Had a nice cool morning for my squirrel hunt, today, 47°, and had a good day. I carried an original flintlock smooth rifle in 28 ga. which I hadn’t hunted with for 14 years, and it was a treat. It always is. It has a 50-inch barrel and is about the favorite gun I own. I loaded with 55 gr. FFg and 60 grains equivalent of #5 shot. I hadn’t been in the woods 10 minutes before I spotted a fox squirrel, and it may have spotted me. It ran to the tiptop of a tree on a dead branch and began flagging its tail. I put the bead on it and did a quick calculation as to the distance. The tree was just about 25 yards away and a tall one, so the squirrel was not more than 30 yards... squeezed it off and it fell straight down. A half hour later I spotted a squirrel moving toward a fence row, wasting no time. I followed along as quickly and quietly as I could for about 75 yards, hoping it was headed for a feeding tree and would stop, but it didn’t, left me feeling lonely. An hour later I stepped into a dry stream bed, intending to hunt along it because of the extreme dryness and noise of the woods, and a squirrel was on the ground at the edge of the stream, about 20 yards away. It made a mad dash across the stream, and I swung and fired at it like a rabbit. It disappeared in a cloud of dust, but I thought maybe I saw it bounce off the trunk of a small tree 12 feet up the bank and in the trash. I reloaded while keeping an eye out for movement, but decided I had missed it. When I walked to the spot and up into the trash on the bank I spotted a big gray squirrel tail. Number two with the old gun, slick as you please. The temperature had climbed to near 85°, so I hiked to the car, cleaned the squirrels, chucked them in the cooler and headed for the settlements. I love hunting squirrels with a flintlock.
Spence
Spence
