Close in to Chicago, you're going to be hard pressed to find anywhere to hunt squirrels after the end of September. I don't check the areas south, but it looks like the further you go into the northwest corner of the state, the more state property there is for hunting squirrels. Considering that squirrel season ends February 15th, you have to expect to travel to enjoy this hunt.
Marseilles State Fish and Wildlife Area is probably one of the most convenient in the area. For me an easy 45 minute drive. Marseilles shuts down to squirrel hunters on January 17th though, the end of archery deer season. I don't understand why they don't allow squirrel hunting like the majority of the other state parks. A simple check in station. Sign in, sign out, record your kill. Nobody needs to be there to monitor you.
Years ago I had it on my radar to hit the northwest corner and all the different properties. I did get to fish and hunt the Thompson and Salem Units in one day a few years ago, but I never got back there. It's a thrill to spend the early morning hours quietly sitting in the woods, then go fish the Apple River in the afternoon for smallmouth. Was hoping to take home a squirrel/fish dinner, but I had opportunities to shoot at a couple of squirrels and let them walk away without firing a shot. I just sat there watching them wander off without bothering to raise my shotgun.
To this day I have no idea why I did that.
I think this season I'm going to plan a couple of late January into February trips out to the northwest corner. Tapley Woods, Witkowsky and maybe back to the Salem Unit. It's a long ride, but in the long run it could be worth it. Living on the edge of Chicago if you want to hunt you have no choice but to put some miles on your car. That area being as beautiful as it is could be just what is needed come that time of year.
Right up to the night before I couldn't decide whether to go to Morrison or Marseilles. While cleaning my guns and buffing out my old Savage .22/410 over under, the decision was pretty much made for me. I would have to lock up the old Savage for the year if I didn't put it to use this weekend. Morrison it would be. I loaded up the car the night before so I could groggily wander out the door at 4 in the morning and hit the road.
I measured the distance to Morrison when I went out there November 1st. Eighty eight miles from door to gate. Takes less than two hours on the back roads I prefer to drive. When I was signing in I noticed the same names on the list already signed in that had been there on the 1st. A group of six. On the 1st they were shooting up the area they were hunting and I figured they were just shooting at everything that moved. I would be wrong. They had gone to the area I wanted to hunt so I picked another area to be away from them. That would be wrong again.
In the parking lot with one other hunter in the dark. You're 30 feet from each other so it just seems natural to strike up a conversation. Met Bill from Freeport. In the brief 10 minutes while getting ready we compared notes about the 1st, all the shooting from the group of six, why we come out here just for squirrels, the other places we want to try further northwest and the chance Bill recently had to go hunting with his 80 year old dad.
One of those coffee'd up yet relaxed conversations you can have only with another hunter, a total stranger, in the dark of early dawn. Bill wasn't leaving till he got his limit that day and neither was I.
Still another wrong.
We bid each other good hunting and he wandered south while I headed for the far northwest corner. An absolutely perfect morning for squirrel hunting, in an absolutely perfect oak forest, ruined by the total absence of squirrels for the first few hours. I did get to spook up another deer. From the south only a couple of shots were heard. From across the lake where the group of 6 had gone, it was like a war zone again. I knew I had picked the wrong side of the lake and that just proved it.
On the way back toward the car I treed a squirrel and sat and waited him out. Eventually he got bored and came out to see if I was gone. I thought he was close and opted to use the 410. I got what I thought was a nice clean kill. Then the squirrel started crawling through the woods. By the time I got to him he had crawled into a hole under an old rotted stump. All you could see was his ass end at the back of the hole with the rest of him up into the stump.
I had been confronted by this once before with horrible results and I was determined to end this quickly. Did you know that when a squirrel is threatened and you try to grab it's tail all its fur will come off so you can't get a good hold of it? Neither did I till then. I poked and prodded it with my gun barrel. Did the same from a different angle with a stick. I did everything I could think of to get this thing to come out of the hole. None of it worked. Finally, I lay on my stomach, put the barrel of the gun up into the stump in the general direction of where the squirrels head should be and pulled the trigger on the .22. The squirrel slumped down into the bottom of the hole with a clean shot through its head. There's just something not very sportsman like when you have to end a chase this way.
The last time I was here I had knocked 3 squirrels out of the trees that disappeared before I could get to them. I decided that the 410 just didn't have the knock down power I was used to with my 20 gauge. Either that or I had to get much closer.
The morning basically turned into a walk in the woods, lots of woods.
I was looking for anything interesting to photograph. When I was here on the 1st the woods were filled with bluebirds. Not one was seen this time. I was hoping to get a better picture of one.
Years ago I used to hang out with quite a few sculptors. I knew one that would carve wood into beautiful sensuous shapes. He never got as close as what I find lying around in the woods.
By eleven o'clock I was back at the car. Much too early to be heading home and I only had one squirrel in the bag. Was going to wind up being a long day.
Part 2 later.