THE WEATHERMAN LIED!!!!

Last night I checked the online weather channel & listened to the local weather report & all said the temp would be 42 this morning. I stepped out on the deck about 7:30 this morning & it didn’t feel cold at all & there was no wind so I headed to “my” turkey woods to squirrel hunt. When I got to the woods, I looked at my trucks thermometer & it read 33!!!! I will turkey & deer hunt at 33 but not squirrel, the return on investment just isn’t good enough. But, I was already there & had a warm hat & heavier gloves in the truck so off I went.

I went to the south side of the woods & was ready to go at about 8:20. Nothing happened until an hour later when a fox came from behind me on my right & headed west with no shot. About 9:55, 1 worked its way past in front of me but, again, no shot. 10 minutes or so later, another showed up in front of me but still no shot.

At 10:30, I decided I decided to do a walk-about to see what I could see & to warm up. I worked my way back to the north side & headed west to check the winter wheat field. I was headed to a corner of the woods on the lane when a flock of jakes came around the corner from the other direction. We all literally froze in our tracks. They slowly turned around & calmly walked back the way they had come. When they got out of sight, I could see them enter the woods & take off at high speed. They had total blown their cool!!

I went back to the south side until about 11:30 when I decided to move spots. I walked back to the north side & then to the west to check the wheat but saw nothing. I decided to go to the west section & sit for an hour or so. This part of the woods had been logged last fall & was a mess. I found a spot to sit but, in all honesty, didn’t expect to see anything. It just looked like a nice place to sit with the sun on my back enjoying the quite & solitude. I hadn’t even sat down when 1 started barking at me to my right. I finally spotted a fox on the side of a tree looking at me. I got the scope on it but there were leaves in the way. It was a long shot which is tough enough let alone trying to shoot through leaves so I waited. It moved up just a little bit & Mr. 24 joined the kill log. I stepped it off at 58 yards or about 174'.   I did another walk-about & headed to the house at noon.

As I was driving past “my” other turkey woods, I noticed something in the water way. I stopped & thought it might be a groundhog. I started to pull up & it disappeared so I pulled past the edge of the woods, pulled the truck far enough off the road so vehicles could pass, got out the .17 & snuck through the woods to where the waterway entered the woods. I eased to the edge & found a sapling with a small branch that worked great as a brace for the rifle. Almost immediately, I saw something in the waterway but couldn’t tell if it was a clump of dirt or a ghog. I had the x-hairs on it &, when it moved, I popped it.

That was pretty much it for the morning.

The squirrel was a big, old male. I put the .17 shell between its ears for a size comparison.




I didn’t see this when I went in the morning but did notice it on my 1st walk-about. It's on the edge of the woods facing into a combined corn field. There are a lot of deer in the area so it might be a good set-up spot. I didn’t think about it until I got home, but I should have left some TP on the handle.







The groundhog didn’t even get out of its hole before it went to that Great Pasture Piggy Pasture in the Sky.

This is exactly how I found it.




I pulled it out a little in this shot.