Details, details....

[SA1911a1]

Since most of the forests around me have been timbered recently, leaving destruction that looks like France in 1918, I have had a immigration problem with squirrels. My little 30 acres of woods is the only habitat close by that will sustain any living thing. I don't mind the squirrels so much, but they will not stay off my wife's bird feeders. I wouldn't even mind feeding them, but the greedy bastards try to gnaw their way in to get all of the seeds at once.

I started off a few days ago scaring them off withe the pellet gun. They got so wary of me getting close enough that they can get out of the way of it post haste. Today, I started a new tactic. I have a Chinese JW-15, .22 bolt action rifle that is deadly accurate, set up with a scope that is set dead on the money at about 40 yards. I shoot from a different spot every time and aim for the center of the tails. So far, I have detailed two of the buggers. You know when you get a good hit cause they go straight up, like they were fired out of a mortar.

I really prefer not to kill them if I could just dissuade them from tearing up the feeders. If the current program doesn't work, I will have to start making head shots and returning the bodies to the woods from which they came. (The crows and buzzards need to eat too) I will need to do it while the wife is at work as she is very sensitive about killing any of the critters. I just hope I don't end up having to give my theories on why there are squirrels running around with half tails. Since I will not lie to my wife I will be treading very lightly.

[millman]

Have you tried to grease the pole? http://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/searc ... ction=view

[millman]

Have you tried to grease the pole? http://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/searc ... ction=view

FWIW, I think it is more cruel to de-tail them than to just cap them outright.

[SA1911a1]

The tree rats have a chance to survive with half a tail. They will not survive with half a head.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Make sure not to tell your wife what the meat in the stew is. Eat what you kill, the founders of this country survived on squirrel meat more often than deer.

[steelbuttplate]

Taste like chicken. See squirrel and dumpling recipe about 3 rs. ago. The trick is skinning without getting hair all over them. And getting past the smell field dressing them, smells like fermented buzzard puke.

[SA1911a1]

Come on guys, I am a 5th generation Southerner. I know what squirrel, coon, possum, and crow taste like.

[Junk Yard Dog]

There you go then, small critter stew.

[Ironnewt]

Have you tried to grease the pole? http://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/searc ... ction=view

That's funny!

[steelbuttplate]

Come on guys, I am a 5th generation Southerner. I know what squirrel, coon, possum, and crow taste like.

I've never had possum or crow. I'm pretty sure I'm too old and too sober to try them now.

[SA1911a1]

Come on guys, I am a 5th generation Southerner. I know what squirrel, coon, possum, and crow taste like.

I've never had possum or crow. I'm pretty sure I'm too old and too sober to try them now.

Possum is like coon only very greazy. I was drunk when we ate a crow, after a dove hunt, back at camp, so I don't rightly remember what it taste like. As a matter of fact, I have eaten plenty of crow after hunting in a figurative way as well. We also ate fatback and (hog) brains and eggs, at home. I never got past the smell of chitterlings ('chitlins), then again, I couldn't tolerate liver either, but I did like crackling bread. I passed, more than once on mountain oysters, but I have eaten pickled pigs feet. Every once in a while I still get a taste for bagged fried pork skins. If you ever watched country sausage, being made from the killing to the scalding to the cutting and grinding and stuffing, and can still eat sausage, you can let most anything identified as food pass your lips. As poor people in the South, we couldn't let any protein go to waste.

What I do miss from my youth is syrup making. It could be quite the social event as well as a low-scale commercial operation. Sugar cane ground with the use of mule power and the juice being boiled down in open vats. The crystalized sugar left over was a kid's treat. I suspect something similar happens with maple syrup making up in that frozen hell some of you folks live in.

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[steelbuttplate]

I have my great-grandma's sausage grinder, and I've made my share of sausage and deer burger with it myself. I got a new one 15 yrs ago, retired the antique. The 'ol saying is you eat every part of a hog except the "squeal" .

[entropy]

What I do miss from my youth is syrup making. It could be quite the social event as well as a low-scale commercial operation. Sugar cane ground with the use of mule power and the juice being boiled down in open vats. The crystalized sugar left over was a kid's treat. I suspect something similar happens with maple syrup making up in that frozen hell some of you folks live in.

There's no crystallized sugar left when we all make male syrup up this frozen hell that is WI. The sap goes right into the vats, and is boiled down. It takes a hell of a lot of sap (about 50 gallons to make a gallon of syrup) and some like my brother in law and his neighbor run the lines directly from the trees into the vat. They are on a hill where their farms meet, the syrup shack is on his neighbors land, they both tap their trees, and work out the amounts. He used to give us a gallon for Xmas, but since my FIL died last year, there probably won't be any more 'family Xmas'.