Tara’s Corner – Patience and Squirrels

This morning, a couple friends and I went on a late season squirrel hunt in North Central, North Carolina. We took two Mountain Curs with us, Ghost and Kix. We headed to a small farm that is about 500 acres. The dogs were ready to go this morning.

Big Motor Kix is our 2 year old buckskin Cur. Thunder’s Blue Ghost is our 5 year old blue Cur. They are both seasoned dogs that have had many squirrels killed to them.

First thing as we pulled in, we spotted a hawk circling in the field. This isn’t a good sign when squirrel hunting. Hawks are a natural predator to squirrels. Squirrels will by instinct hide in nests and den trees when there is a hawk in the vicinity.

As luck would have it, that hawk was a bad omen. We cast the dogs and they kicked rocks taking off through the woods. First tree was sure enough a den tree. We could clearly see the while about middle way up the tree. No squirrels in sight. We cut the dogs again and the pattern repeated all morning.

A two and a half hour hunt ended in making 10 trees and only killing one squirrel. We covered a lot of land and looked at a lot of trees in a short amount of time. Days like today remind me that we call it hunting, not killing. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be hunting.