow is, coolly, any landscape term, Arctic
Speaker 1: anywhere around the world. Anytime someone's saying to you, like
Speaker 1: hard pan or whatever, you like, what the hell is
Speaker 1: that mean? It's in this book. It's a good book.
Speaker 1: I need to get that. Yeah, it would fit right
Speaker 1: in with your stuff. Man, it's beautiful. Do you find
Speaker 1: it home ground? Well, you're here and there. No, it's
Speaker 1: but if you do find it, that'd be great. So
Speaker 1: uh pushed up this hollow and the dogs are doing
Speaker 1: We just had one that more the first morning. Bobby Django. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: wind was just yeah, I should point out wind was howling.
Speaker 1: That was another reason we were staying down in the
Speaker 1: hollow is because the wind was howling and we're trying
Speaker 1: to find places where you get out of the wind
Speaker 1: a little bit. Squirrels they don't like real whipping wind.
Speaker 1: Tree tiles moving around, you can't tell what's going on.
Speaker 1: And the dogs are cutting out, like how far do
Speaker 1: they cut out? And they loop around like that. Usually,
Speaker 1: if you just got a single uh dog out there,
Speaker 1: Bobby Django ranges anywhere from like a hundred maybe to
Speaker 1: maxim two hundred yards unless he at that two hundred
Speaker 1: yard point hits a squirrel or something, go feather, but
Speaker 1: usually go out a hundred two hundred yards and come
Speaker 1: back in and check out us. Yeah, constantly, and you
Speaker 1: can guide his movements. At first, I thought we just
Speaker 1: followed the dog through the woods. But the dog, even
Speaker 1: though he's going all over and covering many many many
Speaker 1: times more ground than you're covering, he's always working in
Speaker 1: these circles based off year route. So you're sort of
Speaker 1: suggesting to the dog what areas we ought to be hunted,
Speaker 1: her name, her name, suggestion whatever. We're sending him in
Speaker 1: a direction, general direction that we want to go. And
Speaker 1: he's cutting giant circles around you all the time, hunting, hunting,
Speaker 1: hunting now, and you kind of forget about that. You
Speaker 1: don't forget about dog. But he's out and you can't
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't see him, but all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: often grayness of the morning, you'll all of a sudden
Speaker 1: hear him going nuts and then I mean nuts like
Speaker 1: squirrel food, I mean nuts like going crazy barking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we call it traying training squirrel. He's the dog is
Speaker 1: trying and the first time it happened, I was incredulous.
Speaker 1: First time it happened, he runs off, starts going crazy.
Speaker 1: We kind of half jog, half walk over there. Get there.
Speaker 1: He's standing against the tree, staring up into the tree,
Speaker 1: and we look up tens of squirrel. Just that's it.
Speaker 1: It's a little more complicated that because then you gotta
Speaker 1: get the squirrel, and it can be hard to find
Speaker 1: the squirrel up there, but you you do, like what
Speaker 1: what most squirrel hunters do is if you're working in twos,
Speaker 1: it's great because when you approach the squirrel, he's gonna
Speaker 1: get some the trees between you and him, and you
Speaker 1: might not notice them. Did you find home home ground?
Speaker 1: Oh Um, The squirrel's gonna go on the backside of
Speaker 1: the trees. You can't see him. But with two guys,
Speaker 1: one guy holds tight, gets a rest for his rifle,
Speaker 1: holds tight. The other guy goes around making some noise
Speaker 1: around the tree. The squirrel is gonna respond to him
Speaker 1: by squirting back around to the side of the tree
Speaker 1: the shooters on and that's often the guy that gets
Speaker 1: shot or the squirrels just gonna stick to where he was.
Speaker 1: And you guys, circle and circle. I use binoculars to
Speaker 1: look for my notice. You don't use binoculars to look
Speaker 1: for him. Use your rifle, sculpt look for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just one less thing I have to pack. He used to.
Speaker 1: I used to go in and pack lots of year,
Speaker 1: maybe a pistol in a little hatchet on the side.
Speaker 1: I don't do that anymore. Just clean, going as as
Speaker 1: light as I possibly catch. So you look around and
Speaker 1: find them. And you and these ones we were finding
Speaker 1: were all up in the top. Yes, pretty common on
Speaker 1: a windy day for them to go high for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they feel secure up there or why,
Speaker 1: but that I've seen it happen lots of times, lots
Speaker 1: of times. You know, people are amazed of them doing
Speaker 1: that because one of the sure easy ways to find
Speaker 1: a squirrel up there. You know, you see their tail
Speaker 1: blowing in a win there, flapping it's hard for them.
Speaker 1: And then the winding conditions. You know, even though we
Speaker 1: don't like the wind hunting the wind there, sometimes it
Speaker 1: is to our benefit because it is very difficult for
Speaker 1: the squirrels to hide their tail blowing in the wind.
Speaker 1: But they're not up there like feeding when they get
Speaker 1: treated by the dog. They're going got pushed up there,
Speaker 1: and for some reason they want they feel more secure
Speaker 1: up in the top of the tree. And I don't
Speaker 1: I don't. Squirrel would be smart too, never go into limbs.
Speaker 1: When they get in trouble is when they push up
Speaker 1: high into a tree into limbs. They're thinner than they are. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they're silhouetted. You know. You get this cilhouette of a
Speaker 1: squirrel up there. It's pretty easy to we're gonna do
Speaker 1: squirrels a favor, you would somehow communicate to them. Never
Speaker 1: hide on a limb smaller than a man's thigh, because
Speaker 1: they go up there and they hold still like they're hidden.
Speaker 1: But you can see him from so far away up
Speaker 1: from the top of the tree. Now, the squirrel that
Speaker 1: stays down a little bit and gets in the crotch
Speaker 1: of a tree, that's a tough squirrel to find, very
Speaker 1: very difficult, very difficult because you might see the tail,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't do you any good. I mean, it
Speaker 1: helps you look keying on the head, but you can't
Speaker 1: shoot the tail. But probably know one place that he
Speaker 1: can hide these tails in the crotch he goes. He
Speaker 1: can pull that down in there, and it's it's tucked in,
Speaker 1: you know, just like you know they and they're that
Speaker 1: tail is not the winds blowing whatever. It can't probably
Speaker 1: blow that tail inside that, you know, if it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good sized crotch there, could you know, fork in
Speaker 1: the tree can't. They won't get out and flop around.
Speaker 1: So but I've had him hiding pretty good on me
Speaker 1: when it's like not or a pretty solid limb, you know,
Speaker 1: six eight inches in diameter and the wind is not blowing,
Speaker 1: and they're laying on top of it. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: get down. Yeah, and you know what I've just picked up.
Speaker 1: It's just like one arm, you know, or leg I
Speaker 1: had that. They don't have arms, No, yeah, I would say,
Speaker 1: I would say that arms. Yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you leg out front leg, But I had that. I found.
Speaker 1: I found that one of the ones. This time I
Speaker 1: can see two were just grabbing around the thing. I
Speaker 1: didn't see him do that like I used to see
Speaker 1: him do it in Michigan of laying flat on the
Speaker 1: top of a limb. Fox squirrels are notorious for doing
Speaker 1: that around here. Gray squirrels, you know, some people call
Speaker 1: him a cat. Squirrels are a little bit more cagier
Speaker 1: than a than that. But but the fox squirrel, first,
Speaker 1: I have seen him on the river bottom just trying
Speaker 1: to be too too high off the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: maybet off the ground, just laying flat on it. You know,
Speaker 1: he can just seem he's just trying to get flat
Speaker 1: as he can on that on that limb. But you
Speaker 1: do not see gray squirrels do that much around here.
Speaker 1: Now you brought up fix squirrel and gray squirrel. So
Speaker 1: you know, there's always exceptions, a ton of stuff. So
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some guy out there listening, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna be like, good the tube. Oh, what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is not true. But for tree squirrels in this country,
Speaker 1: in North America, tree squirrels in North America, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give the what I'll call the Big four. You have
Speaker 1: the eastern gray squirrel, that is a lightest gray squirrel. Now,
Speaker 1: when you see a black squirrel, you're seeing a color
Speaker 1: phase of the eastern gray squirrel. In some areas you
Speaker 1: go in and it seems like seventy five of the
Speaker 1: gray squirrels are black. It's typically the grays outnumber blacks.
Speaker 1: In my mom's yard. Over my life, I've watched man
Speaker 1: like all the squirrels seemed black now and then they're gray,
Speaker 1: back and forth. A gray, a gray phase gray squirrel
Speaker 1: can give birth to a black phase gray squirrel. I
Speaker 1: have heard. I don't know if it's true that maybe
Speaker 1: in some areas it's like maybe about tent or black face.
Speaker 1: Does that bring true to you? Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have any any any black phase down here, gray none, none.
Speaker 1: When I went to Walston and Manistee for the first time.
Speaker 1: And we were driving down the road and I see
Speaker 1: something solid jet black. I think it looks like well,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a maybe a burnover place, like
Speaker 1: a stump, you know, a stob, small trees just sticking
Speaker 1: up right there. Then I realized that was my first
Speaker 1: sighting of a black squirrel. But we do not have
Speaker 1: any black gray squirrels that I have ever seen in
Speaker 1: this part of western Kentucky. I don't think. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any. I don't know how far north you
Speaker 1: have to go to see that, but the man of
Speaker 1: State was the first place I had that's that that
Speaker 1: the southern terminus of that National Forest was about about
Speaker 1: a mile and a half from where I grew up.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I grew up with a lot of black
Speaker 1: face gray squirrels now continue on the Big Four. The
Speaker 1: fox squirrel doesn't have as big of a range as
Speaker 1: the gray squirrel, but it extends more westward in the
Speaker 1: eastern gray squirrel. Both these squirrels are mixed up because
Speaker 1: they've been introduced to a lot of places accidentally on purpose,
Speaker 1: so there and they're like native range is different than
Speaker 1: where they actually exist. When I was going to graduate
Speaker 1: school out in Missoula, Montana. We had squirrels all over town.
Speaker 1: They weren't from there. Then the western gray squirrel, which
Speaker 1: is fairly rare squirrel got rare in recent years. And
Speaker 1: now like you know, around Puget Sound you have eastern
Speaker 1: gray squirrels hell over impuge it sounds south there you
Speaker 1: have native western gray squirrel range. And then finally you
Speaker 1: got your pine squirrel or red squirrel those some people
Speaker 1: call fox squirrels red squirrels. Pine or red is a
Speaker 1: little souped up, oftentimes meat eating, fired up little squirrel
Speaker 1: that kind of like almost seems like a has like
Speaker 1: a weasel's intensity. And there a northern animal, more northern
Speaker 1: for tree squirrels. That's the main thing. Now you've got
Speaker 1: different phases of stuff here and there, and like down
Speaker 1: in Florida they got with the monkey squirrel something like that,
Speaker 1: the big gass fox squirrel, different color. Um. I think
Speaker 1: on a fox squirrel there's like tan subspecies, and have
Speaker 1: the gray squirrel. I think they're six I don't know,
Speaker 1: watch wash there, but um. When I was hunting on St.
Speaker 1: Vincent's Island in the Panhandle of Florida, one time, one
Speaker 1: of the funniest things I've ever said is a gray
Speaker 1: squirrel in a palm tree. I just I just thought
Speaker 1: that was he was up there and they had a
Speaker 1: bunch of dead palm fronds on it there, and he
Speaker 1: was up there playing rent and I was thinking, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, there was something about that. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't look right. For all my years I've seen him
Speaker 1: either in a deciduous oak tree or you know, decisions
Speaker 1: tree some kind, or possibly a fir tree whatever. But
Speaker 1: just to see a gray squirrel in a palm tree,
Speaker 1: just that's that's like, you know, I'm I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: Gilligan's Islands with us with a squirrel all the time.
Speaker 1: Squirrel hunter, Jimmy Buffett Man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So why was I talking about kinds of squirrels? Oh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about how fox squirrels like the lay up
Speaker 1: on top of the branch. Now, you know Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: he one time was with a fellow named John Philson,
Speaker 1: wasn't exploring writer. We spent a lot of time hanging
Speaker 1: around during the frontier years. He claimed to have been
Speaker 1: out squirrel hunting with Daniel Boom and he even specified
Speaker 1: the year. I think he might have said he was
Speaker 1: squirrel hunt with Boone, and later in Boone's life, like
Speaker 1: after the Revolutionary War, maybe even as late as like
Speaker 1: eight in the early eight hundreds, was all hunt squirrels
Speaker 1: of Boom and described how Boone would find squirrels laid
Speaker 1: up flat tree, squirrels laid up flat against the tree,
Speaker 1: and he would take his rifle, muzzle loading rifle, and
Speaker 1: rather than hitting the squirrel with the lead ball and
Speaker 1: you know, damaging it severely, he would shoot the tree
Speaker 1: and so that the ball hit the bark right up
Speaker 1: where the squirrel was plastered, and he would call it
Speaker 1: barking him, and the just the jolt from the hit
Speaker 1: and the bark flying up with stunned to squirrel and
Speaker 1: sent it falling to the ground. The problem with Philson's story,
Speaker 1: it's historians later put together that the year Philson said
Speaker 1: he was shooting squirrels of Boone, I think he said
Speaker 1: he saw it happen in Kentucky. Boone never stepped foot
Speaker 1: in Kentucky that year, so Philson might have been pulling
Speaker 1: everybody's leg or mixed up when it happened. But he
Speaker 1: was saying that Boone was a big admirer of squirrel meat,
Speaker 1: and that's how he hunted squirrels. And when you see
Speaker 1: a squirrel hiding, it's like laying against that tree. I
Speaker 1: think of it every time because I always think, now,
Speaker 1: how that would be an exemplary piece of marksmanship to
Speaker 1: bark a squirrel like that. It works a lot better
Speaker 1: to use rim fire cartridges and shoot them in the
Speaker 1: naga very much. You know. I have seen on several occasions,
Speaker 1: um where we have shot squirrels in the head with
Speaker 1: a twenty two rifle and it never penetrated on him,
Speaker 1: just put a skid mark on him and come down.
Speaker 1: Never never penetrate the skull, just kind of ricocheted off
Speaker 1: and do that and kill them or put them unconscious,
Speaker 1: and that's when you you know, I have heard of
Speaker 1: people picking them up, put them in their game pouch
Speaker 1: and then come back to life and be crawling around
Speaker 1: and there. Yeah. So you know, if we ever do
Speaker 1: that skinning one across the head there, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: wipe them on a on a tree there and make
Speaker 1: sure that they are dead. But I have seen that
Speaker 1: on on several occasions. It's just hit a hit a
Speaker 1: squirrel with a twenty two. Just if burne his hair,
Speaker 1: but never break the skin, never be any sign of blood,
Speaker 1: and stune them and be down there, you know, not
Speaker 1: trying to do that. It just it just happened. That
Speaker 1: happened that way. What have you ever? Like, you you've
Speaker 1: never called squirrels? You know, you never had tried to
Speaker 1: squirrel call? Whatsover. I'm the type of individual I cannot
Speaker 1: sit still pretty much, so I've got to be pretty
Speaker 1: much on the move. I have done some predator calling
Speaker 1: and stuff. I could probably do the squirrel calling and
Speaker 1: get around, but I've never never script squirrel call. Well,
Speaker 1: when you squirrel call, you're not really trying to bring
Speaker 1: the squirrel to you. You're just trying to get one
Speaker 1: to light up the bark, yeah, to pause him. You know,
Speaker 1: like you'll see one, or you'll see one bouncing around
Speaker 1: and you can't get a shot at him, or any
Speaker 1: number of things. And you do that, and he'll squirt
Speaker 1: up a tree and position himself trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on, or he'll start barking too, and he'll
Speaker 1: go from kind of running to he'll hear like what
Speaker 1: it sounds like his buddy doing a warning cry, and
Speaker 1: then he'll get up wanting to join in and chat
Speaker 1: or two and it let's put him up in the
Speaker 1: spot where you can get a crack at him, so
Speaker 1: it's not like you're sitting there calling turkeys. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody really uses it. I hear now
Speaker 1: and then of guys will do a very loud distress
Speaker 1: call with a turkey with a squirrel call, almost like
Speaker 1: where you're blowing a predator call noise and then shaking
Speaker 1: the call to get like that that really fast piste
Speaker 1: off call. And they're saying early in the year when
Speaker 1: there's a lot of young squirrels around. Sometimes I've never
Speaker 1: seen it happen personally, but people say sometimes you get
Speaker 1: it where you're just bringing squirrels down the tree, coming
Speaker 1: down aggressively, trying to figure out what's going on. But
Speaker 1: you sure don't need to call squirrels to get ot
Speaker 1: the dogs right, right, You just need a good set
Speaker 1: of eyes. How do you how do you train up
Speaker 1: a squirrel dog? Well, because I'm guessing you don't do
Speaker 1: like what bird guys do of you know, going out
Speaker 1: buying pen raised birds and getting them all dizzy and
Speaker 1: setting them out in the field, like you're not doing that.
Speaker 1: With squirrels, we do something similar, you know, when when
Speaker 1: they're pups. One of the first things we may do
Speaker 1: is uh uh put a squirrel tail on a like
Speaker 1: a cane fishing pible on the line and getting used
Speaker 1: to that and trailing around, putting up, getting squirreled out
Speaker 1: of the bark. That's one of the biggest challenges a
Speaker 1: lot of dogs where run squirrels up the tree, track
Speaker 1: them up right there, but when they get there, they
Speaker 1: just look up. They won't they won't bark no good.
Speaker 1: I mean, if he's two hundred yards away, we're you know,
Speaker 1: where is it? Unless you've got a GPS track and
Speaker 1: color on him? And and you know who wants a
Speaker 1: silent tree dog? But get a get a squirrel tail
Speaker 1: and get him to bark, you know what We call
Speaker 1: it on a hang up, you know, we'll hang it
Speaker 1: up somewhere, or we might pick a whole squirrel off
Speaker 1: the road, up something that somebody's running over in a car,
Speaker 1: drag it around, hanging up, put it in a bush.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, what I like to do and
Speaker 1: have done before, is put it in a bush, maybe
Speaker 1: tie a piece of straining to that bush or small tree,
Speaker 1: and then get back and shake it, act like it's
Speaker 1: got some movement. Get that dog fired up. You start there. Uh,
Speaker 1: then the next next thing, you may go and trap
Speaker 1: a noose and squirrel that maybe that's raiding somebody's bird
Speaker 1: feeder or they need to get to his fruit crop
Speaker 1: or whatever, and to get rid of it and bring it,
Speaker 1: show it to the dogs, let it loose, let it
Speaker 1: run up a small tree where the dog can see
Speaker 1: it there, and that gets them fired up and get
Speaker 1: them started. Now, don't ever do that more than one
Speaker 1: or two times, because after that that seemed like the
Speaker 1: dogs you don't gain anything either. He's gonna do it
Speaker 1: that first or second time. If you do it the
Speaker 1: third or fourth, it's kind of like you know, we
Speaker 1: were head to discussion over shooting pen raised birds. Once
Speaker 1: once you get a dog, and in my opinion, in
Speaker 1: a pen raised bird, if you really want a true
Speaker 1: wild bird dog, if you do that more than one
Speaker 1: or two times, you're gonna get that dog. Dependent on
Speaker 1: the dizzy, highly scented birds that come out of these
Speaker 1: coop situations there where they've got all kinds of unlimited
Speaker 1: sin on them that a natural bird probably does not have.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of my personal opinion. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like he's living this chicken coop with all this
Speaker 1: bird extrement on the floor there. You know, a wild
Speaker 1: bird doesn't, you know, doesn't live that way. A quail will,
Speaker 1: you know, roost at night, leave a quick you know
Speaker 1: louis droppings right there, then they go on. They do
Speaker 1: not live in it day in and day out. I
Speaker 1: know I never thought about in that way, like how
Speaker 1: much smell a gun? And but I have noticed that
Speaker 1: um dogs get like dogs that do that just can't
Speaker 1: cope with reality. They can they can't cope with what
Speaker 1: real They crowd, real birds. You know, they think they
Speaker 1: can get a lot closer to real birds than they can.
Speaker 1: Like a rough grouse in the Midwest. Don't hang out.
Speaker 1: You can't. You're not gonna get up and point it
Speaker 1: from six ft away. No, no, no, same same way.
Speaker 1: And Upper Peninsula in Maine or whatever. You cannot get
Speaker 1: in there and get close to grouse and then just
Speaker 1: and you run pointer. I want to point out point
Speaker 1: out that you run pointers to I've gotta said it
Speaker 1: right now. I used to have a German war haired corner.
Speaker 1: But we just had a recent trip back in October
Speaker 1: up up to Maine. Uh, several of us went up.
Speaker 1: There's one guy, real good hunter there and he had
Speaker 1: some some dogs that killed thousands on thousands of quail
Speaker 1: in a pen. He took them up there. They were
Speaker 1: totally worthless. He put them up. But he thought that
Speaker 1: he you know, because those dogs, you can go out there,
Speaker 1: turnal news so that that that quail farm it's there,
Speaker 1: and a point lock up hold. You know, you go
Speaker 1: around them out there. But they didn't have a chance
Speaker 1: up there against in hunting. Grouse and quails two different
Speaker 1: things anyway, too, So you know, so that was, you know,
Speaker 1: the dogs didn't have a chance to begin with because
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely two game birds. I know that. I
Speaker 1: got a good friend that I grew up with that
Speaker 1: always had bird dogs. I tried to get him to
Speaker 1: go grouse hunting with us, take his bird dogs. When
Speaker 1: I say bird, does bob white quail dogs up there?
Speaker 1: And the first thing out of his mouth was he said, Hey, said,
Speaker 1: then grouse, I'll ruin a good quail dog real quick.
Speaker 1: Why does he Why does he think that? Because you know,
Speaker 1: a quail will lock up stay there. Grouse you cannot
Speaker 1: crowd and they will not stay. They will run sometime.
Speaker 1: And you have to have that. You have to have
Speaker 1: that special dog that that knows that hey, I can,
Speaker 1: I can. He I smelled him right now at ten feet.
Speaker 1: Now he's at twenty. I can move up another ten
Speaker 1: mm and then then then he moves up again. I
Speaker 1: can move up another tin. That's I'm kind of a novice.
Speaker 1: Novice so a grouse hunter, but I tried to look
Speaker 1: at what goes on out there and see and try
Speaker 1: to improve it there. You know, I try to gain
Speaker 1: as much knowledge as I possibly can, just like you
Speaker 1: know you guys tear it up up there. Yes, well
Speaker 1: this is our second second year, and you know when
Speaker 1: we did, we had a very very successful one day.
Speaker 1: I killed three woodcock and in three grouse over a
Speaker 1: pointing dog, and that's a pretty good accomplished. I was.
Speaker 1: I was trying my best to limit out and get
Speaker 1: four woodcock and four four grouse over a pointing dog,
Speaker 1: and that would have been a pretty good lifetime accomplishment
Speaker 1: right there. And I got three and three. But I'm
Speaker 1: still happy it's gonna be. We saw three wood Cock today.
Speaker 1: You don't thing I want to talk about too. With
Speaker 1: the dog and running dogs for squirrels. Early we're talking about, oh,
Speaker 1: you're running up there's a squirrel. That happens. Probably correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, But just from my perspective from
Speaker 1: December hunting, that happens at the time that the squirrel
Speaker 1: is just sitting up there, like, oh, there he is,
Speaker 1: you know, because they got a bad habit of disappearing
Speaker 1: in the nescent holes. It's not a given. When I
Speaker 1: heard that dog bark the first time I ran up
Speaker 1: got a squirrel, I'm like, man, we're gonna be done
Speaker 1: doing this is no time. But the other day we
Speaker 1: had we showed up in ten of them treat into dentries.
Speaker 1: There's no fault the dogs. Dog did his job. He's like,
Speaker 1: I could tell you certainty there's a squirrel in this tree.
Speaker 1: Now if he went into a hole, that's not my fault.
Speaker 1: I can tell you he's in this street. So he's
Speaker 1: doing his job. But he's got no way of knowing
Speaker 1: that there's a two and a half inch diameter hold
Speaker 1: nod into some limb up there in the square, was
Speaker 1: not gonna come out of there. Anytime soon. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: the day's very you know, we turned loose. You know.
Speaker 1: The first one we trade was in a pine thicket,
Speaker 1: and with all the pine cones up there, it was
Speaker 1: just you know, we we gave it a pretty good look. Course,
Speaker 1: twenty five yards away another dog had a squirrel trade,
Speaker 1: pretty hot and heavy, with thought, well, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: give this a quick look over. Everybody looked out there,
Speaker 1: you know. I I couldn't say it with yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't there wasn't nest up there yet. Kid, we'd start
Speaker 1: shooting into the nest, thinking that with beaby guns and whatnot,
Speaker 1: we shoot into the nest thinking that. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a good chance of killing the squirrel never comes
Speaker 1: out of the nest. Yeah, but we stick. You'd drive
Speaker 1: them out of that shooting up into there. But that's
Speaker 1: pretty silky. But on some days, you know, they're only
Speaker 1: outside here. Again, I'm gonna go back. And I talked
Speaker 1: to a friend of mine after we had that hunt
Speaker 1: to day to see what he had been doing up there,
Speaker 1: and he's been facing some of the same problems. He said.
Speaker 1: Other day, we made twelve d entries before we ever
Speaker 1: killed a squirrel, and I believe due to the low
Speaker 1: food sources out there, the squirrels are kg they're leaning mean,
Speaker 1: everything's after him out there, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: when we've got lots of masks, I don't like the
Speaker 1: first squirrels that we kill or come straight out of
Speaker 1: the den. They're looking for food. They have nothing in
Speaker 1: their belly. They can run off, but you give them
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, forty five minutes whatever. They gorge theirselves, you know,
Speaker 1: and you've cleaned some of the squirrels where their stomach
Speaker 1: their pouch is just pooching out. I think they get lethargic,
Speaker 1: just like a human does. When we go in there
Speaker 1: and do a buffet, eat everything we've got. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get and get where the guy can't
Speaker 1: reach me, and I have to go no further, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, just stay out here. And I truly do
Speaker 1: believe that stomach contents look like is uh my little
Speaker 1: daughter she's three. If you give her like cash using peanuts,
Speaker 1: she keeps putting them in her mouth, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: get around the swallow on them. I'm pretty sure she's
Speaker 1: walking around and you tell like she needs some help,
Speaker 1: and so she'll spit it all on your hand. It
Speaker 1: looks exactly like squirrel stomach content. Yeah, just a yella
Speaker 1: yalla tasty turns into that, but she can't like yeah,
Speaker 1: whenever she does that, I was like, man, it looks
Speaker 1: like cleaning squirrels. But so they get you know what
Speaker 1: you brought up anything I thought was interesting. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: so little food out there that they're probably burning more
Speaker 1: energy going out looking for limited food reserves. And that's
Speaker 1: partially keeping them around, maybe not even coming out and
Speaker 1: not venturing out far because it's just they're just not
Speaker 1: out right now. They're taking it easy. Things are. Times
Speaker 1: are tough, not a lot of grub. Going back to
Speaker 1: the conversation with another fellow squirrel hunter, he said, yes,
Speaker 1: Kevin said, you know, pretty soon it's gonna be where
Speaker 1: you go out and hunt an iron in the morning
Speaker 1: and the iron evening. You get what you get, take
Speaker 1: your dogs out. I mean as the season. As a
Speaker 1: season progresses, because they're gonna be looke, you know, moving
Speaker 1: less and less and lass sir, as we getting it's
Speaker 1: gonna get probably a little bit cooler and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: right now, we still got ideal conditions. What was it
Speaker 1: the day before you all got here, seventy two degrees
Speaker 1: we need that day probably got up into the fifty
Speaker 1: nine sixty there during that day. Do we get that
Speaker 1: high on the first day? Cold cold that day, But
Speaker 1: you know we haven't got cold fingers now that the
Speaker 1: first day we hunted, we killed six, Yes, I saw seven,
Speaker 1: and it probably had I don't know, not more than
Speaker 1: four or five hole up on its not too many.
Speaker 1: That's that's probably correct. Another day we went out, we
Speaker 1: had a bunch of hole up and nest up, and
Speaker 1: then bam, bam bam, killed three in a row, yes,
Speaker 1: three trees in a well. We had a two pack
Speaker 1: and a one town And then went on to den
Speaker 1: up probably ten every bit of ten, yeah, every bit
Speaker 1: of ten where that dog is bade up on the tree,
Speaker 1: and that dog like no doubt in his mind that
Speaker 1: he knows what's up there. But you looking as plain
Speaker 1: as day holes holes, you know, I think a couple
Speaker 1: of them. We saw a few little nut shavings where
Speaker 1: they'd come out and eating. I said, I think they
Speaker 1: just come out from the den's peddled around on the
Speaker 1: ground there a little bit. He come in one of
Speaker 1: my buddies. He's got a a pet squirrel that he
Speaker 1: keeps at his house there, and he'll go out and
Speaker 1: show puppies that it's up hine. He's got a condominium
Speaker 1: squirrel condominium forward and wire cages like a hamster cage.
Speaker 1: He can run up and down all over right there.
Speaker 1: And that's another way you can start a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the area start dogs. That a way. Just
Speaker 1: go over and look at him and run around. You know.
Speaker 1: I took him a whole big, like three gallons of
Speaker 1: the cons the other day that we're left over from
Speaker 1: my trees from about two years ago that I didn't
Speaker 1: utilize there. And he says, he says, right now, Kevin
Speaker 1: said that squirrel his house is cram packed full of
Speaker 1: corn and nuts. He said, I've never seen one do
Speaker 1: like that before. Said it's cram packed up. He packed,
Speaker 1: he packed it in up there, and that's why he and,
Speaker 1: like I said, our conversation, we don't know. He says,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the den trees out there
Speaker 1: that they've got a bunch of nuts and stuff holded
Speaker 1: up in them. Don't know that, you know, I said
Speaker 1: that just just looking at his pets squirrel that he
Speaker 1: has that is taking his nuts that he gives them
Speaker 1: out there, you know, you know, you know, may put
Speaker 1: a half a gallon at a time right there. And
Speaker 1: he says, you know, he the shells are not there, says,
Speaker 1: you know, they're in that they're in that house right there.
Speaker 1: He's got them packed in there. What genders that squirrel
Speaker 1: he's got, it's a it's a great squirrel male female,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, I do not know. I
Speaker 1: feel like you ought to put another one in there there.
Speaker 1: It's like we might think about someone put you in
Speaker 1: a situation like that one another you know, man, he
Speaker 1: really had to do that. Uh. I had some big
Speaker 1: thought about this whole thing with Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: tell you this. We're hunting deer in Wisconsin not long ago,
Speaker 1: and also heard just this loud shrill shriek and a
Speaker 1: squirrel going nuts too. At the same time. You could
Speaker 1: hear all this. There's a tree maybe up there's a
Speaker 1: crotch and tree with a cavity, and there's a mink
Speaker 1: and a squirrel fighting outside the tree. The whole the
Speaker 1: mink goes down in the hole, turns round, so his
Speaker 1: head's coming back out of the hole, and he's still
Speaker 1: fighting the squirrels trying to get into the hole. Eventually
Speaker 1: squirrel just says screw it and goes off and gets
Speaker 1: on a limb and starts barking and carrying on. And
Speaker 1: that mink we wash up there on and off for
Speaker 1: two hours. If he had come out, we had to
Speaker 1: notice that never came out of that tree. I think
Speaker 1: he r in there and and uh, eat all them,
Speaker 1: eat all the young. That's exactly what I would say
Speaker 1: happened exactly. He went in there and ate him. Probably
Speaker 1: the highest of my life I've ever seen a manking
Speaker 1: a tree um going back to predators in a tree.
Speaker 1: I guess it was back this last year for two
Speaker 1: years ago there. I've got some mulberry trees out here.
Speaker 1: Kentucky used to have what they call the spring mulberry
Speaker 1: season to hunt squirrels when the mulberry trees become right
Speaker 1: to have a spring squirrel. We still have a spring
Speaker 1: squirrel season there. But I've got some mulberries here at
Speaker 1: the house, and I could hear a squirrel with that,
Speaker 1: given the the real shriek sound rent there. And I
Speaker 1: had a young squirrel doull ground here. I thought well,
Speaker 1: last take him down there, and it kind of showing
Speaker 1: him that something's going on on there, says, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they're breeding or want but but it's making
Speaker 1: some kind of strange noise. And I went down there
Speaker 1: and there was a snake that had a squirrel in
Speaker 1: the top of that probably twenty five ft up in
Speaker 1: the top of that mulberry, and was wrapped around him
Speaker 1: putting the construction. Tell him there, first time in my
Speaker 1: life I've ever seen that. It's pretty pretty neat, pretty neat.
Speaker 1: I tried to take a little video with my my phone,
Speaker 1: but it was too far away and couldn't get get
Speaker 1: any good. But it looked like to me probably some
Speaker 1: type of of a rat snake, prairie king snakes, something
Speaker 1: of that name. Some kind of constructor there, some kind
Speaker 1: of black constructor there, Probably a king snake. I want
Speaker 1: to get into hunting the marsh rabbits, swamp rabbits. What
Speaker 1: kind of dog like, what's your dog for that? Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a little blue tick beagle um uh. And
Speaker 1: I also a little tri colored beagle there you know,
Speaker 1: um bagle ham. These swamp rabbits, I've always heard about him,
Speaker 1: but they lived down on the like they're down the
Speaker 1: low lowlands. We're hunting around the banks. We're hunting the
Speaker 1: banks of the Mississippi. In the bottoms, it's like some
Speaker 1: areas of sand mud, a lot of briers, and these
Speaker 1: things go down there. And one of the most peculiar
Speaker 1: things about them is they when they're huge, like you said,
Speaker 1: five pounds, they have the trine logs where they climb
Speaker 1: up and defecate on elevated stumps, whole bunches of it
Speaker 1: up there. Now, then you've heard it might have something
Speaker 1: to do with the territory territories what I've heard before.
Speaker 1: To go out and hunt them, they'd be like, I
Speaker 1: don't even know where to begin, because my whole life
Speaker 1: I hunting rabbits. We are just drive rabbits, push rabbits.
Speaker 1: You guys get lined up, depending on how thick the
Speaker 1: cover is, fifteen yards thirty yards apart, and you just
Speaker 1: push through a good rabbit cover and you get a
Speaker 1: couple of guys posted up on the opposite side, and
Speaker 1: you squirt the rabbits out and usually the guys posted
Speaker 1: up get shots as they come going by. But this
Speaker 1: you kind of line up and then you guys send
Speaker 1: all these packs of beagles in there, and once you
Speaker 1: kick up a rabbit, the beagles start trailing it, and
Speaker 1: the rabbit will go on a big loop or multiple
Speaker 1: loops and keep coming back around because he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to leave his familiar area, and he keeps coming around.
Speaker 1: And as you're listening to these things banging around, you
Speaker 1: eventually try to get where you can head it off.
Speaker 1: And in the case of the swamp rabbit, the rabbits
Speaker 1: out a hundred yards ahead of the dog all the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: so when you see the dogs coming, it might be
Speaker 1: too late. It is too late. The rab might already
Speaker 1: be gone at last. In some occasions you get a
Speaker 1: rabbit that goes out there and just kind of squats
Speaker 1: down there. But I think I might have sold at
Speaker 1: a time or two to two today, but after I
Speaker 1: saw it too, But always after they've already been running
Speaker 1: it forever. Yeah, I think one of the longest trails
Speaker 1: I saw today's they pushed the rabbit out four hundred
Speaker 1: yards from us. It got out of ear shot. That
Speaker 1: was curious because you had that GPS color on that
Speaker 1: dog and I was like, listen to it fade and
Speaker 1: fade and fade, and fading, and I was wondering, like, well,
Speaker 1: how hell like in this thick cover, how far does
Speaker 1: the dog's bart travel? And when it faded out of earshot,
Speaker 1: you held up four fingers to me and said, like
Speaker 1: there four yards out and it was a long time
Speaker 1: yet I appreciate you hear him coming back, coming back,
Speaker 1: coming back. We'veventually killed that rabbit. Yes, yeah, we had to.
Speaker 1: We had to push it back into the area. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to watch. By that time, we've kind of like
Speaker 1: almost it seemed like we we had to move up.
Speaker 1: We're jockeying in a position kind of maybe get like
Speaker 1: a half moon half circle. We came up I think
Speaker 1: three times only there before before we got that right
Speaker 1: back into the area, but no one got a crack
Speaker 1: at him. And then he went back out and started
Speaker 1: cutting smaller circles, so we had to like move our Yeah,
Speaker 1: like imagine he's just going like a big spiral, like
Speaker 1: a traveling spiral, like a circle that moves around on
Speaker 1: a page, and we're always trying to go up and
Speaker 1: get But you gotta be quiet, extremely quiet with a
Speaker 1: swamp rabbit, extremely because if he hears it, he's just
Speaker 1: gonna avoid you. Yes, yeah, yeah, that that they were
Speaker 1: short stop. And when I hung on there last year,
Speaker 1: I saw that they would get up there and do
Speaker 1: those short circles and they'd be a group of people
Speaker 1: back and and I don't know if you had a
Speaker 1: chance to notice that, if some even someone that whispered
Speaker 1: trying to whisper, how that sound would carry that far?
Speaker 1: And uh, I had Chris with me as his You know,
Speaker 1: Jason's coming through the weeds there, but you know, something
Speaker 1: crashing through there is a natural saying m but the
Speaker 1: briars and a brush hitting his corridora Chaps was a
Speaker 1: man made sound. And when they hear the man made
Speaker 1: sound there, they just go other way. I never will
Speaker 1: forget that deer hunting one time, or deer shooting. I'm
Speaker 1: not a deer hunter. I'm a deer shooter that down
Speaker 1: at pause, climbed up in the tree stand and had
Speaker 1: some cover roles on. I think I it got hot
Speaker 1: and I just didn't have room for him up to stand,
Speaker 1: and for some reason I just threw them down on
Speaker 1: the ground. Well I had a little prong horn, but
Speaker 1: come up to those cover roles and smell of them there.
Speaker 1: Then I thought well, I need some meat for the freezer,
Speaker 1: I says, I'm like the last day of dear says,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and shoot him his books
Speaker 1: young and timber. And as soon as I clicked, I mean,
Speaker 1: he smelt of my cover rows. But as soon as
Speaker 1: I clicked that, just for some reason, I just did
Speaker 1: the man click on the safety instead of an easy saved.
Speaker 1: As soon as that that gun clicked, that deer knew
Speaker 1: that that was not a sound of the woods and
Speaker 1: ran off. And that was one of the neatest things
Speaker 1: out in the woods. You know, he's snuggling up to
Speaker 1: your cover y. Yeah, I mean he's sitting there sniffing
Speaker 1: of the cover roles I just had on. That didn't
Speaker 1: really bother him, But that metallic sound did. I have
Speaker 1: that conversation all the time with people where I'd be like,
Speaker 1: everybody holds still. You know, we're gonna wear earth tones,
Speaker 1: we're gonna wear camouflage. Everybody's gonna hold real still. People like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, but I was at one time jogging and
Speaker 1: I had a red shirt and I ran right past
Speaker 1: the here. I'm like, that's great, I'm glad they happened
Speaker 1: to you. But like I said, we're gonna wear a camouflage.
Speaker 1: We're gonna still because you just don't know, Like you
Speaker 1: don't know what their deal is. Everyone of them is different,
Speaker 1: you know. The rabbid thing. I found that my experience
Speaker 1: doing rabbit drives, and we spent tons of time doing
Speaker 1: rabbit drives, this one thing is getting a sense of
Speaker 1: how the rabbit is gonna travel and then being cognizant
Speaker 1: of your shooting lanes. I found beneficial today very much,
Speaker 1: very much like you're always like you're always jockeying, and
Speaker 1: you were encouraged me in that direction too. You're always
Speaker 1: jockeying to be like once the first spot I walked into,
Speaker 1: you told me there's no point being here. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't see anything because you need to see you Ideally,
Speaker 1: you want to get where you're seeing forty yards through
Speaker 1: a little lane so that when the dogs run that
Speaker 1: thing through, you got a chance to look at it.
Speaker 1: Because it's not gonna be like a long time. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have a narrow, narrow window, you know, into a
Speaker 1: three foot of elevation makes a big difference. You know.
Speaker 1: I actually saw somebody in the deer standarday trying to
Speaker 1: see what was going on, and that really and I
Speaker 1: killed and I actually killed a contentail the other day
Speaker 1: when Jayson and I we're hunting there. I got that
Speaker 1: twelve fourteen feet in the air, saw the rabbit coming,
Speaker 1: it comes by, you know, and getting that everybody else
Speaker 1: on the ground, and you know, you get advantage. And
Speaker 1: just sometimes two or three foot standing on the stump
Speaker 1: a lot of times will give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of an age out there. And you want your field
Speaker 1: evasion out to you know, if it's a big tree
Speaker 1: right there in front, try to move maneuver up and
Speaker 1: get in front of that tree and get a little
Speaker 1: height advantage there where you can say because if you
Speaker 1: if you have no if it's all a thick cover,
Speaker 1: you have no chance of you know, get the shot.
Speaker 1: Seeing what's coming out there, and it doesn't take much
Speaker 1: to hide those rabbits now now talking in feet, not
Speaker 1: really in yards. Once they get to that fifteen twenty ftmark,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, just like the smallest little bit
Speaker 1: of briar lee for something, they stopped and you're like,
Speaker 1: where do you go? Where do you go? I was
Speaker 1: standing next to two They are gonna name any names now,
Speaker 1: but two guys where I'm like, there's a rabbit coming.
Speaker 1: There's a rabbit coming. See him coming right at you
Speaker 1: at twelve o'clock, and I mean, he's just hopping along
Speaker 1: reel slow. But the guys were just weren't picking him up, know,
Speaker 1: out of that dear stand. That was interesting because you're right. Also,
Speaker 1: I got little elevation. I could see a rabbit at
Speaker 1: it like two yards. And imagine you put down your
Speaker 1: three middle fingers down on the table, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: down kind of your middle finger, which is like this
Speaker 1: thick but small tree, you know, brush kind of cover,
Speaker 1: and there's two open lanes being your other two outside fingers,
Speaker 1: and I sent three hunters. One of them kind of
Speaker 1: is close hugging your middle finger, and then the other
Speaker 1: the other hundred the other two hunters are each taking
Speaker 1: those open lanes and just kind of working towards the
Speaker 1: main forest out away from me where I saw this rabbit.
Speaker 1: They worked through there. They wait a while. The dogs
Speaker 1: were doing a circle on another you know, rabbit somewhere
Speaker 1: off in the distance. They wait, wait, wait, ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes goes by, no rabbit. They don't kick up
Speaker 1: the rabbit. They move on out of sight. You know,
Speaker 1: this is two hundred yards away from me, not ten
Speaker 1: minutes later, right down my middle finger coming right at
Speaker 1: me through that you know, rough rush. Here comes a
Speaker 1: swamp rabbit. Maybe not the same rabbit, but I mean
Speaker 1: right with These three hunters have just rocked through, and
Speaker 1: here he comes, just slipping through. Yeah, they're super sneaky.
Speaker 1: It's one of the more you know, I've done all
Speaker 1: kinds of hunting. It's one of the more exciting things
Speaker 1: is when those dogs get on the track, and it's
Speaker 1: not exciting right away because you know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a long ass time until they bring it back around.
Speaker 1: So when they first take off, you can just sit
Speaker 1: there b s because it's like nothing to get that
Speaker 1: excited about. But eventually they'll bark way the hell out.
Speaker 1: They get a couple hundred yards out, you'll kind of
Speaker 1: hear them come back. Then everyone will be like, okay,
Speaker 1: we better get serious. And you fan out and you
Speaker 1: get where you got a little lane, maybe two lanes,
Speaker 1: you can actually see what's going on down in the swamp,
Speaker 1: and you hear those dogs coming. You know he's out
Speaker 1: ahead of them. Is one of the most exciting hunting
Speaker 1: moments there is, Man, I had a great time, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I get excited out there and like should
Speaker 1: you hear a pack of those bagels and they go
Speaker 1: off and then you look at your GPS and are
Speaker 1: starting to come back, and you know, and then you
Speaker 1: they get louder as I come, louder as I come.
Speaker 1: Not to get a smile on your face. A lot
Speaker 1: of times, little buggers. I don't call them many things
Speaker 1: cute in this world, but those little buggers have just
Speaker 1: a smidgeing of cuteness. And they're just coming through their
Speaker 1: their tails. Because I asked Jason about this, Why don't
Speaker 1: because they're all those tails are bleeding. Oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, man, just dock them, you know. He said,
Speaker 1: oh no, I gotta see those tails wagon. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you have a dozen of those little dogs. They're
Speaker 1: having the best tip. They have more fun than anybody
Speaker 1: you have does, those little dogs. And they're just like
Speaker 1: little like vacuums, man, and noise they make and they're
Speaker 1: coming to and they all got blood coming off the
Speaker 1: end of their tails and they are just fired up,
Speaker 1: having the time of their life. And it's like nothing's
Speaker 1: gonna escape their notice. Man, it's just amazing to watch,
Speaker 1: if you know, you know how Adam and we are
Speaker 1: to him after we kill the rabbit, to show those
Speaker 1: dogs that we've got the rabbit, because some of them
Speaker 1: keep going. You know, they just that's their heart. They
Speaker 1: just that's what they're made to do, is to run
Speaker 1: a rabbit. And if you do not show some of
Speaker 1: them right there, they keep on looking for that that
Speaker 1: rabbit out there. That was another thing I enjoyed quite
Speaker 1: a bit. As they'd run a rabbit and like you said,
Speaker 1: the rabbits hundred yards out ahead of the dogs. You
Speaker 1: shoot the rabbit, go over, pick the rabbit up, talk
Speaker 1: about the rabbit for couple myths, and meanwhile the whole
Speaker 1: time er er er er, and eventually they run that
Speaker 1: rabbit right up to where you're standing. And then they're
Speaker 1: all like, hey, you got it, you know, and you
Speaker 1: show them all the rabbit. What was interesting about that
Speaker 1: is that, you know, speaking of like your scroll dolls
Speaker 1: having that sighting ability, those beagles they don't see that
Speaker 1: dead rabbit until their nose touches it. You know, some
Speaker 1: of them, you just kind of got it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're so intent on that track that scent on
Speaker 1: the ground. Are you just gotta really get some of them,
Speaker 1: you know, and say hey there here, you know, wagon,
Speaker 1: let it smack him in there to get him to
Speaker 1: do it there. And then after they get it, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a couple of them that are pretty intent
Speaker 1: on getting hold of the dead rabbit. You know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: some of them they don't after they see it right there,
Speaker 1: they don't care. They know it's dead there. But there's
Speaker 1: but we got two or three in there that are
Speaker 1: you know, they're being there hanging on. You gotta watch
Speaker 1: it or they're gonna be stripping all the hides and
Speaker 1: stuff off the rabbit. You're interesting, I noticed, is you
Speaker 1: gotta dogs, but you bad to that when you get
Speaker 1: a squirrel, butch you bad. Till likes to eat the
Speaker 1: head right off the sir, he'll eat it right off.
Speaker 1: I don't you know. It's just something that that he does.
Speaker 1: That that he knows that, you know, twenty two heads
Speaker 1: shot there and and he eats it off and usually
Speaker 1: nine times at then he stops right there, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's that's all he wants, is the heat does
Speaker 1: he want? He'll may eat five or six of them
Speaker 1: out there. This is incredible to me, just chomps the
Speaker 1: head up, hiding everything, teeth and all up, chop. He
Speaker 1: was passed out. It doesn't even he doesn't even make
Speaker 1: like a weird turn. He doesn't. What's your what do
Speaker 1: you like? Eating the most out of squirrels and rabbits
Speaker 1: and like swamp rabbit regular eastern cotton tails for personally squirrels.
Speaker 1: The squirrel, uh is the most mildest meat out there.
Speaker 1: You know, they eat the nuts all the time and there,
Speaker 1: and to me it is the mildest taste of meat.
Speaker 1: And I think, like we've had the conversation under I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody that I haven't prepared any for that
Speaker 1: didn't say, hey, this was really really good meat. I
Speaker 1: used to take it to we had church potluck dinners
Speaker 1: take it. They're people would would starrow the nose finally
Speaker 1: kind of shame them into not eating something, and after
Speaker 1: they ate it said hey, this is really good. And
Speaker 1: then the next time we have a meeting or pot
Speaker 1: luck or something, you didn't bring it. So why didn't
Speaker 1: you fix any squirrel this morning? So you know, I
Speaker 1: just didn't have time to do at But I've converted
Speaker 1: a lot of people that thought squirrel was just a
Speaker 1: rodent or whatever out there that there was not fifty two.
Speaker 1: It's a very good source of protein. What are some
Speaker 1: of your favorite way? If you had to rattle off,
Speaker 1: like a half dozen favorite ways to fix squirrel, what
Speaker 1: would you say? You know, the chicken fried, squirreld baked
Speaker 1: squirrel in the oven is the easiest way, you know,
Speaker 1: quartered up, put it in a a cooking pan. Put
Speaker 1: your favorite type of season, whether it's tony satuaries, lemon pepper.
Speaker 1: I made a whole bunch of lemon pepper one time
Speaker 1: and put a put a It was like when you
Speaker 1: know when these great big aluminum pans to to the
Speaker 1: a good old boy function there and put lemon pepper
Speaker 1: over it with a few tabs of butter in there,
Speaker 1: low and slow on the oven two twenty five for
Speaker 1: about two to three. IROs kind of depends on your oven.
Speaker 1: In the in the mount of squirrel, you have the
Speaker 1: meat just falls right off the bomb. I mean you
Speaker 1: can just suck the meat right off the bone there.
Speaker 1: That is the easiest way. Uh. Squirreling dumplings, that's the one.
Speaker 1: I just to clarify, though, no liquid in that pan.
Speaker 1: No liquid, the raw meat, put some butter in air
Speaker 1: covered with foil through the oven. Three I or there.
Speaker 1: Four if you kill a bunch of two year old bucks,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, maybe a little bit longer, a little bit
Speaker 1: less their easy, easy, easy easy. My favorite that you've
Speaker 1: made you made squirrel a bunch of ways for us
Speaker 1: or the last few days is the dump like the
Speaker 1: dumplings your mom made, well, she does them in the
Speaker 1: squirrel broth. Ye, she'll put up. I had taken her
Speaker 1: several squirrels up there before you guys came and asked
Speaker 1: her to make me some some squirreling dumplings, which she
Speaker 1: favors for there. She makes a broth with the squirrel meat,
Speaker 1: takes the squirrels out, picks the meat off the bones,
Speaker 1: then takes the broth, makes her dumplings, drops her dumplings
Speaker 1: into the bowling broth, and that cooks. The cooks the dumplings,
Speaker 1: the dumps the squirrel meat back in there, and it's
Speaker 1: just like almost melts in your mouth. No, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You make squirrel chowder. Squirrel chowder is is another another
Speaker 1: very very good uh recipe. Um Kentucky burgoo burg oo.
Speaker 1: Another one of my favorites we didn't get to do
Speaker 1: is a squirrel on a open charcoal uh, really like
Speaker 1: a cold fire over over a grill, and keep them basted.
Speaker 1: Make up a a sauce of one gallon vinengor um,
Speaker 1: a pound of lard, uh, two sticks of butter, and
Speaker 1: a can of like Texas pete or or glass bottle
Speaker 1: Texas pete or or whatever kind your uncle Frank's hot sauce.
Speaker 1: Frank's hot sauce. Mix that up and keep those squirrels
Speaker 1: basted in that. And and that's yeah, to keep them basic,
Speaker 1: keep them from drying out. It's a little bit takes
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's a little bit of time to
Speaker 1: do that, but you know, you're setting out with your
Speaker 1: eyes and it's a good good way. You don't drink
Speaker 1: a beer or whatever. Sit out there and cook that.
Speaker 1: And it's that is excellent. That is really good. I've
Speaker 1: had good luck grilling squirrel by take the squirrel cutting
Speaker 1: five pieces. It's got four legs the back. Now these
Speaker 1: are home squirrel, So that do that away home squirrel,
Speaker 1: the hole squirrel, keep them based down, big fox squirrel
Speaker 1: comes out really good. That a way too, And that's
Speaker 1: apple cider vinegar, not not white bitter. You're cooking them
Speaker 1: only till they're done. Yes, yeah, so it's done them.
Speaker 1: You can kind of stick a fork in them, and
Speaker 1: you know when it goes penetrate, you know that they're
Speaker 1: they're done. I've done, retake a bunch of garlic in
Speaker 1: time leaves and mashing the mortar and pestle, just pulp it.
Speaker 1: They put salt in there and then olive oil and
Speaker 1: some lemon stir it up, and I marinade the squirrel
Speaker 1: pieces there. But I got ahead of myself before I
Speaker 1: do that. I take the squirrel and put on the
Speaker 1: cutting board all the pieces and take a meat fork,
Speaker 1: like a sharp time fork, and poke it a bunch
Speaker 1: of times all over, so the marinade gets in there
Speaker 1: better then a marinade that eight hours or overnight. Then
Speaker 1: I do them by my grill, just two done, not
Speaker 1: like trying to slow. Was grill them on medium heat,
Speaker 1: too done, and they just get where he started a
Speaker 1: chart A little bit, just like if you're grilling chicken,
Speaker 1: like a little bit of char on there is very good,
Speaker 1: but you marinade for the night. I know a friend, uh,
Speaker 1: he had an elderly gentleman that's friend of him. And
Speaker 1: I don't know where the wrist bee comes from. But
Speaker 1: he used to like to take a host squirrel, he said,
Speaker 1: and keep the ribs on it, dress it out and
Speaker 1: make a dressing and put it into the cavity and
Speaker 1: then take a needle and thread and sew it back up.
Speaker 1: I need to go probably see him do that sometime.
Speaker 1: But he just he just went wild over that. But
Speaker 1: he made some kind of dressing stuff squirrel and took
Speaker 1: a took you know, you know, I took a needle, thread,
Speaker 1: sold it up in that cavity there and baked him
Speaker 1: into heaven. So that that sounds something that we probably
Speaker 1: ought to try sometimes. Yeah, that's interesting. Many have a
Speaker 1: nice visual appeal, Yeah, including thoughts. If you're not hunting squirrels,
Speaker 1: you are missing out. Yeah, I think you're stupid. You're stupid.
Speaker 1: If you don't want squirrels, I think you're messed up
Speaker 1: in the head. I mean, look not to nothing against
Speaker 1: Wisconsin white til deer hunting, but we took Helen and
Speaker 1: Brittany out there a couple of weeks ago. They had
Speaker 1: a blast deer hunting. They learned a lot but they're
Speaker 1: cooked on squirrel two days of squirrel hunting. I mean
Speaker 1: they wanted more and more and more and more of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they loved it. It trained you to be a good
Speaker 1: woodspin town. You know. When I met you, you know
Speaker 1: what what I think one of my my points of
Speaker 1: that said, I said, you know, I said, you're doing
Speaker 1: the outdoor shows out there, says you know, not very
Speaker 1: many kids can go out and go on al khunt
Speaker 1: or something out west there if you can go on
Speaker 1: deer count. But I said, just about every kid can
Speaker 1: go out of his back door and go squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: with a limited amount of equipment. Yeah, for more months
Speaker 1: out of the year than you can't, right, And and
Speaker 1: that's probably one reason why I'm like a squirrel hunter,
Speaker 1: because I can't hunt. You know, I hunt a little
Speaker 1: bit when the leads around with my dollars, getting them
Speaker 1: in shape, training them up. It's pretty difficult. You might
Speaker 1: get one out of ten. But I'm out there hunting.
Speaker 1: But then I've got December, January. In February got almost
Speaker 1: ninety days of squirrel hunting, and most of the Midwest,
Speaker 1: well Montana, there's you know, you hunt them. There's someplace
Speaker 1: you hut them a year ound and most of the
Speaker 1: Midwest you start hunting him in September. You can hunt
Speaker 1: him September, October, November, December, January, off in February. Some
Speaker 1: states have an early season, and then they opened the
Speaker 1: thing up for six months later on. And then, like
Speaker 1: we said yesterday, you can tie it into whatever. If
Speaker 1: you're a big game hunter, uh, bear, deer, whatever is
Speaker 1: out there, you can say, what's going on with those guys? After?
Speaker 1: How many buck scrapes we find? Man? I lost track
Speaker 1: probably at thirty? How many scrapes we found hunting squirrels?
Speaker 1: Did you see some of those giant rubs that we
Speaker 1: saw today? We found cops found two turtle shells, found
Speaker 1: two turtle shells, found, a drop, anler found. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many buck scrapes we can find, all guys
Speaker 1: junk on the woods, tracks all over the place. What's
Speaker 1: your concluding thought? Take a kid squirlhead first, ganchi yet
Speaker 1: make a hunter out having or her or her that's great.
Speaker 1: And we had a we had a young lady with
Speaker 1: us today got her first swamp rabbit. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was that was congratulations. Cover all shot with that
Speaker 1: pistol then really showed a shotgun. Uh. You know another
Speaker 1: tidbit today when we was hunting, we didn't get to
Speaker 1: see it, but the other guys did get to say.
Speaker 1: It is that that a county packed in with the
Speaker 1: with the bagel hands. We were still don't know for
Speaker 1: sure if the county was was chasing the dogs. They
Speaker 1: said he was barking on track, or if he was
Speaker 1: helping him chase the rabbit there. So that would be
Speaker 1: another thing to be very interesting thing to say when
Speaker 1: you're out in the woods. Oh, speaking of Western gray squirrels,
Speaker 1: you guys got your You guys got to California Hunt
Speaker 1: Eat shirt coming out? Yes, how long until now? It's
Speaker 1: gonna be after the holidays. I would check on the website.
Speaker 1: January one skinny's out. Yeah, we at Wisconsin, p A, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: It will also be out first of the year. The
Speaker 1: skinny one's got one on it. It's the UH. I
Speaker 1: don't want to it's not old. I think it's the
Speaker 1: It might be actually the retro UH state stamp, the
Speaker 1: official state stamp that we converted into a hunt to
Speaker 1: Eat T shirt, and California's got wildhog on it. The
Speaker 1: last doll sheep. Pa has got a white tailed deer. Man.
Speaker 1: You need to do Kentucky with a small game theme,
Speaker 1: swamp rabbit the squirrel. Well, I've got a small game
Speaker 1: themed Sure it's not stay affiliated in the works as well. Good.
Speaker 1: My concluding thought would be, I am so glad that
Speaker 1: when I was young we had that we could hunt
Speaker 1: squirrels right out of our house, because it just learns
Speaker 1: you to, like teach you how to go out in
Speaker 1: the woods and read sign yes, and you get a
Speaker 1: lot of shooting, and you just learn one of your
Speaker 1: one of those old timers you had out there today.
Speaker 1: You guys are talking, you're saying, like, go sit in
Speaker 1: the woods, in the world will come to you. That
Speaker 1: was that was one of the the old timers that
Speaker 1: did lots and lots of hunting. And that's one thing
Speaker 1: he told me. He said, you just get out there
Speaker 1: and said in the woods in the world will come
Speaker 1: to you. Be patient. Another thing he said about the
Speaker 1: coyote falling in with that pack of eagles, as he says,
Speaker 1: you know, you go out in the field long enough,
Speaker 1: it's amazing what you're gonna see. It's not all about
Speaker 1: taking game, you know. There's sometimes out there you just
Speaker 1: see things that just amaze you. And we've all seen that,
Speaker 1: and it is just another ding dong sunrise. Well, God,
Speaker 1: save a chicken, eat a squirrel, alright, anyone have any
Speaker 1: last thing to say Enjorge our hunting, Yes, sir, it
Speaker 1: was a pleasure, Kevin, thanks for having us, all right,
Speaker 1: signing off,