From the intensity of the yelling, you’d have thought the quarry was, well, bigger.
Gunner, the champion feist, had let loose with a series of frantic barks and howls just a moment earlier. We’d all rushed in, eyes skyward, full of anticipation.
Dallas Middleton hollered first.
Squirrel!” he yelled. “Squirrel, squirrel!”
In the time it took to look up, Dallas was gone, loping off at first, then sprinting all out through the woods in an attempt to keep up with the gray. It, too, was running, racing along branches and leaping from tree to tree as it tried to make good its escape.
After a couple of hundred feet it stopped and tried to hide in the Y where a branch met the main tree trunk.
Someone in the trailing, panting group – who will never be clear, given all the firing that took place in the next few seconds – hit it with a round from their .22-caliber air rifle and another squirrel was added to the day’s bag.
In the end it wasn’t enough.
Our team, despite collecting more than a dozen grays from private ground previously untouched by squirrel hunters, didn’t win the 2017 Squirrel Master Classic. The title, and the squirrel-shaped trophies that go with it, went to the squad captained by Travis “T-Bone” Turner of Bone Collector fame.
But the Classic, in its fourth year, is about so much more than that.
“We have a politically incorrect sport,” said Jackie Bushman, founder of Buckmasters and one of the organizers of the Classic. “It’s tough to tell the story. But I always say, if you’ve got just five minutes to sit down with somebody to tell our story, it’s second to none.”
That’s the goal, really, to share that message.
Held at Southern Sportsman Lodge near Hanesville, Ala., the Classic pairs some of the biggest names in the outdoor television industry – Turner, Bushman, Michael Waddell , Doug Koenig and others – with top-shooting teens enrolled in 4-H shooting programs across Alabama. They hunted together and, this year for the first time, shot in competitions involving everything from concept air rifles to Dairy Red Ryders.
It was all great fun, to be sure.
But the intent is primarily to bridge a generational gap and get adults with a passion for hunting to pass on their love to those youngsters.
“If we don’t engage and recruit young shooters, we’re not going to have a job to do. It’s that simple,” said Andy Carroll, vice president of marketing for GAMO USA, the air rifle manufacturer which sponsors the Classic.
“So we’ve got to bring the young ones up and make them enjoy the sport and participate in the sport and pass this on to their own children down the line.”
There’s no time to waste, said Keith Higginbotham, president of GAMO. In an increasingly urban and technology-centered world, where guns and hunting often get a bad rap, hunters and shooters have a “big responsibility,” he said.
“We’ve got to pass this on. We always assume that somebody else is going to do it. That I don’t have to worry about it because somebody else is going to pass it on,” Higginbothom said.
“Well, we’re losing those days. It’s our responsibility.”
Organizers of the Squirrel Master Classic hope that teens from Alabama’s 4H shooting program who earned the right to compete will share their experience and serve as ambassadors for the outdoor sports.
The Classic is designed to take that on.
Champion squirrel dogs are imported from around the country. Ours was Gunner, owned by Victor Bridges of Alton, Mo. He would race – literally, running non-stop and covering who knows how many miles over the course of the day – through the woods and tree squirrels as he went, on the fly.
“You start them when they’re a puppy,” Bridges said. “A lot of it is instinct, though, and breeding. A good dog just seems to have it.”
These all did.
“These are world-class squirrel dogs that go all across the country competing every weekend. These are the best of the best,” Bushman said.
“If that dog barks at that tree, you’d best go look at that tree because there’s a squirrel in there. That dog ain’t lying. They can smell what you can’t see. I learned that.”
Teams of hunters, each with one 4-H teen, spent the day following those dogs and shooting squirrels. All were equipped with the same rifles, GAMO’s new Swarm Maxxim, which made its debut at the event.
“Every time you cock the gun, you rotate the internal magazine. It loads the pellet for you,” Carroll said. “It’s the only break barrel cocker on the market that does that.”
It’s capable of firing 10 shots without reloading (we’ll have a full review of it and some other air rifles soon here).
The hunting was, at times, as fast as the rifles. Coming after a day of heavy rains, it was also frequently challenging.
The often hilly terrain was one thing. Traversing it in boots that gained pounds of weight courtesy of clinging clods of legendary Alabama mud was another.
It’s no wonder the locals refer to it as “faithful soil.”
“Because if you stick with it when it’s dry, it will stick with you when it’s wet,” said Gary Lemme, Alabama Cooperative Extension Service director.
Teams checked in with their squirrels twice over the one-day competition, with the number of bushytails in the bag determining who ranked where. Total weight served as the tiebreaker. The competition was fierce, with lots of ribbing.
That made clear just how coveted the squirrel trophies were.
“The Masters in the green jackets ain’t got nothing compared to having these squirrels on your counter,” Bushman said.
In the woods, though, before and after the weigh-ins, it was all about fun. For a lot of the adult hunters, chasing squirrels brought back memories of their younger days.
Ralph Cianciarulo, who with his wife Vicki hosts the Illinois-based hunting show Archer’s Choice, has hunted from Alaska to Africa, for everything from mountain sheep to alligators. Like many, though, he started as a youngster on small game.
The Classic reminded him of what joy that brought.
“If anyone had told me years ago that we’d do a show on squirrel hunting, I’d have said no way. They’re crazy,” Ralph said.
“But this is great. This is fun.”
Hopefully, Higginbotham said, the next generation comes to realize that. He challenged not only the adults, but also the teens in the Classic to go back and talk to their friends and share their experience.
“And remember,” he said, “you can do this anywhere. You can pass this on.”
