another great day of rat chasing yesterday with Brock, and briefly Mason. the dogs hunted well, and found the meat for us. It took the dogs a few minutes to get on one, but we got three pretty fast before stopping to check the zero on Brocks scope and skin those first three. Shortly after letting the dogs loose again, Slick treed pretty fast, and squirrel was easy to see. seemed like a slam dunk, but somehow Brock missed. The squirrel timbered out two or three trees and Brock kept firing and I had shouldered my rifle by then, too. The squirrel tried to get into a leaf nest, but flew back out after a few seconds, and the shooting started again, the dogs going nuts the whole time as they saw the squirrel. just as soon as the squirrel came back out of the nest, two more followed. the chaos that ensued was surely a sight to behold. it sounded like the shootout at the OK corral, lol.
squirrels running around everywhere, dogs running around in circles trying to keep up with three spastic rats running for their lives, and the two of us trying to shoot running squirrels with .22 rifles. Two eventually hit the ground and Lefty tenderized them for us. while we gathered up those two we heard a squirrel barking from inside a large old piece of farm equipment in the middle of the woods not 30 feet from us. upon investigation, we found squirrel number one had sought refuge in the old hunk of scrap metal during the commotion, but was to much of an asshole to keep quiet. Brock claimed to have a vendetta against this particular squirrel for some sort of altercation weeks ago while he was deer hunting. We found the little bastard in there, and rousted him out with stick, but he found another hiding spot in there real fast. the dogs could see it and Brock finally poked around enough that it got the squirrel to make a run for it. he didn't get far before Slick had it, or more exactly, it had Slick by the lower jaw, Lefty grabbed the rest of the squirrel and played tug of war with poor Slick who had a real mother fucker of a squirrel attached to his face. eventually Lefty squeezed the life out of the squirrel, Slick got the worst of it, though. LOL, he seemed pretty proud of himself despite bleeding more than the squirrel was. After that fracas, Brock was convinced that we had the right one.
The ruction between Brock and squirrel brought to its conclusion. The dogs treed 15 for us in total, 13 came home with me. One that I shook out of a leaf nest got away and into another hole, and we left one hanging. I shot it square in the head, and it tried to flop out of the tree, but somehow got stuck on top of a large broken splintered branch. we pumped it full of lead, but could not get it to fall. pisser. just when I shot this one, another took off out a leaf nest in the same tree only a few feet from the one I shot. Both Brock and the dogs saw it and the dogs stayed with it about 40 yards where it stopped and offered a shot, which Brock made.
We took a break and cleaned the nine squirrels before turning the dog loose again in another woods. That woods did not produced a half dozen dens, but not a single squirrel was seen, and the rain started. When Mason caught up with us the rain was picking up and we decided to go back where we had started. the rain continued, and the dogs only showed us one more squirrel, which Mason shot in the noggin. We had pretty much non-stop action all day, and didn't really go to a den until after our mid day break. And I tripped over a shed antler on our way to the first squirrel we shot. always a welcome bonus. thanks, buddy. we'll do it again after the holidays.
Slick got 6 on his own, Lefty got 6 on his own, and they both get credit for the two that fled their nest, the one that fled the nest in the tree we left the one hung up
Slick 51
Lefty 33