Of Corvidae and Camouflage
When my wife and I bought our first home, she found a place “On the Other Side of the World”. In other words, while we had built our lives in northwest Houston and she had found a likely house in northeast Houston. To most folks this would seem like no big deal but the reality was almost fifty miles going in a straight line (Metro Houston is a big place). We discussed travel to work and starting anew in a strange area but eventually went to see the place.
Of course, she loved it.
We did make the move and one of the benefits unbeknownst to me at the time was the fact that the property backed up upon a flood plane of the San Jacinto River including many square miles of swamp forest containing deer, bird life, squirrels, nutria, snakes of many descriptions and crows. In between my initial fascination with archery and my current fascination with archery there was a long spell of fascination with everything firearms related. To take advantage of the squirrel opportunities in my new woods and to satisfy my craving for accuracy I assembled an inexpensive scoped, single shot, bolt action Savage .22 rifle. After working through some hitches in the accuracy department the rifle became a tack driver from which no squirrel was ever safe.
Now I know that the concept of hunting tree dwellers with a rifle will no doubt raise safety questions regarding shooting skyward with a rim fire instead of using the traditional shotgun; however, I placed a personal limitation on my activities in that there would be no housing behind the trajectory of the shot AND there would be a substantial portion of a tree behind my target to catch the round. One may say “He must never have had a single shot!” Far from it, many squirrels found their way into the black iron skillet where my Mother-in-Law (God rest her beautiful soul.) concocted a gravy born of the Great Depression and Heaven and transported to our home via a bag of flour and some butter along with some salt.
My wedding to the .22 came from having past bitten on many a shotgun pellet whilst dining on various waterfowl. One must remember this was the time before small hand-held metal detectors were readily available to easily find errant balls of shot waiting to destroy vital masticating surfaces. When I was young, I promised myself that when I “grew up” I would never attempt the ingestion of metal objects again, if I had any say in the matter. Numerous .22 squirrel dinners produced zero projectiles in the pan, on the plate and more importantly between my teeth.
The squirrel rifle was then pressed into service fighting the Never-Ending War of the Snakes. Many was the afternoon when walking the dog along the edge of the pond bordering the woods that various and sundry snakes met their doom at the muzzle end of the now famed squirrel rifle. Death came in the form of a high velocity .22 long rifle lead bullet. Incidentally, I was using the exact same load that worked so well on the tree dwelling rodents.
It was during the protracted War of the Snakes that I adopted the use of a cardboard toilet tissue paper roll taped to the objective lens bell of the scope to cut reflections from the water and a shooting stick. In most instances I conducted my operations against the invading snake army in the late afternoon and as such faced almost directly into the setting Texas sun. The stick is an Aspen memento from our honeymoon camping in the Rockies of Colorado. I won’t get into where the cardboard tube came from. The electrician’s tape I used on the tube is still the original installed some twenty years ago. I think if the tube were now removed, I would not recognize the rifle.