Fishing for squirrels

This fishing trip turned into a hunting trip

It was one of those November days that was just cool enough for a sweatshirt. My friend Curtis and I were in a farm pond catching bass ranging from 4 to 6 pounds when something caught his eye.

Curtis has hunted and fished all over the country, and has a dedicated trophy room in his house, where he’s got mounts of an 8-point buck, a 10-point buck, a 12-point buck, along with a full mount of a bear, and an 8-pound bass, a 10-pound bass, a 12-pound bass…you get the picture.

But one thing he didn’t have in his trophy room was scurrying up a tree on the banks of the pond.

“Fox squirrel,” Curtis said.

And with that, he began paddling toward shore. His focus on fishing was gone. He wanted that fox squirrel.

Curtis paddled us back to shore, where he began searching his truck. He had a .22 rifle, but no ammunition. A little more searching produced a .25 caliber handgun, with one round.

Back in the boat, I tried to reason with him. The fish were biting, he could get a fox squirrel later. But his mind was made up.

Once we made it to the far side of the pond, Curtis caught sight of the fox squirrel, and appeared to go straight from sitting in the boat to clamoring up a tree in one motion.

Soon, I heard the crack of his handgun, then the sound of the fox squirrel barking and sliding down the tree, trying desperately to gain footing. He’d hit the squirrel all right, but that little creature was doing all it could to stay out of his hands.

Finally, the fox squirrel’s claws gripped the tree enough to stop, seemingly inches above Curtis, who pocketed the gun and swiped unsuccessfully for the squirrel.

With its last attempt at survival, the fox squirrel got a sudden burst of energy, ran up the tree, and dove headfirst into a hollowed out section of the adjacent dead, but standing, oak tree.

The squirrel was much too high for Curtis to climb. And worse, the squirrel’s tail was hanging out of the hole, as if giving Curtis the finger.

Without a word, Curtis got back in the boat and paddled toward our fishing hotspot. When just short of it, he spun the boat around, picked up his bass rod, and made a precision cast, high toward the dead tree, where his Rat-L-Trap disappeared in a tuft of squirrel hair.

With a quick hookset, the squirrel sailed through the air, toward our boat, then the taxidermist, and eventually to Curtis’ trophy room, where it is fittingly mounted on the wall with animal trophies to one side of it, and fish trophies to the other.