September, 1945 



Browx ^' Ye.ager: Squirrels ix Illinois 



519 



practice. He found that the majority of 

 leaf nests shot into did not harbor squir- 

 rels, and in instances where animals were 

 present they usually did not jump from 

 the nests if hit ; if they were killed, he 

 believed they usualh' were not recovered. 



The types of guns used by Illinois squir- 

 rel hunters are indicated in table 24, which 

 is based on 158 returned questionnaires. 



A carving, fig. 38, by an unknown in- 

 dividual is indicative of public interest in 

 .squirrels. 



Kill 



Through the cooperation of the Illinois 

 Department of Conservation, a good esti- 

 mate of the 1942 squirrel kill in Illinois, 

 based on hunters' kill return cards, is 

 available. The total was 1,463,305 

 squirrels. A breakdown of the 1942 kill, 

 as disclosed by the present investigation, is 

 presented in table 25. We have no com- 

 parable data for 1940 and 1941, the hunt- 

 ing seasons principally represented in this 

 study. 



Table 24. — Types of firearms used by 158 

 Illinois squirrel hunters reporting in 1940. 



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Fig. 38. — Carving found on a beech tree, 

 Alexander Countv, 1941. 



The dressed weights of squirrels, heads 

 oii, based on a small series handled by the 

 writers, averaged about 0.98 pound for fox 

 squirrels and about 0,60 pound for gray 

 squirrels. These weights applied to the 

 figure of 1,463,305 animals, approximately 

 65 per cent of them fox squirrels, indicate 

 that the 1942 squirrel kill in Illinois rep- 

 resented about 1,240 000 pounds of high- 

 quality meat, practically all of which was 

 used for human food. The annual scjuir- 

 rel kill in Illinois is thus belic\ed to repre- 



Table 25.— Calculated squirrel kill in Illinois in 1942 based on hunters' kill return cards 

 of the Illinois Department of Conservation. 



