Nov 1st is the opening of small game season here so as soon as I got home from work at 3 pm I hurriedly got into my hunting gear, grabbed the .22 caliber Goldfinger, a tin of Predator pellets and headed for the 200 acres of state owned woods down the street from my house. I have a special permit allowing me to hunt there,, that combined with the fact that not to many people know about this property makes hunting pressure there pretty light and as a result it holds a real good population of squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, pheasants, deer and quail. Of course the deer are off the airgun menu :) but all the other critters are fair game.
Upon arrival I loaded a pellet into the Goldfinger and headed down the entrance trail. The property has several main foot paths that run through it and my usual tactic is to still hunt the trails listening and looking for squirrels feeding or moving about.
After about an hour I had slowly worked my way down one of my favorite trails when I heard the distinctive rustling of leaves off to my right. I stopped and stood motionless trying to home in on the location of the sound. After 3 or 4 minutes of scanning the forest floor I caught a glimpse of a young squirrel feeding at the base of a small tree. I didn't have a a shot, to many branches in the way, but suddenly he jumped up onto the trunk of the tree, his head facing down, and he began quickly flicking his tail.
I had a small opening in the branches to shoot through so I put the crosshiars on his shoulder and sent the predator on it's way. The pellet slammed home with a loud "smack" and the squirrel fell to the ground. Walked over and saw the pellet had entered just behind the shoulder and did quite a bit of damage inside. The little squirrel never knew what hit him.
I hunted the trails until dark, but except for a large rabbit that raced across the path in front of me at about 200 MPH I didn't see any other game. I had wanted to spend the last hour of daylight sitting in a ground blind in a swampy wooded section of the property that is usually a favorite squirrel feeding and nesting area, but there was a bowhunter perched in a tree right in the middle of those woods so I let him have that section of woods to himself. I'll be heading back early tomorrow morning and plan on being in the woods before daybreak for round 2.
I took a couple of pics of the proud Goldfinger and her kill.
Jeff
