No 2 of us. Me and pops. Yea club in George county on black creek but just as many or more in the pecan trees in the yard. They are hell on our pecan crop every year
I can make you money AND help your pecan crop. I can bring a truck full of coonasses for a paid weekend hunt. I imagine people around there don't eat them like they do in Louisiana??? I have 28 killed in 4 hunts. Have given most of them to the property owners.
Actually we eat the hell out of them. Pretty much got a family commune here.....parents, grandmaw, uncle and fam, brother and fam, and my family all have houses right here on the hill. So it takes a good many to feed us all. These in the yard are by no means safe. I prob won't go kill any more at the camp but will kill another 30-40 right here the next few days when I have time to shoot and clean the same day. But that is a good thought though....it is easy pickings in these about half leafless pecans right now. People around my place are still fairly country. Ain't many critters safe from the iron pot around here whether its on my hill or pretty much anywhere else around us.
I must admit. In Ocean Springs there ain't many folk that eat squirrels. I never have but I'm not opposed to it either.
nah you just aint runnin in the right circles......or maybe I am runnin in the wrong ones? Got a pickin basket full of cousins and friends scattered all around OS from Fontainebleau to St Andrews into Gulf Park Estates and even into downtown and they all eat em. Not out of the yard as far as I know except for one older cousin in his 80s and he traps em in live traps and knocks em in the head with a shaved persimmon branch and in the pot they go. Coons the same way. If the chickens had ever made it to his yard he would have eaten them too. Now most of these are of course the older OS residents that used to be able to hunt right there. My grandpaw told me that whole area along Big Ridge was the best squirrel hunting in the SE when he was growing up in St Martin on Brittany Bayou.....said outside of seafood and more domestic type animals like the cattle and hogs that they used to run down there, squirrels were some of the main meat that anyone around there could get. Hard to picture it now but my way back family used to run free range cattle and hogs in that whole area down there. Even used to swim em out to Deer Island. Wasnt all that long ago...grandpaw just passed last year in his late 70s and it was in his early life that it was still happening. enough that he could remember it but said he was very young so prob not much more than 70 years ago.
Went camping a few years back on Deer Island. Woke up to a bunch of dogs barking. 2 rednecks walked in front of our camp with ropes draped around them and big bowie knives hanging from their belts. I asked them what they were doing. They were fucking hog hunting with dogs on Deer Island. You could hear dogs in the distance & they said that their dog must have one. I asked how they would kill it and he pointed to his knife. I had no idea hogs even lived on Deer Island much less people hunted them with dogs.
yea there were def hogs on Deer and Cat Islands pre-Katrina. The ones on deer were very likely the descendents of the ones that used to free range there....not sure now if any of them are still there or if any have been released out there since the hurricane. Was this before or after Katrina that you saw them? Cat Island actually was/is basically a private hunting preserve.....the owners had released a good many whitetail and fallow deer out there along with hogs and a few other exotics. Used to see the hogs and fallow deer regularly in the marsh on the south side well up in south bayou. Had an acquaintance slip in there one day with his bow and killed one of the whitetails....it was a giant. Kept running his mouth about it and of course word got around and wound up that they had DNA of the deer on file somewhere and they busted in on him with a warrant and got all the meat he had in his freezer and found that some of it matched.....not sure what all the fines were and all but from what I understand of it they threw the book at him. From what I was told and based on what I have seen(which is nothing while out there fishing when I would normally see at least a couple fallow every trip) Katrina pretty much wiped out all those animals from Cat but they have probably released a bunch more back out there by now.
oh and dont knock that hog hunting with dogs and knives out till you try it......it is a hell of a lot of fun. Now i go the trap em, cut em if male, fatten up, then butcher em route rather than the dogs but that is not near as much fun.....but you def get a much better meat yield with I think a 150% better quality of meat though.
I wasn't knocking it. I was just shocked by it. I never thought I would awaken to such a scene on Deer Island.
Best friend bringing his 6 year old over in the morning to work on some of these yard squirrels....should be fun. He will be after em with my old single barrel .410....old gun has knocked down a pile of squirrels and rabbits and even a few deer. Hasnt been used though in prob 20 years other than shooting snakes. Pretty excited for it to get put to use a little bit and cant wait till my boy is ready to start with it....prob another 1.5-2 years before he will be able to handle it being he just turned 3. Buddy and his boy are the only ones in his house that eat em.......his wife is an alabama transplant (and bama fan and with us both somehow managing to marry bama fans it makes for some wild early November weekends) and wont touch em, wont even give em a try......so we will prob put a batch of squirrel dumplings in the big iron pot over some pecan coals outside sat evening at my place.
