Big Squirrel

Thats as big as a pomeranian! Lol, been waging war with our tiny Alaskan squirrels for years, they get in my trash trailer and make a mess of things. Tried eating a couple of them but they are pretty nasty. I guess they eat nothing but spruce pinecones and my garbage lol.

That’s a chubby chap. Mine get fed to the dog.

That’s a nice one. I bet he looked like a loaf of bread running through the trees.

I've seen 'em that big before. But not this year. Plenty of squirrels around here but they all seem to be on the smaller end of the scale. Congrats. I've been out a few times this season and haven't scored yet. Did manage to miss one twice at 30 yds. with a .22 Single Six. I knew I should have brought the CZ 455 that day because I'm not much of a pistolero.

I have taken about a dozen of the grey squirrels we have here in CT with my .32 Flint lock long rifle. None near as big as the one by the OP but it depends on what they are eating. Hickory nuts and acorns tend to put the fat on them. Hunting squirrels is great practice for the up coming deer season. My squirrels get cleaned and put into spaghetti sauce.

Got one that stands over a foot tall. No idea what he weighed....he was a chubby one.

Rembrandt said:

Got one that stands over a foot tall. No idea what he weighed....he was a chubby one.

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Nice taxidermy, would be nice on my gunbench

It is indeed a big'un. It might be tough too.

That's a big one indeed. I took an eastern grey a couple of years ago that looked a tad smaller than yours and it was the most delicious, nutty game meat I've ever had.

HB said:

Shot a Booner today. Pictured with a 12 gauge BPS with 28” barrel. I actually weighed it and was just shy of 2#.

It doesnt look that big in the pic but I’ve never seen one this big. Should be a good meal.

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Looks like a fox squirrel. Definitely bigger than a grey squirrel. Nice meal there.

Fox squirrels here are a protected subspecies, Sherman's fox squirrel. No hunting allowed.

a neighbor came over when i was a kid and asked me to shoot some squirrels that were getting into his creep feeder and eating all his calves feed.

i didnt think much about it cuz this guy was tight. if a squirrel ate one kernel of corn he wud be pissed about it..

when i made it over there the squirrels were swarming the creep feeder and they were HUGE! if i had to guess id say they were eating several pounds a day!

We got into some black squirrels in old Mexico back in 69. Shot 4 of them. Sure wish we could have had a pair mounted but getting them back to the U.S. would have been the problem. Not sure if they would have made it through ten days of Mexican heat and a 1200 mile drive back to Arkansas.

I have a black squirrel mounted that I took with a bow and blunt tipped arrow while deer hunting.

Looks like the fox squirrels I used to see in south Fl. They are black in NC.

I've got a whole backyard full of "black" squirrels. Seems to be more prevalent in urban settings(I live in a sub-division on the outskirts of town) when squirrels tend to interbreed. Some claim it's a recessive gene that dates back to before squirrels broke into the sub-species of grey and fox squirrels. At one time having black fur kept small bodied squirrels warmer in the winter. Supposedly the gene was passed from Fox squirrels to Eastern Greys thru interbreeding between the two species and now is passed by inbreeding within the grey squirrel species. All of the "black" squirrels in my backyard appear to be Greys, even tho there are some Fox Squirrels back there too. The amount of "blacks" seems to come and go. Some years we have only one or two, this year we appear to have at least 4 since I have seen 4 at the feeders at one time. Always a disappointment to see a "blackie" flattened on the county road that runs behind us. Kinda like finding the red feathers of a Cardinal on the ground beneath the feeder after the neighborhood feral cat or the local Sharp-Shinned gets it.

Patocazador said:

Fox squirrels here are a protected subspecies, Sherman's fox squirrel. No hunting allowed.

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In the book Modern Hunting With Indian Secrets, Allan A. McFarland; copyrite 1971 the author says, "Many squirrel hunters have never seen a fox squirrel because they have grown scare in some areas... The Fox squirrel is so large that he looks as big as a marten to the man who is used to hunting grays. The fox squirrel is much clumsier in the trees than the gray or any other tree squirrel, and that may be the reason why this animal is almost extinct in some parts of his range. A hunter usually has little difficulty in hitting a fox squirrel, and predators find it an easy prey."

We have very few fox squirrels here and they are concentrated near the rivers for some reason. I hunted fox squirrels in Tennessee and they were the size of our cotton tail rabbits.

BIG squirrel = BIG pot of stew!

Mmmmmm squirrel dumplings. Wish I could find someone who cooks them as good as my late grandma.

Being a lifelong hunter I was extremly lucky to have married well, as my wife is a wonderful cook who is un-daunted by whatever I bring home. Just had leftover bear roast for lunch. Having pheasant for dinner. Life is good. We went 3 years never buying chicken as she used rabbit in any recipe calling for chicken. That was when I had 2 beagles that lived to run rabbits but didn't mind treeing the occasional squirrel. If you kill it eat it as it is a sin to waste any wild game.

The greys generally disappear once it gets down in the single digits around here.

Patocazador said:

Fox squirrels here are a protected

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The one you pictured has a disproportionate long tail compared to ours. Ours are red.

FL-NC said:

They are black in NC

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9x56MS said:

. I hunted fox squirrels in Tennessee and they were the size of our cotton tail rabbits.

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I'm in the blue ridge mountains in the VA NC TN tri-state area.

We have Appalachian red squirrel. "Boomers" our smallest squirrel. (Other than the rare flying squirrels that sometimes come south from VA.)

Then grey squirrel.

Then we have fox squirrel. Ours are Red. They moved in the past 5-10 years. We just got a season on them a few year back. They double the grey squirrel in size and yeah can be rabbit sized. I raise new Zealand rabbits for meat and these fox are almost as big. They are a bit tougher than grey.

All three season run the same 4 months except for fox which ends a couple weeks early. WHY....I do not know.