squirrels have been raiding the kitchen lately - so we’ve been trying to hit them with sling shots. no luck so far. although, we have been held back by vegans, too… so we can only go after the squirrels when they’re not around.
I nailed a squirrel with a slingshot and it shrieked, jumped about four feet in the air and then ran away and up a tree, appearing to be unharmed. Maybe a headshot would work but I think you need something more powerful than a slingshot to kill a squirrel in a quick and relatively painless way. I was using a marskman slingshot and a large ball bearing from a bicycles bottom bracket. I’d suggest traps, rabbitsticks or a nice sized rock. squirrels are tough.
In retrospect I probably just didn’t hit it in the kill-zone, but man that kill-zone is tiny on a squirrel!
Squirrel is my totem animal, inasmuch as i have one. I’d only eat one if it presented itself to me. Wandering into a trap I constructed would count.
Heh. One just presented itself to me. Apparently it fell out of a tree. I’m not goiong to eat it (I don’t know how long dead, there werre flies on it.) but The pelt looks good, so tonight I’m going to try to skin it. This will be my first time processing an animal, so wish me luck!
Ha ha! Interesting! Maybe old age fell it, I donno. Happy to hear the news! 
How’d the skinnin go?
Wilderix, slings IMHO are the most difficult weapons to master. My friend David has been shooting a sling for fifteen years nearly every day, and can reliably hit a hubcap from ten yards away.
For comparison, a beginner archer can reliably hit a hubcap from ten yards at the end of their first hourly session. These days I believe you have to grow up with a sling.
On top of this, slings are very dangerous to other people in a park because sling rocks have so much mass and misses can be very big misses. I have accidentally whacked a goose with a sling before-- I was aiming at a cottontail and missed by more than 45 degrees on my throw. The rock sailed 30 yards and clocked a goose on the chest hard enough to knock the wind out of it, just in time for me to run up and grab it by the neck. A hand-thrown rock has been much more successful for me, the heavier the better.
I’ve hunted squirrels quite a bit, and they are certainly best hunted by bow, with blunt arrows and flu-flu fletching. There are a number of good tricks to get them to descend their tree, but you just need to make them upset (red-tailed hawk call or a pishing) and they will climb down. With small game, in my experience, shooting a longer bow works out better-- more accuracy. A reminder-- do not shoot up into a tree with your arrow or you will likely lose it. They travel a very long distance and may hit someone else.
For stealth, I recommend making a very small bow (36-48") with a short draw, and learning to anchor your draw on your body rather than your mouth. Alternatively, a primitive cross bow is extremely accurate for size, even small ones, because of consistency. They can easily be hidden. If you can make a bow, you can make a crossbow. In fact, I have shot a primitive crossbow with pin sights that was very accurate at specific ranges, good enough to peg a nine inch circle at twenty yards.
Hope that helps you squirrel hunters out there. For you squirrel trappers, look into Snare Pulls. They are extremely effective on tree squirrels if you have wire of the right diameter.
I find your insight wonderful!
The skinning went horrendously terrible. Having no previous experience, and unable to find someone who has, I relied on instructionis from the internet.
Things I learned:
1: My knife is way more dull than I suspected. Horrifically dull.
2: Work gloves interfere with grasping the appropriate parts of the squirrel. I had to wear them because I did not know if the squirrel was sick or not. But they made things much harder.
3: I suspect I did not act during the proper stage of decomp. I don’t know If it was to early or too late, but telling the skin from the meat was not as easy as it was in the pictures online.
4: squirrels come apart when you pull to hard.
I’m getting a blow gun for birds and rabbits, you can make significantly long darts for these, especially if you have a large bore. Coldsteel sells .625 caliber hunting blow guns for about 20 bucks. I’m getting the 4 foot moddel with a 2 foot extension so I can break it down and have it pass as a walking stick more or less.
I’ve found that rocks work to an extent, but you really bang up alot of animals that live, and I hate that. Even when they run off, they are running for their lives, that adrenaline can make creatures do crazy amazing stuff, they can get away easily with broken ribs or internal bleeding. Traps seem to be the only way to be pretty sure you’re not gonna mortally wound a squirrel that can still escape.
P.S. The only reason I didn’t include squirrels as an option for bagging with my blow gun is because I personally don’t want to kill them, cuz I kind of am one. Seems like it would be perfect for squirrel hunting though.
here’s a video of Ray Mears making a squirrel trap.
not sure if that’ll help.
i came across it and thought of this topic.
I personally don't want to kill them, cuz I kind of am one.
You are what you eat.
Seems like it would be perfect for squirrel hunting though.
Check out this site. http://www.geocities.com/blowgunhunter/
I used this guy’s instructions and some from another site to make a blowgun from conduit pipe, It was about 8 feet in length, and I made the darts from doweling and x-acto knife blades. I tried out 2 different sizes of couplers and found one that worked better than the other for the mouthpiece. Whichever one allows you to seal the air in better and molds to your mouth seems to work best. I was surprised at the power of the blowgun, it would be more than enough for a squirrel if you get your aim good enough to hit your target. It wouldn’t be too accurate in windy conditions though…Making the cones or “fletching” can be a bit tricky and takes some practice to get right but other than that it’s pretty simple. He also has some squirrel hunting with the blowgun videos on his site that might be useful.
yeah, i just found that site last week. i’d like to put one together.
i’m wondering tho’, obviously it’s good for squirrels & rabbits, but what do you think about waterfowl like ducks & geese? do you think it has enough power?
I have no experience hunting with the blowgun, but I would imagine that if you could get close enough and get a head or neck shot in it would work. The power is certainly there, and if the dart is solid enough (the fletching and broadhead attached securely enough not to fall off mid-flight or when it hits the target) it’s only accuracy and wind that would need to be taken into consideration.
I wouldn’t go any less than 8-9 feet for blowgun length to get maximum velocity out of the blowgun and to stabilize your aim, many of those rainforest tribes use 16-20 foot lengths from what I have heard but I wouldn’t try that with metal pipe as it would be too unwieldy.
From what I understand blowguns are best used at ranges of less than 20-30 feet and the one I made I wouldn’t have used at longer ranges than that as I wouldn’t be able to maintain accuracy beyond that range…Not to mention that wind easily affects the accuracy of those light darts as well. perhaps a slingshot with small buckshot or ball bearings would work better than the blowgun. If the goose was moving around that much I wouldn’t even attempt it with the blowgun, a bola or something would probably be better for flying waterfowl…
New Squirrel for Me!
So since lat time I acquired a “havahart” trap, the kind that’s a metal cage that lets them in but not out. Then the ice weather hit and the squirrels weren’t around. My first experiment trapped a possum, and then I put it up for a few months.
Today I saw the squirrels fighting outside my window and thought, well, lets go for it. I baited the trap with the peanut butter left on the knife after I made my son’s lunch, and set it outside. Sure enough, when I got home that afternoon I had a squirrel in a cage.
after breif consultation with Wilderix and teh internets, I decided the most humane and safe way to kill it was to drown it. I submerged the cage in a bucket of water and waited a minute. There was little struggling and little sign of suffering that I could see. I then took it to the basement, dried it off and gave it about an hour to set while I did other things.
Coming back to it, I cut the head and limbs off with a hatchet. I then slit down the belly and started pulling. I got hair on the meat, which I’ll have to deal with tomorrow. After about thirty minutes of pulling harder than I thought would be required, I got the pelt off. Another 15 and I have it stretched on a frame. The meat is in the freezer waiting for tomorrow when I spill the guts and cook it. I also still need to scrape the hide. I have no brains with which to tan it, but I do have a lot of tannic acid left over from when I made acorn meal.
Advice appreciated, update when I’ve done more.
Fuckin brutal. Nice work Andrew! Congratulations.
OK, so today I did the scraping. I just dragged my knife down the inside until most of the stuff that was stuck to it was gone. I wore through in one place near the legs, but otherwise I’m more concerned I didn’t scrape enough. In a few places it’s clear there’s still meat on it, but It doesn’t scrape off.
Anyway, I gave it a wash to get the blood off, and it is drying now. I’ll see what google gives me about tannic acid tanning.
congratulations, andrew!
it makes my heart glad to hear that the drowning worked well and quickly.
Thanks guys.
Today’s update: Tanning with Tannins, as far as I can tell, consists of soaking it in a bucket of tannic acid, scraping the inside while wet, stretch to dry, repeat until happy with results. Supposedly this won’t make the hair fall out unless you leave it to soak too long. But I’m really guessing here. Looknig up Tannic acid (incidentally not really an acid) just tells me that people used to soak skins in them to tan them. All the how-tos I could find were either brain-tanning or commercial chemical using. I just kinda guessed that the tannins could be used in place of the chemicals in the instructions.
Anyway, I like the idea because the Tannic Acid is a byproduct of boiling acorns to make them edible, so it’s an excellent use of a “waste” product.