texag_89 said:

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Ok, since Tree Rats only exist within urban/suburban West Texas, this fetish with "hunting" and eating vermin - and the subsequent love affair - must be an "East of I-35", East Texas thing.

Man, you guys are stepping ever so close to a Coon-A$$ like way of life with all this Tree Rat talk.

What's next, Nutria, Coons..... Possums?? What about Carp... want to fry up a big batch of Carp??

Have at it, I guess.

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I'm guessin you've never had good squirrel.

TwoMarksHand said:

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texag_89 said:

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Ok, since Tree Rats only exist within urban/suburban West Texas, this fetish with "hunting" and eating vermin - and the subsequent love affair - must be an "East of I-35", East Texas thing.

Man, you guys are stepping ever so close to a Coon-A$$ like way of life with all this Tree Rat talk.

What's next, Nutria, Coons..... Possums?? What about Carp... want to fry up a big batch of Carp??

Have at it, I guess.

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I'm guessin you've never had good squirrel.

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Question is: Is your statement even possible..... "Good Squirrel"??

aggiepublius said:

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texag_89 said:

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Ok, since Tree Rats only exist within urban/suburban West Texas, this fetish with "hunting" and eating vermin - and the subsequent love affair - must be an "East of I-45", East Texas thing.

Man, you guys are stepping ever so close to a Coon-A$$ like way of life with all this Tree Rat talk.

What's next, Nutria, Coons..... Possums?? What about Carp... want to fry up a big batch of Carp??

Have at it, I guess.

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FIFY

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Sorry sir, Hutto is E Texas...... Its more than just geography and topography, ecspecially for those of us that enjoy lower humidities and high visibilities!


_89

When you live in the desert everything east of I35 seems like East TX.

Squirrel hunting is loads of fun no matter where you live

Growing up in Luling in the late 60's, early 70's, I used to love going upstream on the San Marcos River and then drifting down and shooting big fox squirrels out of the pecan trees along the bank. Always used my Dad's old Ithaca pump 16 gauge. A shotgun is better. You hit when they running through the trees and you don't want to mess up the head. There's nothing like squirrels tongue and squirrrel brain. I can remember rapping the top of their heads with a butter knife to crack the skull to get the brain out. I'd trade chicken and dumplings for squirrel and dumplings any day.

I've only had the quarters fried with rice and creamed gravy. That's how we cook them when we hunt them. They are very good this way.

Have been able to shoot some at our place over the years. Mostly because my tree hugging mother is almost always at our place when we make trips out there - to see the grandkids not me - and she thinks the squirrels are her pets and loses her mind when we shoot them. It's easier to wait until she doesn't make a trip out and hunt them then than to listen to the howling about shooting them.

Have never had them with dumplings. What are other good recipes? Stew I'm guessing?

Edited to add - one of my first hunting memories from childhood was hunting squirrels with my dad's single shot .410 and an old squirrel call my grandfather gave him when he was a kid. Need to break that call out over Christmas break.

Year 'round kids sports are killing hunting & fishing.

wheelz said:

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Year 'round kids sports are killing hunting & fishing.

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Absolutely true. My son who is a freshman in college played both football and baseball and between travel baseball and football practice/games there was very little time for hunting or fishing. He loves both but weekends get eaten up pretty quick.

GreyhoundDad said:

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Growing up in Luling in the late 60's, early 70's, I used to love going upstream on the San Marcos River and then drifting down and shooting big fox squirrels out of the pecan trees along the bank. Always used my Dad's old Ithaca pump 16 gauge. A shotgun is better. You hit when they running through the trees and you don't want to mess up the head. There's nothing like squirrels tongue and squirrrel brain. I can remember rapping the top of their heads with a butter knife to crack the skull to get the brain out. I'd trade chicken and dumplings for squirrel and dumplings any day.

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Enjoy your Squirrel variant nvC-JD.

Bitter Old Man said:

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My dad, in his 70's, claims that squirrel meat is better than beef.

I cannot confirm or deny this.

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He's right. Salt and pepper them, bring em to a boil, and then simmer on low for a few hours. Delicious.

Some of my fondest memories growing up. Get out of school for the summer and June 1st we get a two week squirrel season. I'm about 11 or 12 yrs old.

Get up as parents are going to work, grab my shotgun and head off behind the house. Those young just weened squirrels are easy pickings. They aren't old enough to be aware or scared of anything. Make my way down through the hollow across a creek and up the hill on the other side.

I end up in my great grandmother's backyard where she is sitting on the back porch drinking coffee. She's looking to see how many squirrels I have and she knows how many shots I fired too. "Boy, you need to learn how to make every shot count, can't be wasting your shells like that". I can remember it like yesterday.

Then she would help me clean the squirrels and she would fry them up with some eggs and potatoes . Good times.

Quote:

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Year 'round kids sports are killing hunting & fishing.

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Start taking your kids hunting, fishing, and camping at an early age and they won't care about sports.

texag_89 said:

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Question is: Is your statement even possible..... "Good Squirrel"??

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not sure if you're trolling or just a too citified, but squirrels eat pretty much everything you would want a farm raised animal to eat. i personally love catfish but always am amazed how people that eat it are too grossed out to even try "tree rat".

Dont mind shooting them, not a fan of the meat but maybe south texas squirrel just not as tasty as river bottom squirrel. They are public enemy no. 1 right now for tearing up two of my patio chair cushions to make nests.

PineTreeAg said:

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Quote:

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Year 'round kids sports are killing hunting & fishing.

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Start taking your kids hunting, fishing, and camping at an early age and they won't care about sports.

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That damn sure didn't happen with me.

BurrOak said:

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PineTreeAg said:

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Quote:

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Year 'round kids sports are killing hunting & fishing.

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Start taking your kids hunting, fishing, and camping at an early age and they won't care about sports.

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That damn sure didn't happen with me.

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Me either. Loved them both, actively participated in both.

A guy that works for me lives in Castroville by the Medina River. Twice he has had to get his For Explorer Sport-Trac fixed because squirrels had eaten a bunch of his spark plug wires. Twice!

He would appreciate it if the other Castrovillians would eliminate every squirrel in Castroville.

There's a BIG difference in taste and tenderness between a cat squirrel in East Texas and a fox squirrel. Fried cat squirrel is my favorite game but the only way I eat a fox squirrel is boiled in a mulligan stew. A fried grown fox squirrel is about like chewing a baseball glove.

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That damn sure didn't happen with me.

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To each their own.
If I gave my kids the option to go to the farm or to play a sport they would jump up and down to go out to the country.
Sports and hunting certainly dont have to be exclusive though.

PineTreeAg said:

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Quote:

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That damn sure didn't happen with me.

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To each their own.
If I gave my kids the option to go to the farm or to play a sport they would jump up and down to go out to the country.
Sports and hunting certainly dont have to be exclusive though.

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I'm thinkn that maybe BurrOak grew up on a farm,

Sunday mornings...SE Texas... circa 1985ish.

My old man would get up early, start a bonfire and eventually slap a pork shoulder on the pit.

We'd get home from church around 8:15 (country Catholics don't dilly dally), check the poke, then kill and clean a couple few squirrels in the backyard.

BBQ squirrel was always the appetizer and always so damn good. Mop it alongside the swine. Spring borns only. So tender n joocey,

Screw that .22 stuff. Too many cattle around and too long a range. 16 ga with #6 duck and pheasant. Fried squirrel with biscuits and cream gravy is good eating.

Used to hunt squirrel with a scatter gun but we bit too many pellets.

Head shots is bests shots

North of 6, east of I-35 is East Texas as far as I am concerned. Hutto, Mexia, Waxahachie, they're all in.

It's atill popular here in East Tennessee. One of my students had part of a squirrel tail in his wallet.

JoeCephas1974 said:

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There's a BIG difference in taste and tenderness between a cat squirrel in East Texas and a fox squirrel. Fried cat squirrel is my favorite game but the only way I eat a fox squirrel is boiled in a mulligan stew. A fried grown fox squirrel is about like chewing a baseball glove.

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This post made me wonder about our squirrels on the Medina River in Medina County. I don't know anyone that ever mentioned more than the name "squirrel" so I assume we only have one species, which I have no idea what it is.

We had one field that ran from the house down to the river about 1/2 mile away. If I would plow that field, after harvest, at sunup, the first trip down to the river would run bunches of squirrels out of the field, cleaning up the dropped seeds (corn, milo, whatever). About 1/4 of these squirrels were black and I was always told that it was just a color variation of the same squirrel. Knowing other landowners on the river, I never knew anyone else that saw the black ones with such regularity as on our river bottom.

So, googling this, it seems that the black is most likely a variation of the "gray squirrel", which above post calls a cat squirrel.

Am I right ?

As someone growing up in the pecan business, I hate squirrels. I also hated the taste of squirrel - it was gamey as hell the few times I've tried it. That said, we have fox squirrels here, that may make a difference. Maybe the rats in east Texas taste better. I doubt it, as we used to have hunters from east Texas come every year and fill up their coolers full of squirrels.

Squirrel hunting, however, is very enjoyable. Made it through the Fran years by just walking out the door and taking my frustrations out on the vermin population.

And .22lr/head shot is the correct method.

I don't think so. Medina County is still in range of rock squirrels (the black ones). Never eaten one, but I've been told they are no good. Nothing wrong with fried fox squirrel, just choose the young ones. Old ones are for squirrel and dumplings.

Here the kids hunt mbea.

https://instagr.am/p/BpcmzvGgTqZ

https://instagr.am/p/Bpcm1BBgqxM

I had an old Stevens over/under that was 22/.410. It was a squirrel killing machine.

One-Eyed Fat Man said:

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Here the kids hunt mbea.

https://instagr.am/p/BpcmzvGgTqZ

https://instagr.am/p/Bpcm1BBgqxM

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Reminds me of "Never Cry Wolf".

Allen76 said:

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JoeCephas1974 said:

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There's a BIG difference in taste and tenderness between a cat squirrel in East Texas and a fox squirrel. Fried cat squirrel is my favorite game but the only way I eat a fox squirrel is boiled in a mulligan stew. A fried grown fox squirrel is about like chewing a baseball glove.

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This post made me wonder about our squirrels on the Medina River in Medina County. I don't know anyone that ever mentioned more than the name "squirrel" so I assume we only have one species, which I have no idea what it is.

We had one field that ran from the house down to the river about 1/2 mile away. If I would plow that field, after harvest, at sunup, the first trip down to the river would run bunches of squirrels out of the field, cleaning up the dropped seeds (corn, milo, whatever). About 1/4 of these squirrels were black and I was always told that it was just a color variation of the same squirrel. Knowing other landowners on the river, I never knew anyone else that saw the black ones with such regularity as on our river bottom.

So, googling this, it seems that the black is most likely a variation of the "gray squirrel", which above post calls a cat squirrel.

Am I right ?

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No, if they were black, they were a fox squirrel. We have some of those too in East Texas. Most fox squirrels will be mostly gray but will have some reddish orange especially on their underside. There is a color variant that is basically black though. A cat squirrel is, as far as I know, almost exclusively basically gray and much smaller than a fox squirrel. Basically cat squirrels exist from the Atlantic coast through East Texas. I think Huntsville would be about as far west as you would see a cat squirrel. I've lived in B/CS since '98 and I don't think I've ever seen a cat squirrel west of Huntsville.

On eating the old tough squirrels...a guy on one of the most recent Meateater podcasts said his family eats about 200 squirrels a year. He said he will put a bunch of squirrel quarters in a crockpot and cook them all day. Nothing else in the crockpot, no liquid or seasonings, just the squirrel. The meat will fall off the bone, and then he will take that meat and use it a variety of ways.