Oddball Methods for Bushwhacking Bushytails
Day 5: Quietly Stalk Hills and Water for Squirrels
Editor’s Note: Everybody knows about the tried and true techniques for squirrel hunting – stalking, sitting and using a dog, but, chances are you haven’t tried these wrinkles that will put more game into your bag by day’s end.
 A method that also works extremely well – primarily in swampy terrain where there are many trees with “snatching vines” on them – is vine-snatching. Snatching vines are the kind of vines you can catch hold of, pull and snatch that run up the side of a tree and usually go into a squirrel’s nest in the higher branches.  Three or four hunters can walk through the woods pulling vines and flushing squirrels. If you hunt through a productive hardwood bottom where there are plenty of cut acorns and other squirrel signs, the hunters often can get a limit by simply pulling the vines. However, there is one all-important drawback to this technique. The vines you snatch may be poison-ivy vines. In that event, you not only can take home a limit of squirrels but, in many cases, a good case of poison ivy to go with them. So, if you plan a vine-snatching, bushwhacking trip, be sure you either are immune to poison ivy, take shots ahead of time that will help you to become immuune to poison ivy, wear gloves that will help prevent you from getting poison ivy, or accept the fact that you will contract poison ivy before you begin to hunt in this way.
Slipping Ridges and Creeks:
Ridge-slipping is another deadly way to bushwhack bushytails. It can pay big dividends for both the ridge-slipper and the water-slipper. This tactic works best when there’s a small, shallow creek with a bank about 4- to 5-feet high, a hardwood bottom 15- to 50-yards from the bank and a ridge adjacent to the bottom. The ridge-slipper stalks the squirrels along the ridge and bags as many bushytails as he can as he eases through the woods.  The water-slipper puts on his rubber boots and wades the edge of the creek looking for the squirrels that will be frightened by the ridge-slipper and that will move around the side of the tree to hide from him.  These squirrels make easy pickings for the hunter in the water. Employing this tactic, two bushytail hunters often can luck-up on a limit of squirrels. There are about as many ways to hunt squirrels as there are men who hunt them. However, many sportsmen only consider conventional stalk-hunting or dog-hunting to take bushytails for the skillet. But these bushwhacking methods have worked for me and for others for years. And, they will pay-off for you if you’ll give them a try.
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