Squirrel Hunting

Hi;

Yesterday I went squirrel for the morning.  It was a nice day for it, in the low 60's and sunny.  I did not get any but I have a story to tell.

When I first got into the woods and pick out a place to stand, I saw a partially bent over small tree limb just bobbing away.  From the looks of it, I thought a squirrel had been sitting on the limb and I scarred it away.  Figuring that was the case I decided to stay there and wait for the squirrel to reappear.  The woods were quite for over 10 minutes.  No squirrel chatter, no leaves rustling, just some birds singing.  All of a sudden behind some low brush about 30 yards away I heard a big commotion.  I thought at first maybe a deer was coming though, but no.  All of a sudden on a bent over tree trunk (maybe 10 feet off the ground), a squirrel comes tearing up the tree trunk. When it got to the apex of the bend a hawk came swooping down trying to pick up the squirrel in it's talons.  Fortunately for the squirrel, he jumped off the tree trunk just as the hawk was reaching out to grab him.  The squirrel ran off to safety.  The hawk was making a bee line towards me! With in 5 yards of me he turned slightly and flew away.  Whew!
From that point on any squirrel in the area had fled.  I heard all around me the barking squirrels.  Time for me to move to a new area.  I followed one of the barking squirrels and set out to hunt that one.  To bad for me the squirrels I did find were all way up in the trees, hidden most of the time by the leaves.  Oh well.  maybe next time I get to go out the leaves will have turned and beginning to fall.

Take care, good hunting and good shooting.
M.