The Joys of Cur Ownership

I feel fall coming. Cooler temperatures, declining stress, new hunting license, fox squirrels going about their squirrelish business with renewed vigor, Cate understandably raising hell all day long, and, thus far, my dear, long-suffering neighbors not complaining to the authorities.

Jane tells me to make her hush. I respond that you probably shouldn't reprimand a tree dog - especially a pup - for treeing - or "roofing," or "fencing," as the case may be.

In hot weather, fox squirrels, like gray squirrels, are most active early and late in the day. No problem. Let the dogs in just before sunrise then turn them back out around mid-morning.

Now, the squirrels are active all day, scurrying about roofs, running along the top of my fence, trying to get at the last of my tomatoes, and generally keeping little Cate in a state of high and noisy alert.

I cannot safely shoot the squirrels with my pellet gun. Believe me, I've given it serious thought. Blessed silence plus baked squirrel.

We'll tough it out. Hunting season opens October 1. Cate can get her squirrel fix in the woods, then lie around my office dreaming squirrel dreams.

Yesterday afternoon, I gave up and let the dogs in. After sniffing everything in my office at least twice, they lay down and commenced snoring. A bit later, as I stared at the monitor and considered superfluous adverbs or wondered if there were any new entries at the Atlantic Monthly blog and otherwise worked very hard at not working, Cate cut loose at the top of her lungs. In my small office. With the door closed.

After I regained my wits and breath, I spun around to find both dogs staring at the ceiling, ears perked, brows furrowed. Then I heard the unmistakable patter of a squirrel running along the roof.

There was nothing to do but say, "Good girl!" and try to keep Cate from jumping on my desk.

Carry the Damn Camera

Back in the early nineties, when I started writing for the bird hunting and gun dog magazines, I had to provide photos with my manuscripts - for no extra pay, of course. On every hunting trip, I tried my buddies' patience by holding things up to photograph a dog on point or by bringing everything to a halt if the light was especially good. I have never been a good photographer, but a bunch of my simple shots saw the light of publication. But constantly worrying about photos took some of the fun out of hunting. I vowed that if I ever wrote for magazines that work only with real photographers, I'd leave the camera at home and concentrate on my hunting and any stories that might come out of it.

Well, I'm happy to say that I haven't submitted a photo in a dozen years or so. My stories seem to read better accompanied by photos by Wyman Meinzer, Russell Graves, and other pros.

But these days, of course, digital photography is easy and fun, and the results are immediate. And of course I like to include photos with my blog posts.

Still, I'm usually too lazy to carry a camera.

I paid for that laziness earlier today.

I took Cate to a creek bottom a few miles from home. It's within the city limits, so I can't carry a shotgun, but the place is covered with huge pecan trees, several kinds of oak, hackberry, and Osage orange, and it's loaded with fox squirrels.

Cate is really starting to tree. She's been treeing and barking at squirrels that she can see for several weeks, but lately, she's starting to tree by scent only, and she's learning to follow timbering squirrels through the treetops, barking every breath - a nice, clear, chop, almost as deep and smooth as a coonhound's.

Cate struck about 50 yards away amid a stand of huge post oaks. For several seconds, I couldn't find her even though she was raising hell. Then I heard scratching up in the trees - a squirrel running up a trunk or branch, I assumed.

No, Cate running up the trunk of a big oak that had fallen against another old giant.

There she was, my seven month-old pup, eight feet off the ground, standing on the trunk of a leaning tree and reared up on the tree that held the squirrel, barking her head off.

And I had no camera and no gun. Nothing to do but cheer her on.

Directly, the squirrel timbered. Cate ran back down the leaning trunk, following the squirrel by sight. She lost it after a few minutes, but had that been a real hunting situation, that squirrel would have gone in the bag.

Next time, I'm carrying the damn camera.

Baked Squirrel

Squirrels are tough. If they weighed 50 pounds, you'd need to hunt them with an elephant gun. Fry them like chicken, and you might as well gnaw on your hunting boots.

If you must fry them - and I love fried squirrel, gravy, and biscuits - you'll do well to parboil even the youngest squirrel for 20 minutes or so before flouring it. Even then, it's awfully easy to overcook those delectable forelegs.

If you're just getting into squirrel hunting or you've come onto possession of a mess of squirrels and have no idea how to prepare them, here's a nearly fail-safe recipe. If you've had bad experiences with tough squirrels, fear not. Follow these steps and you'll forever turn up your nose at store-bought meat.

Harold Hoey's Baked Squirrel (From Squirrel Dog Basics by David A. Osborn - highly recommended, by the way.) I've modified Mr. Hoey's recipe slightly and added some additional instructions.

Ingredients:

2-3 sectioned squirrels
flour
vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 small can of sliced mushrooms or half a cup of sliced fresh mushrooms.

Season squirrels with salt and pepper, then roll in flour. Cook in oiled skillet until golden brown. Place squirrels in covered baking dish. Cover squirrels with milk/cream mixture, celery, onions, and mushrooms. Bake young squirrels 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. Bake old-timers - especially fox squirrels - another half-hour or 45 minutes.

You can't go wrong. Eat with your fingers. You'll need lots of napkins.

Deep East Texas Hunting and Fishing Trip

I spent two days last week hunting and fishing at Caddo Lake with my old friend Donny Lynch. May squirrel season is on in East Texas, bream are bedding, and we're having an unusually cool, wet, and pleasant spring.

Donny hunts raccoons and squirrels with mountain curs, feists, and rat terriers - serious meat and hide dogs. He hunts every day; I feel like the rankest beginner every time I visit him.

Caddo Lake, with it's cypress breaks, moss-draped oaks, and sloughs is last thing most folks picture when you mention Texas.

We started out after bream - red-ears and bluegill - in mid-afternoon. Donny, practical meat fisherman that he is, rigged up with floater and number 10 hook baited with a crawfish he'd netted in a creek that runs through one of his 'coon hunting hot spots.

I, gentleman fly fisherman that I am, started rigging up with a woolly worm - my never-fail bream fly. Donny hauled in two or three whoppers while I screwed up a couple blood knots. Over the next hour, it became obvious that Caddo Lake bream prefer crayfish to my lovingly tied flies.

In desperation I tied on a hair's ear nymph.

Donny said, "What's that s'posed to be?"

"It suggests the larval stage of various insects."

"I got a little cup full of the larva." He reached for his maggots. "Tie one of these on that little hook. Them brim will eat it up."

I did. They did.

An hour later, we were back in his camp dressing a nice mess of bream.

We ate supper, waited for dark, then went coon hunting. He cast Ranger, a feist, and Whitey, a mountain cur, along the edge of some flooded timber. Within minutes, they struck and the chase was on. A few minutes later, they treed and we waded into to the flooded woods. Mind you, it was eighty degrees and pitch dark. Donny had a coon hunters lamp; I had a $5 flashlight. We found the dogs raising bloody hell around the roots of a huge fallen oak.

Donny said, "I smell a cottonmouth. Come here and you can learn what one smells like."

I know very well what a cottonmouth smells like." (a mild skunk odor) "I'm just fine where I am."

We never found the raccoon, though I know it was there somewhere. The dogs were just too worked up. Donny conducted a methodical search while I trained my light on any tangle that might hold a cottonmouth.

A few minutes later, another strike and another short race. This one ended at a hollow cypress tree in waste-deep water in the middle of a slough. I got to the dogs first; they were swimming circles around the tree, barking every breath.

Donny arrived and found the 'coon right off - a young boar that will go well with yams and cornbread. You can take the boy out of Kentucky but...

Next morning we headed to the woods for squirrels. As I write this three fryers are thawing in the kitchen.




Ranger, a two year-old feist, treeing a gray squirrel.

Whitey, a mountain cur, and Ranger working a tree. Donny said, "Old Whitey is eatin' that tree up!" We expected a squirrel, but they'd treed a 'coon.



Chance a 10 year-old rat terrier stops to listen. Good squirrel dogs use their eyes and ears as well as their noses.




Ranger fetches a gray squirrel. He's as soft-mouthed as any retriever.