A few days ago a friend called & said one of his new hay fields was being over run with ground squirrels & wanted me to check into it for him. When I hear this kind of news I always think of badgers. Even though I love shooting ground squirrels badgers are my summer time "bear hunts" & I love tangling with them.
I called my oldest son at work & ask if the youngest 2 grandsons would like to do a ground squirrel safari with grandpa. He said they were fishing (Brook Trout) at their secret fishing hole but he would call them & have them ready.
When I got there they were ready, the second grader had a model 62A Winchester pump 22 & the fourth grader had a model 63 Winchester 22 auto. They told me they had hammered the Brookies & were ready to whack some squirrels. Even though these boys aren't very old they are very good squirrel busters with hundreds of kills under their belts.
I told them we might bump into a badger so be ready & it would have to be a head shot with the 22's or the badger would escape & die in his den hole. They are very hard to kill. Neither one of these boys has killed a badger yet so they were hoping we would get in a fight with one.
After 15-20 minutes both of them had whacked several squirrels & I happened to look in my rear view mirror & there was a badger sneaking across the road. He had been hiding in the fence row when we drove by & was heading for the sagebrush on the other side. I bailed out & started running back down the road.
In my hands was my S&W 45 Colt Mountain Gun, its been cut for moon clips & was loaded with 45 ACP's & a 205 gr. HP & more than enough 231 to discourage any transgender from trying to use our bathroom.... He had made it into the brush & I slowly sneaked around trying to spot any movement, its kind of spooky beening in close with a mad badger in heavy cover, they can be a hand full.
After a few minutes I gave up & went back to the truck. That heavy brush was no place for 2 young boys trying to flush out a badger. They kept pounding the squirrels & ended up with over 30 in less than an hour. I got 7 with 8 shots using my little 32 maggie & 3 grs of WST & the 100 SWC thats powder coated. I've killed hundreds & hundreds of squirrels with that load.
Here's the boys with their trusty 22 rifles.
This is some prime squirrel country, they were everywhere but the rain cut us short, still we got about 40 in maybe an hour or so. Most of the females are in the den hole having babies right now. In another week or so there will be squirrels everywhere, lots of little targets for the boys to shoot. I'm holding my 32 maggie in my left hand & my 8 shot 327 Blackhawk in my right hand, its loaded with 113 gr. HP's & 13 grs. of H110, this load makes one squirrel into 3-4 squirrels after impact.
Dick
