Mobile technology: hunting black squirrels from an outdoor office
By Bob Hooftallen

My how the world has changed. From this 'outdoor office,' I worked for three hours until the battery on my laptop was nearly drained. And from the mountain's top, my cell phone worked perfectly- I could make calls, but not receive them! The woods proved to be a productive place for me from a work perspective, but I got skunked in my effort to find a black squirrel. I was able to photograph an eastern chipmunk, which got within two feet of my boots when I took the photo at left.

I was lucky enough to interview Dave Drakula shortly after he finished his book about hunting.

It was a great interview; more of a conversation, really, liked most good interviews are. Dave was an incredible outdoor writer, my personal favorite. What I loved about Dave's style was the way he described situations, sights and sounds.

I asked him his secret to such vivid descriptions. He smiled and said "If you want to write about something do it. And when you are doing it take notes. You can't write about being cold if you aren't sitting there freezing."

Today, I am taking Dave's advice. I am on a mountain top, lying on dry oak leaves, typing away on this computer, waiting for squirrels, or better yet turkeys, to stroll into .22 range.

It'd be nice if one or the other did, but I'm content writing and thinking in t h i s incredible setting. Today is Thursday, Nov. 12. It's partly cloudy and 63 degrees. It's only noon, but the trees in these thick woods are casting long shadows. It is late autumn and the earth's tilt robs this hemisphere of direct sun.

There is a gentle breeze that clatters the leaves against tree limbs and trunks. It sounds like falling rain. The temperature is warm, but the breeze, like the long shadows, carries the signs of the season.

A passing jet, a screaming hawk and a noisy crow are all that challenge the breeze for the right to be heard. The occasional chickadee calls its own name. No squirrels. Heck, I haven't even seen any chipmunks.

Patience is the key to squirrel hunting. If you find a spot that has acorns, beechnuts or hickory nuts and hang around long enough, you'll see squirrels. If it's a windy day, forget it. Squirrels don't like wind. It make balancing in the tree tops difficult, I guess.

I walked about 500 yards to get to this spot. I had my children here a month ago. We brought snacks and drinks and sat around "scouting for squirrels." We saw four. They were severely outnumbered by ticks, a parasite that has reached near epidemic proportions in Cameron County. I wonder when we h u m a n s will get enough o f them and try to e x t e r m i n a t e them?

Incredibly my mobile phone works from this l o c a t i o n .

Although my phone

won't ring, it'll call out. Now that's a perfect scenario if ever there's been one.

I have been seated for 15 minutes. It takes that long for an area to settle down after you've moved into it, sometimes longer. I'll give it another 15 minutes. If I don't see anything, I'll move further down the ridgeline where I know there are some grapevines. Heck, I might even catch a grouse roosting there, although it's more likely I'll watch one fly away wishing I had a shotgun.

I don't, though. I brought one of the only new guns dad ever bought for me, a model 120 Savage .22 rifle. I love the gun. It is single shot, but so accurate that for squirreling, you shouldn't need more than one shot.

I am only here for a black squirrel. One of the four we saw here several weeks ago was a big black squirrel. I'd love to get one mounted. I have shot many in the past, but always with shotguns and always when I was too young and too foolish to appreciate such things.

I won't shoot grey squirrels because my family won't eat them and that would make it senseless killing. And just like clockwork, I hear the familiar crunch of the leaves that I know to be squirrels hopping somewhere below me. A grey squirrel is about 35 yards away now doing who knows what, probably squirreling away winter food reserves. I could easily take a shot, but it would break the peace of this and knowing my luck I'd probably hit him just because I don't really want to.

Not shooting was hard for me to do, but the squirrel has made its way out of the area and I wish it hadn't. As much as I enjoyed watching it, shooting it would have been far more fun and despite the cruelty in that statement, it's true.

Half angry, the next one won't be so lucky, I tell myself.

But, the opportunity doesn't come so I've moved closer to the grapevines. There are scattered beechnuts in this area and the chipmunks are deafening. As annoying as they may be, their presence indicates that squirrels, too, ought to be here since they each eat the same foods.

Within the usual 15 minutes a fat, fluffy grey squirrel barked his disapproval of me from 30 feet up, of all things, a maple tree. He was staring straight at me and when I grabbed for my camera, he spun around to the other side of the tree, sprinted to the ground and ran straight away from me as fast as he could go. The woods are full of activity. I am holding out for a black squirrel.

I was astonished when I looked at the spot I last saw the squirrel in the tree and saw its twin sitting there. I put it in the scoop and then it all made sense: the tree was hollow there and there was clearly a family of squirrels living in it. "I wonder if the odd black-phased one's in there," I thought.

The grey one stared at me long enough and I decided no more Mr. Nice Guy. Fortunately for him, I haven't hit a squirrel with a .22 in years and I didn't break my streak with this one. I watched him scamper through the tree tops after the shot. He'll live to see another day and I'm free of the responsibilities of taking care of an expired squirrel.

I sat for another hour, hoping to see deer move through. There were a couple incredible buck rubs on some of the striped maples about 100 yards behind me. No luck, though. Just chipmunks, lots of chipmunks.

Before I knew it, I needed an electrical outlet for this computer and the duties and responsibilities of my occupation were more than I could manage in the middle of the woods.



I got some pretty decent shots of the cedar waxwings

that have been working over the fruit on our flowering crab apple trees.

None of them are good enough to publish yet, so I am holding off and hoping the weekend will provide me better opportunities. Time is running short with them, though. The apples are getting scarce.