SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 



*'We can not but pity the boy \vho has never fired a gun; he is no 

 more liumane, while his education has been sadly neglected." 



— Thoreau. 



"I have entered many woods just for the purpose of creeping through 

 the brake and the thickets. Destruction in itself was not the motive ; it was 

 an overpowering instinct for woods and fields. Yet woods and fields lose 

 half their interest without a gun — I like the power to shoot, even though I 

 may not use it." 



—Richard Jefferies. 



" Gayly chattering to the clattering 

 Of the brown nuts' downward pattering. 

 Leap the squirrels, red and gray." 



— Whittier. 



HAVE always been attracted to squirrels 

 with an uncontrollable impulse. I must 

 be on the hunt, away to the woods and to 

 their haunts. Squirrel hunting was the 

 favorite pastime of Rip Van Winkle. Why 

 should it not be ours also? 



The best kind of a day in which to 

 hunt squirrels is on a still morning, quite 

 early, when there has been a rain on the 

 day before, and the woods are yet a little 

 wet, and the leaves perhaps not through 

 their dripping; or on a late afternoon, 

 when the wind has died down and they are out for their 

 supper among the branches. Any quiet dawn or even- 

 ing will do, but after a rain is the most favorable time, 

 for they will be out then in full force, if the trees are 

 not too wet for them. In the middle of the day they 



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THE SQUIRRKL HUNTER 



