For years I kept two squirrel mounts on the mantel over the fireplace in my den. One was a red squirrel, or “boomer” in Southern mountain lingo.
I took it from the very top of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina on an authorized collecting trip. It came from the highest acre of ground in eastern North America. The other was a large fox squirrel that I got near the mouth of the Suwannee River in Florida, which is as low as you can get east of the Mississippi unless you want to drown.
These trophies were two of my best conversation pieces. Many visitors would ask questions about them before they even looked at the Dall sheep head on a nearby wall, the wide mule-deer rack in velvet, or the grizzly and polar bear rugs on the floor. The squirrels seemed to have a special charm.
They had for me. When I looked at a little boomer flattened against a limb, I could almost smell the fragrance of spruce trees. The fox squirrel, sitting upright on a piece of driftwood with a pecan in its paws, took me back to a long sweep of the lower Suwannee with limpid black waters, forests of pine and magnolia trees, live oaks, and wild pecans.
Though I lived hundreds of miles away, I spent many days on the Suwannee, most of them with J.L. Stephens, a lifelong outdoor friend and partner. Every body calls him Steve. At this time, we were near the end of a float trip by canoe from the Okefenokee Swamp to the Gulf of Mexico. It was fall and squirrel season was on, so occasionally we were able to vary our diet of fish with a pot of squirrel stew cooked over the campfire.
I lined my sights on what I could see of the head. Then suddenly I wasn’t looking at the squirrel anymore but at a blur of action. A small blue darter hawk shot through an opening and hit the squirrel with such force that both fell into the drapery of moss.
We enjoyed collecting the ingredients for those stews, and to make the sport more challenging we devoted our attention to fox squirrels. They weren’t nearly as plentiful as the grays, but one big fox was all we needed for a meal.
We went about it the hard way. We hunted for the big fellows with a .22 rifle, and we did it from the bow of a moving canoe. In those days, we were a lot more accurate with a rifle than we became in later years, and conceited enough to think we could shoot every squirrel in the head.
But within an hour of camping time that afternoon, we hadn’t picked up a single squirrel for the pot. It was beginning to look as though we’d have to beach the canoe, go ashore, and be satisfied with a gray squirrel or two. It was my turn at the paddle.
Steve was in the bow, casing the trees ashore.
“Hold it right here,” he said quietly. “There’s the head of a big fox sticking over that second contour of the river bank. He’s right beyond the pecan tree.”
I didn’t see it until my paddle flashed to dig in and hold our canoe against the current. My movement startled the squirrel, and I watched him lope away to the base of a pine more than a dozen yards behind him.
“Now if that ain’t just like an old grandaddy fox,” Steve said. “A gray will take to the nearest tree and file his flight plan through the air. A fox sticks to the ground wherever he can. We’ve got him now, though. He’ll go plumb to the top of that pine.”
The squirrel hit the base of the tree, swung to the side away from us, and we heard the rattle of bark as he climbed.
“We’d better go get this one,” Steve said.
I beached the canoe on a sandbar. We stepped ashore, climbed the bank beyond the bar, and moved around until we were able to spot the squirrel. It had squeezed through a curtain of moss in the dense upper crown of the tree and flattened it self on one of the topmost limbs. We could see only a part of its head and the upper contour of its body.
“Try him,” Steve said.
I lined my sights on what I could see of the head. Then suddenly I wasn’t looking at the squirrel anymore but at a blur of action. A small blue darter hawk shot through an opening in the tree and hit the squirrel with such force that both fell into the drapery of moss.
I lowered my rifle, wanting to see the outcome of this little drama. I never had a chance to find out. Steve’s gun barked almost in my ear, and the sound brought that treetop skirmish to a sudden conclusion. The hawk was the first to recover. It tumbled out of the fight, perched momentarily on a limb, and then was gone beyond the heavy crown. The squirrel scrambled back to its perch, stopped there as though confused, and Steve’s second shot sent it tumbling to the ground.
“Why didn’t you wait to see the rest of that show?” I said.
“That hawk was getting ready to carry off our supper,” he replied.
We examined the squirrel. It appeared that both creatures had been in a fight for survival. Some of the hawk’s feathers were clogged under the squirrel’s claws. The squirrel’s back was punctured through the skin, but the talon marks were not deep enough to have been fatal.
I skinned the squirrel carefully, rolled the hide in salt, and later had the mount made. That was the fox squirrel I kept on my mantel.
Fox vs. Gray Squirrels
The fox squirrel has long been one of my favorite small-game animals. I like him for many reasons. One is his charm. At times this prince of the treetops seems to be almost un real. His movements are majestic, never as nervous or quick or fidgety as his small cousin. He’ll take many of the same precautions, such as go ing up the wrong side (for me) of a tree and keeping the trunk between us when I’m trying for a shot. He seems to be almost nonchalant about making such decisions.
Compared to the gray, he is clumsy in the trees and seems to prefer to stay on the ground in more open woods. Possibly he feels more secure with solid earth under his feet, for he is large and heavy. Some may weigh as much as three pounds, but the average fox is smaller.
The gray hoards his food, making caches of acorns and other nuts or burying them in the ground. The fox, at times of year when food is plentiful, stuffs himself until he builds a heavy layer of fat as a re serve against the cold months. He’s fat in the fall, and that’s one reason many gunners devote their hunting days to him, and why there is such a tremendous kill each year. Game men count the take in millions.
Some sources list 10 varieties of fox squirrels, such as the Southern, Northern, Mangrove, Bryant, and Texas. Others say there are only two, the Eastern, and the Apache that lives in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona and in Mexico.
The subspecies of the Eastern cover a vast territory. They range from western New York and Pennsylvania to western North Dakota, and from there generally southward to the Rio Grande in Texas, where they spill over into Mexico.
The fox has an even larger range than the gray, but within it are many regions where the fox is rare or doesn’t occur at all. But even in these areas he seems to be becoming more numerous. No one remembered ever seeing a fox squirrel in my home county in mid-Georgia until several years ago. Now quite frequently some hunter brings one in.
The Latin name of the fox squirrel is Sciurus niger. Niger means black. Possibly the only fox squirrel the botanist Linnaeus, who gave this squirrel its Latin name, ever saw was the black phase. If so, he missed a lot. The fox comes in a variety of color ranging from light gray through several shades of red and yellow to solid black.
Fox Squirrel Hunting
One of the most interesting afternoons I ever spent with fox squirrels was when I hunted on the rim of the Altamaha Swamp in lower Georgia. An outdoor partner had told me about a small, abandoned farm there that had some pecan trees on it.
I had parked my camouflaged carcass in a favorable spot to cover the trees with a .22 Long Rifle ball. The first squirrel came over a little bluff and poked around on the ground for pecans. When he was near enough for a sure kill, I put my sights on him. A movement off to the right caused me to shift my eyes in that direction, and I saw a second fox. He was in a patch of sunlight, and the way the rays hit him made him shine like gold. I lowered my rifle to wait until he was within range. He was followed in minutes by a large russet-colored animal that could have been a small red fox with a large brush.
Within half an hour, seven squirrels were feeding in the old pecan grove. One was solid black, one gray with a black nose, and one almost orange colored. This was the largest concentration of the big squirrels I have ever seen. I was so fascinated with the scene that I didn’t disturb it with a rifle shot.
Much of my hunting for the big fox has been in Georgia. Possibly the state’s best populations of the squirrels are on the coastal islands, where they are relatively undisturbed and acorns and other mast are plentiful.
In my younger years, many of my most enjoyable hunting days were spent along the backwoods creeks and rivers of the lower coastal plain. Some of the swampland bordering the streams was spongy, miry, or covered with shallow water; much was flat lowland, normally dry except in time of flood. The forests of oaks, gums, and other mixed hard woods, with scattered pines, grew to magnificent girth and height. In certain places the canopy of tree crowns was so dense that only splotches of sunlight could penetrate it, and the understory of vegetation was negligible. This was the kind of setting fox squirrels liked. Grays were often closer to the sunlit edges.
Many of these choice spots have been sacrificed to man’s greed. Clean streams were converted into muddy ditches. The forest giants went down before the saw and ax, and anything left was bulldozed to the ground so that pine trees might be planted for pulpwood.
Shortly after dawn you might sit quietly under a hickory, oak, or den tree around the edge of a swamp or lowland and fill your hunting bag with grays. Not so with foxes. Each fox had his own address, and the dens or bulky leaf apartments might be hundreds of yards apart. You had to stalk to find their occupants.
I spent many hours walking a step or two, then pausing long seconds to look and listen. This worked fine when the ground was soft or damp and I could move noiselessly. But I couldn’t do it often. Most times I had to move across a carpet of dry autumn leaves, and doing so was about like trying to sneak across a mound of potato chips.
Steve taught me how to travel soundlessly through the lowland wilderness.
One brisk November afternoon after we’d come in from a day with bobwhites, he asked if I’d like to go after a few fox squirrels in the morning.
“I’ll be ready at daylight,” I said.
“You should know better than that,” he said. “The old fox is a gentleman of leisure. If it’s a bit chilly, he won’t be stirring until the sun is well up.”
“Where’ll we hunt?”
“I’ve got a creek swamp on the back side of the place,” Steve said. “It’s not very wide, but full of tall scattered pines. It’s just the type of territory an old fox likes. I like to hunt it bare-footed but you’d better wear these rubber boots.” He tossed them to me.
“Barefooted?” I asked.
“The quietest way you can go through that swamp,” he said, “is by wading down the little creek. You don’t make any noise. If you move slow enough, you can sometimes get close to one of the foxes before he pays any attention to you.”
Steve started on one fork of the little branch and I took the other.
I put Long Rifle cartridges into the magazine of my rifle and jacked one into the chamber. I’d brought along my Marlin, mounted with a 4X scope.
I could feel the cold water through the boots. But the stream was only inches deep and ran over solid sand, so there was no problem with footing. I moved downstream, placing one foot in front of the other so carefully that I barely made more than a ripple.
The sun rose above the trees and splotched the swamp floor with patch es of golden light. I saw my first squirrel on the ground about 50 yards away. He was humped over, digging at something in the leaf carpet. I moved slowly ahead until he straightened up, then I stopped. When he went back to digging, I moved ahead again. We repeated this until I was less than 20 yards away. Then he caught my movement, stood for a few seconds on his hind legs, and then moved gracefully to the trunk of a huge longleaf pine. He didn’t seem hurried or afraid. When he stopped 20 feet on the near side of the pine to recheck my position, I was ready. I put the crosshairs on his head and squeezed the trigger. I didn’t know how beautiful a specimen I had collected until I had the squirrel in my hand. It was the color of a penny and had white ears and a white nose.
I passed up a fox that was gray and had a black head. I believe I could have taken it, but I was look ing for something more striking. Around midmorning I saw one that was solid black except for the markings around its head. I studied it through the scope and decided that getting it would make a perfect end of a perfect morning hunt.
No doubt remained that I’d been outfoxed.
The squirrel had other notions. Apparently it had seen me first. It seemed to stand on its tiptoes for a long minute until I moved. Then it turned and headed for a live oak on the edge of the swamp. No other tree grew near enough to provide an aerial passage from the oak to larger timber. Mentally I put that ebony trophy in the bag.
Keeping my eye on the live oak, I stepped out of the creek and walked slowly toward where I had last seen the squirrel. I circled the tree, studying every limb, every clump of moss, trying to see an ear, nose, foot, or tip of tail. I saw no hollow or other opening into which the fox might have gone. No loose bark fell to indicate that it was circling to keep the tree trunk between us.
I spent half an hour at this, then sat down for another half hour. By that time, had he been there, he would have moved. When no doubt remained that I’d been outfoxed, I moved down to the junction of the forks where I met Steve. When I told him about the black, his eyes crinkled.
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“I know that one,” he said. “I tried him myself a few times until I finally learned how he gets away. He pulled the same stunt of going to the big oak, and I’d never see him again after he reached it. Then one day I had a sudden notion. After he disappeared, I made a beeline toward the tree and ran a few steps to one side. I caught a glimpse of the squirrel on the slope behind the oak. He was making for a big pine, which I later learned was his nest tree. What he does is go around that live oak, put it between you and him, and then stay out of sight until he gets to his apartment.”
“Do you think fox squirrels are that smart?” I asked.
“That one is,” he said.
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