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| Silver and Walnut |
When we slipped into the 20-acre walnut grove, high in Oregon's Chehalem Hills, it seemed as quiet as a cathedral. But after we'd hunkered down, each in his chosen position, we became aware of the whispering sound of falling leaves. It was mid-October, and the trees were beginning to shed their gaudy dressings of red, yellow, and gold. Occasionally there would be the thump of a falling walnut it was these late-ripening nuts, missed in the walnut harvest, which had brought us here.
To the uninitiated, it would seem folly to crouch here, guns ready, waiting for game. The ground in the grove, seeded with a lightly sprouted cover crop, was otherwise barren and open. It was obvious there wasn't a living thing in the grove, but we knew that in the forest which surrounded the grove, there were many husky, fat silver-gray squirrels. The forest was a tangle of oaks and tall fern's, so under grown with vine maple and fern bracken that hunting squirrels in it was almost a hopeless task. Trying to fight your way through produced sounds akin to an elephant' in a bamboo patch. We felt our only chance was to catch the grays out in the nut grove.
As we concealed ourselves at the edges of the grove, we felt that the squirrels had witnessed our arrival, and were now peering suspiciously from the forest, wondering when it would be safe to slip back into the open for further nut gathering. Suddenly the silence was broken by a deep-throated barking in the oaks behind me, to be answered from across the grove. I couldn't see the other members of our party, my wife, Laurel and Bennie Warrick and his son Bernie, who run a body-and-fender and automobile painting business in Lafayette, Oregon., our home town. But I knew they were holding their breath, as I was, expecting action.
Years ago I'd hunted gray squirrels in New England, and more recently I'd hunted both fox and gray squirrels in Texas and Oklahoma, and silver-grays along the Pacific coast. For my money, the nut-fattened squirrels about us at the moment were the largest and most beautiful of any I've run into anywhere. Known as the Western Columbia or California gray, they range most of the way down our Pacific coast and into Mexico.
There seems to be considerable difference in size and beauty of silver-grays, depending on location and available food supplies.
Those I've shot in California, Washington, and in other sections of Oregon were large, but not as large or as luxuriantly furred as the nut-robbers we were hunting at the moment. These nut-fed silvers often measure 30 inches long, the length being about equally divided between body and tail. The tails, when fluffed out, are gorgeous. A dozen of these squirrels that I measured ran from 31 inches in length down to 24, with an average of 26. Being exceptionally thick-bodied and fat, they had the meat-in-the-pot heft of a cottontail rabbit.
There's only a one month open season on silver-grays in Oregon, except for the seven major nut-raising counties of Columbia, Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas,Marion, Polk, and Yamhill, where the season is open year around. All of these counties are in the northwest section of the state, mostly in the fertile, 100-mile Willamette River valley. Walnut and filbert ore! are spotted over these counties in great profusion most of the groves are located in the foothills, rounded by oak and fir forests.
Since nut growers don't care to have their valuable crops carried off by squirrels, I've yet to find a grove owner who would refuse to permit hunting, provided of course, it is carried on in a sensible and safe manner. Grove owners often appeal to government predator hunters for aid in thinning out the squirrels. We I hunting in Yamhill County, about 20 miles south' of Portland and five miles from the Willamette valley town of Yamhill.
The squirrels around us apparently were well aware they'd been declared nut-stealing outlaws, and therefore developed an acute wariness. They see to be always in motion when in view, a trait which makes hunting them with anything less lethal than a shotgun a job for a rifleman with the skill to drop quail on the wing. .Knowing this, our party was equipped with three shotguns and one .22 caliber rifle. On entering the grove, our strategy had been three of us to take concealed positions around the edges with the forest against our backs. My wife was hidden above me, on the east side of the grove, Bennie Warrick held the west side, and I was in the west side , and I was in the southeastern corner. After we were in our positions, Bernie began to move boldly through the center of the grove with the rifle to spook any squirrels that hadn't been able to make it to the woods when we arrived. I was listening to the squirrel barking behind me when Bernie spooked the first nut-robber in the middle of the grove. I heard his rifle and saw what appeared to be a silver streak, followed by a ballooning tail rocket for the oaks below me. It was too far away for my 12 gauge Winchester to make a certain kill on such a leather-hided animal, so I tried to shorten the range by sprinting forward. The gray saw me, did a pin wheel around a walnut tree, ran up the far side, and jumped from there to the next tree. I didn't see the gray again until it sprinted from the base of this tree in a five yard dash for the concealing shrubbery. I blew a shower of good earth into the air with a charge of No. 6's, and realized that I'd been neatly skunked.
The grove was silent now, but I knew Bernie would be proceeding according to plan, down through the grove, to take a stand covering the south end. Feeling that he might shove more squirrels my way, I began to pussyfoot along parallel with him. I hadn't taken 10 steps before a silver-gray zoomed out from a walnut tree and dived for the oaks. He had about two jumps to go when I made one of those once-in-a-lifetime shots by firing from the hip It was a male, 29 inches long and very fat, with sleek, silvery fur. With the grove blasted by gunfire the first phase of our hunting operation was completed, and we settled into a silent sitting-and-waiting game. Easing
back into the bracken at the foot of an oak, where I could see up and down my side of the grove, I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was under the scrutiny of many pairs of unseen eyes.
The crack of the rifle interrupted my thoughts, followed a moment later by the bark of my wife's 16 gauge Winchester. Then I saw her emerge from the cover, beckoning to me. Although leaving your stand on this type of hunt is akin to blowing a bugle in church, I decided to go to her, since we were too far away from the Warrick stands to alert any squirrels on their side.
"I missed him," my wife whispered disgustedly as I approached. "He went up that walnut with all the leaves on it. Sneak up on him and I'll cover you with the camera."
"Who ever heard of one of these squirrels being up the tree you think he's up," I whispered. "He probably went down the other side and into the brambles."
"He couldn't without me seeing him." I knew he could have, but I thought I'd humor the lady, so I began a continues advance. I soon discovered that this silver-gray must have had his squirrel-conduct book shuffled He was still in that walnut tree. I was in good range when he spooked, ran along a limb, and jumped for another. I nailed him in mid-air—a twin to the one I'd taken before. While we were admiring him, Bernie Warrick came up to us.
"Give me that shotgun," he said. "Don't these devils ever sit still They're like will-o'-the-wisps. I'm hanged if I can hit them on the run with a rifle."
I exchanged shotgun for rifle, anxious to try it since it was mine, a Remington pump that I knew as well as I knew my hunting pants. My wife and I slipped back into cover, widely separated, trying to look as small as possible while practicing shallow breathing. This went on for a good half an hour and then I felt a, ticklish cough coming on, one of the kind that's almost impossible to suppress. It was about to get the best of me when I spotted a squirrel slinking into the grove, long tail fluffed out, low to the ground. I missed him clean. The hollow-point, high-speed Long Rifle bullet was just close enough to his belly to send him into the air like an electrified pretzel. He swapped ends in mid-air, then lit and rocketed for the woods. I doubt if I could have hit him with a machine gun. I melted back into the woods and fought my way around the grove to Bennie Warrick's position.
"I've seen seven." Bennie whispered, "but all out of range. I'm going to try it back in the woods, like I used to do in Iowa." He turned his position over to me and left. From my new stand I could cover the southwest side of the grove. It was approaching noon, and the brilliant sun gave the grove a wash of gold.dappled by falling leaves. Time dragged, and then I saw another squirrel coming out between my position and Bernie's, taking advantage of the shallow drill rows made when the fall cover crop was put in. Only his bushy tail gave him away, but I followed him with the rifle, hoping to see enough of his body for a shot. He put a walnut tree trunk between us, then disappeared. While I was trying to locate him, Bernie's 12 gauge boomed. Instantly the squirrel popped up near the top of a walnut tree. He sat motionless, a walnut as large as a hen's egg in his mouth, apparently listening to the echoes of the shotgun. I laid the sights on his head, touched off, and missed. An astonished look flashed over the squirrel's face; then he ran down the far side of the tree, and made for the woods. Bernie's shotgun caught him halfway there and rolled him for a kill.
After this we sat motionless for an hour or more, during which we saw many squirrels, but they were all out of range. Finally we gathered at my car for coffee and sandwiches. I had two squirrels and Bernie one; Bennie complained of seeing silvers in the woods, but always having to shoot through foliage which diverted shots.
"There are plenty of silvers right out in the open," I said, "if we can figure some way to get in range of them."
"They're gathering nuts just as though we weren't here," Bernie added, "but always where we can't get a shot. They seem to know exactly where we are. It would take at least a dozen hunters to cover this grove."
"That gives me an idea," I said. "If they can scoot from tree to tree, why can't we ? If we keep slipping quietly around in the grove, they won't be likely to know where we are all the time." "In other words," Bennie said, "operation confusion."
"It just might work," I told him. Thus began one of the most unorthodox squirrel hunts I'd ever been on. The four of us pussy-footed around the grove from tree to tree as silently as prowling cats—quite an undertaking amid crackling leaves. We avoided the edge, where the squirrels came in from the woods, giving them an opportunity to get into the grove. It worked. When we encountered a squirrel, it had some distance to go before gaining shelter. It either had to run for it or take to the trees, many of which were fairly well denuded.
I found that the best method was to crouch down against the base of a walnut, absolutely motionless, for 10 minutes or more. If I spotted a squirrel,I had a fair chance at him. If I didn't see any, or after shooting at one, I got
up and moved to a new position. Sometimes I surprised squirrels which had slipped by me unseen.
It was tricky shooting, because, not knowing where each hunter was all the time, we had to be careful to shoot at angles which wouldn't endanger one another. With the shotgun this wasn't much of a problem, but with my rifle I had to pass up several shots which might have scored. One squirrel I saw was too far away for flat shooting, so I drew a fine bead on his shoulders, lifted it a bit for distance, looped one off, and hit him squarely. I surprised another that tried to make a long run below me. I began chopping at him on the run, and while I couldn't hit him, I threw enough dirt in his face that he stopped for a second or two. This offered a sitting shot for a clean kill.
Deciding to call it a day, we all gathered to add up and found I had four, each of the Warricks had three, and my wife two. Even with a year-around open season, the law still enforces a limit of five squirrels per day. We had enough for one trip.
On the way home we passed another walnut grove, about a mile down the road. Parking the car where we could look down the rows, between walnuts and woods, we saw a steady stream of silver-grays packing out goodies as fast as their plumed tails could follow them. Even here, where there had been no gunfire to disturb them, they were ever on the move. At the rate they were going, it seemed that these squirrels could pack off enough nuts in one evening to top all the cakes in Yamhill County. In this county alone there are about 10,000 acres of nut groves, many of which are only a few acres large. This makes for plenty of separate squirrel- hunting areas, with miles upon miles of
timber edge.
As we watched the busy squirrels, Bennie pointed out that since these woods, here more open, maybe we could get in some woods shooting' without having to mow down trees."Let's try it," my wife agreed. "We both have home freezers to keep them in, and there's more autumn colors down there for photography."
I had only one to get for my limit, and I got him in a golden-leafed oak when he made the mistake of pausing too long. My wife, busy with the camera. failed I score again, and the Warricks got one more apiece. Then the silver spooked, and the necessary waiting became too long for the remaining shooting light. We called it quits.
The best time to hunt these husky silvers is in the fall, when the leaves have thinned and many un harvested nuts lie on the ground. But with the year-around open season, one can have a squirrel hunt almost any time. The grays work the groves from the time the nuts are formed in summer, on through the winter. There seems to be little hibernation in our mild climate, and when we have an occasional snow, you can always find heavily used squirrel trails in and out of groves located near woods. Nuts covered by earth when the fall cover crop is put in remain buried treasure for winter use.The best sport for these silver-grays on the run is with a rifle, but if you
want to be sure of meat in the pot, better use a shotgun.
THE END
Outdoor life September 1958
