Busytails & Pecan Trees
Winter 2025
By Ron Brooks
Photos by Jimmy Jacobs
I have hunted squirrels all my life, mostly in the north Georgia hills with my uncles, grandfather, and cousins. Squirrel hunting was popular when I was young because the deer population in most southern states was sparse in the 1950s and 1960s. My whole family hunted rabbits and squirrels, and these two animals were the prime source of meat on many occasions.
When I was old enough and strong enough to hold my dad’s old Remington 550, he would take me squirrel hunting. That gun weighs eight pounds, and the length-of-pull is certainly not designed for a six-year-old boy. I am right-handed, and when I shot right-handed, my left arm had to hold the weight of the gun. I couldn’t do it. Oh, I could do it with my BB gun, but not with that 550. My cousin had the same issue being right-handed, and he solved it by holding the gun to his left shoulder so his stronger right arm could hold the gun up. From then on, I credited my cousin and an eight-pound Remington 550 for making me shoot left-handed.
In my younger years, we hunted lots of property in north Georgia. Every one of my six uncles had a squirrel dog. The dogs were no particular breed unless you consider Hienz 57 a regular breed. The mixture of dogs was amazing; most were very smart. I’m not sure how my uncles chose which dog to train. I suspect they were looking for an indicator of a particular pup’s intelligence.
The squirrel dog’s intelligence was more important than its breed.
A good squirrel dog will look up into the tree branches. A great squirrel dog will watch intently because it knows that squirrels that have gone up a tree trunk will shortly be traveling overhead from tree to tree. Whether because the dogs were well trained or because they possessed innate abilities, a great squirrel dog was what my uncles wanted. All of my uncles seemed to have great dogs. I found out years later that the indicator my uncles looked for was whether a dog could follow a squirrel from tree to tree.
Two of my uncles lived in the southern portion of Georgia, in the land of pecan groves. They were neighbors to several large growers and made friends with them. Conversations always turned to hunting in the fall and winter, and squirrel-hunting stories were swapped. It was only natural that one of the growers would complain about the squirrel population decimating his pecans. My Uncle Tachie offered the grower to take care of the squirrel problem. He would sit and kill squirrels in the grove in the fall and winter before the growing season. He told the grower he did not need a season to shoot the squirrels because they were a nuisance destroying a crop. Whether that was legally true back then, I have no idea. But for quite some time, Tachie could be found sitting under a big pecan tree with a rifle in the grove in December and January.
Now, Tachie was no bumkin. It seems to me that everything he did during his life somehow turned into money. He asked for a bounty on the squirrels, and the grower agreed. Tachie would cut the tails off the squirrels he shot and send them to Mepps Bait Company. They paid 10 cents a tail back then. Today they will give you a quarter per tail. He did this for several years in the fall and winter months and then stopped for unknown reasons. I never found out why, other than perhaps old-age boredom.
He always set up early in the morning, before daybreak. The squirrels did not hole up in the pecan trees. Instead, they chose to head into the adjacent woods for the night, where large oak and other hardwoods grew.
He took me with him on several occasions. We walked through the pecan grove toward the edge of the woods. A couple of fruit crates were sitting under the last pecan tree in that row, and we sat on them facing the woods as the sun began to show. We sat so that the big oak trees, leafless at the time, sat between us and the coming sunlight.
Tachie told me to watch a huge, old oak tree just back in the woods. The limbs were outlined against the sky. He told me to watch the lumps and bumps on the limbs. See if one of them moves; if it does, I should shoot it.
A squirrel “lump” on a limb.
This old tree had some dead limbs and a hole or two in the trunk. As I intently watched those lumps and bumps and it happened. I saw a new lump that had not been there two minutes prior. I put my scope right on the lump and fired my .22 rifle. The lump fell with a small thud.
I began to rise and get that squirrel, but Tachie told me to sit still. A few minutes later, he popped a lump. Then I popped another one. This lasted about 45 minutes before we ran out of new lumps on a limb. We got up and walked over to that big oak. On the ground, we had 12 squirrels waiting for us!
I used this squirrel tactic for many years until landowners and game wardens began requiring hunters to have the landowner’s written permission in their possession to hunt. No more stopping by some woods on the way home from work to take a couple or three squirrels home for dinner.
Much later in life, as Uncle Tachie was lying in his last hospital bed, we talked about that squirrel shoot. I mused that we shot all the squirrels and he would need to find another hunting location. He grinned and shook his head.
“Them squirrels will be back. Two weeks after I took you to that grove, I shot 13 from that same tree.”
He was right! Squirrel populations are growing every year. With the right approach, you can probably find a pecan grove owner willing to let you hunt, but only when the leaves are off the trees. I’m sure the squirrels are still giving pecan grove owners fits!
Ron Brooks was a long-time resident of metro Atlanta and now living in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association. Contact him at jbrooks@bellsouth.net.