First
squirrel
On 15/05/2012
I went out walking with a friend, Ben Saint and where we walk is sometimes uses
for pheasant shoots, so there are pheasant feeders around there, and by some of
the pheasant feeders someone had laid very strong rat/ squirrel traps and they
were somewhat successful, we found one squirrel but it wasn’t dead it was
trapped up around the shoulder so on the basis it didn’t squirm or run away
when we got close we assumed it has been there a while so Ben took my knife and
simply pushed it through the side of the neck, killing the squirrel almost
instantly.
We took the
squirrel which we named Shellie back to base camp, it’s the first squirrel I
have ever skinned and first animal Ben had ever killed so it was an interesting
effort to try and gut and skin it, but we did it, it took a long time, we used
the Finnish Pukko knife. The video will be on YouTube soon I hope.
We then
decided to light a fire and cook the squirrel, I had never eaten squirrel
before so after spit roasting it over a fire we decided it was done enough to
eat, It tasted great, no sauce no vegetables just plain meat straight of the
bone, not a huge amount of meat but enough for Ben and I to have a good try
each.
As we were
walking out of our den we noticed more pheasant feeders, so in hope we had a
look to see if they had traps, one more un-dead but seriously injured squirrel which
was dispatched with another quick stab to the throat, and two outright dead but
still warm ones, so on this discovery we pulled out our knives and skinned and
gutted the lot of them, the 3 bodies currently are in a plastic bag in my
freezer and Ben insisted on taking the skins, he wanted to practise tanning and
making stuff from them.
So next time
I see Ben we’re taking a squirrel and seeing if we can make a nice little sauce
for it and make it all the nicer. Very successful day and I did take home one
of the tails to try and save to put on my hat.
Stay safe
God BlessWWB
