Poll: How many guns do you own?

[lowangle al]

I have reasons for disliking grey squirrels too, I was threatened by one on my front porch as a child and had bad dreams for years. Then in college I was physically attacked by one, he didn't bite me but it was embarasing. Lastly in 1980 one stole my hackysack and took it up a tree and chewed it apart. I don't hate them, they're tasty.

The red squirrels pissed me off in 2000 when they moved into my house and evicted the swallows who had just returned to nest. I've tried closing off there entrances but couldn't get to them all. I can usually get rid of them all with the help of a trap but every few years another family moves in.

 

[Guest]

I use 22 cal. birdshot on squirrels but would like to have an accurate 22 cal. air rifle to increase my range and it might be legal to shoot within city limits.

No red squirrels here, but a plague of grey squirrels. If they weren’t destroying my bird feeders and emptying seed (and scurrying to hide somewhere in the frame of the Ford van, which worries me) I would live and let live.

I have yet to kill a squirrel with .22 dust shot, albeit using an H&R 9 shot revolver and a wide shot pattern. I’m not even sure if I have hurt them that badly. With one exception; I must have nailed one right in the testicles. He leapt 4 feet straight up in the air and continued to bounce around like a super ball for a good 60 seconds on the lawn before recovering his wits and hiding in the Hosta.

Sorry Dude, I felt kinda bad about that.

A Hav-a-heart trap and dab of peanut butter on the pan is effortless and quiet. How much of a heart you have is up to you.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Havahart...t_b_product_&gclid=CMqq5IPEndYCFUVLDQodOxUFWA

I’ve had that trap since I was 12, still works like a charm.

I have shot targets with an air rifle. B-O-R-I-N-G. Maybe if I were nine years old. Even then, I would have preferred my awesome Lone Ranger pump action water rifle, which I could sneak into school in a book bag.

I don’t guess you will ever enjoy shooting. I have an inexpensive CO2 BB pistol, a 19 shot semi auto that is both under powered and inaccurate. I still throw a CO2 cartridge in it once in a while and backyard plink. It’s the only semi-auto I own and I can go all gangster in the back yard.

Some people like to shoot, some don’t.

My original and fanciful interest in guns was for self-defense while I slept in some sleazy places in my van -- a weapon against zombies. But I settled for a baseball bat, which I've had in my van for 13 years. I added a police billy club. And I now take some or all of my four machetes, as well as most of my highly enlarged fixed and folding blade knife collection.

Maybe I should sell the shotgun or use it for a canoe anchor. Actually, my son awaiting Irma this minute in Tampa is somewhat of a gun collector, so maybe I'll give it to him someday.

You are amply armed in the Magic Bus, without bringing the Ithaca and no ammunition. I expect your son would appreciate it as more than a canoe anchor, but I think you are missing an opportunity before then. Box of shells and a session on the range, maybe with an instructor, and you’ll have a sense of what and how, or at least a day’s novelty to your routine.

I too kept a baseball bat in the truck. And an old first baseman’s mitt and ball. “I was on my way to practice and . . . . .”

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

But you have all those fancy things in your truck . . . what are they called? . . . oh yeah, tools . . . hammers, screw drivers, bolt twisters, drill presses. I don't have any of that stuff.

Actually, I do like to shoot . . . REAL GUNS. I've target shot with rifles, shotguns, revolvers and air guns, though none of them my own. Air guns are just sort of sissy. They don't go KABLAM much less KABLOOEY! But ammo and ranges around here are too expensive, and not close. I can't afford to blow $100 for an hour of shooting and 90 minutes of driving.

There's also a very practical reason I don't shoot my shotgun on my property.

In Connecticut you need I least 10 acres of property, which I have, in order to shoot on it. I'm not sure there's an exception for air guns. Even when you have the property, the local gunsmith tells me the SWAT teams will probably show up when the neighbors complain.

When I was brush hogging, mowing, tree clearing, bridge building and maintaining, back-hoeing, chainsawing, and otherwise landscaping my 11 acres, I had people tell me it was nicer looking than any park in our town. Now, my gazebo has been crushed by falling willows, there are trees down everywhere, my bridges are in disrepair, and the whole thing has reverted to jungle.

I limbed the bottom six feet of one of my dawn redwoods and a bald cypress a couple of weeks ago, using my two new Silky saws (and testing them against my bow saws, Fiskars, and Bahco Laplander), and I couldn't work for more than three minutes without getting exhausted. Old age. The 50's were a 10 percent down slope, the 60's about 18 percent, the 70's have been a quick 40 percent.

In short, to clear out properly and get to the part of my property that has a good hill backstop for target shooting, I'd have to do at least 100 hours of work that I'm no longer inclined to do or able to do without risk. I suppose I could just wade through the thorns, and tall grass, and millions of ticks in this ground zero of Lyme disease, and the muck, and get depressed at my lost Eden, and start blowing away red squirrels -- but frankly. Scarlett, I just don't give a dang anymore.

 

[Boreal Birch]

Glenn.........
You wrote "Not the axe; that's a useless tool." To me, that is just plain stupid talk. The axe is my favorite and most used tool. I built my home with one, I use it daily during the heating season. It has probably saved my life. I know it is the main reason that my friend Bonnie didn't die of hypothermia on a cold, windy, and raining day on a October BWCA canoe trip.
As for the dislike of red squirrels, up here, they will get in your home, if they can not find a entrance they will make one. Once inside they will take the pink insulation that you have in the roof to keep the warmth inside the house, in our the cold arctic winters, to build a nest. Once they have taken up residence in the roof of a home they start chewing on electrical wires, which result in blown breaker box fuses that result in a shut down furnaces, well pumps and other modern fixtures. Red squirrels chewing on electrical wires are one of the reasons people up here have house fires. The first President George Bush, had a No Fly Zone. I have a No Squirrel Zone. Outside of my No Squirrel Zone I find them to be cute, charming critters, doing what Mother Nature designed them to do.
Two hundred years ago most men in North America would have not been able to provide for their family without a axe and firearm.
......BB

 

[Canotrouge]

BB, I'm with you... Other than the red squirrels... We don't have them up here! But I never go in the bush with one of my axes. I'm leaving for a 12 days canoe trip on friday, and you can be sure that we will have at least 2 axes, I'll also bring my 22 and my 30-06. and the ammo that goes with it, after all if I want to fill-up the freezer, better bring some ammo!!

 

[Guest]

I do so enjoy bantering with you Glenn.

But you have all those fancy things in your truck . . . what are they called? . . . bolt twisters

Yes, including left handed bolt twisters. And a can of blinker fluid. I had a coupon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoOlFJwUb48

They don't go KABLAM much less KABLOOEY!

Despite the fact that my nearest neighbors to the north and south both shoot regularly, I can do without the KABLAM and KABLOOEY. It is loud, and if anyone else is at home, a disturbance of the peace, especially if my wife is working from home and on the phone.

I am possibly responsible for the shooter neighbors to the south. When that woodlot was for sale I would find potential buyers parked in my driveway and walking around in my back yard (despite the obvious fence between properties). We were having supper on the back deck one evening when a couple parked and began strolling about 20 feet away in my backyard lawn without so much as a how-do-you-do.

I walked inside, got the .38, walked out front and emptied 6 shots into the front lawn. They left hurriedly, and we now have shooter neighbors.

In short, to clear out properly and get to the part of my property that has a good hill backstop for target shooting, I'd have to do at least 100 hours of work that I'm no longer inclined to do or able to do without risk. I suppose I could just wade through the thorns, and tall grass, and millions of ticks in this ground zero of Lyme disease, and the muck, and get depressed at my lost Eden, and start blowing away red squirrels -- but frankly. Scarlett, I just don't give a dang anymore.

If you want to hire a couple South Americans in front of Home Depot to do the heavy work you better move fast.

Or you could just tinker around build an increasingly elaborate squirrel obstacle course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EnDwkclDcA

 

[Steve in Idaho]

A Hav-a-heart trap and dab of peanut butter on the pan is effortless and quiet. How much of a heart you have is up to you.

You can have a lot of fun with that. A friend of mine was having trouble with a squirrel, and he lived in town, so he resorted to live-trapping it. He released it in the park across town (after dark - no witnesses ), but within a couple days, the squirrel was back. So, he trapped it again and released it again. This cycle was repeated a few times before he got to suspecting that maybe he wasn't catching a single homing squirrel, but was dealing instead with a squirrel infestation. So, he decided to mark the squirrel before releasing - with orange spray paint. He snagged the beast, painted its tail orange, and released it again in the park. Sure enough, the next squirrel he saw in the yard had no paint. He caught that one, and got to wondering just how many squirrels he was actually dealing with. To be sure, he again marked that one with an orange tail before releasing it in the park. This went on repeatedly for some time before he noticed that it was getting pretty common to see orange-tailed squirrels in the park on any given day - sometimes three or four. We had a laugh about it, thinking that the locals must be puzzling over it by then - but he stopped the practice out of worry that someone would take offense and catch him in the act.

 

[Iskweo]

Hmmm...Mem, sadly, you are a barbarian. It 's part of your charm. The whole red squirrel thing is interesting. I had a .58 muzzle loader that was a nice squirrel and gopher gun. Used to cast my own minie balls for it. Lotsa fun.
My dad shot PPC way back in the day when they all still used revolvers. So he reloaded a LOT. We used to sit at the kitchen table and run cast bullets through a Lyman sizer/lubricator by the hundreds. When you are 8 years old, making bullets is cool. Now it is just tedious.

While I have a couple of shootin irons, I have not currently shot any of them. I do have ammunition, somewhere. For someone who used to shoot a lot, I have gotten quite far away from it. A pellet rifle is sounding like a lot of fun.

Christine

 

[Boreal Birch]

My friend and former co-worker, Mike Taras, had this story in yesterdays Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

My friend and former co-worker, Mike Taras, had this story in yesterdays Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

"Like the gray squirrel, their highly sought-after larger cousin in the Lower 48, red squirrel is surprisingly tasty."

Jiminy Crickett, you Alaskans haven't been plinking and discriminating against red squirrels in favor of gray squirrels, because you don't have any gray squirrels. I didn't realize the geographic regions of these two populations.

A little research also tells me that the native population of squirrels in Europe was the red squirrel, and that the gray squirrel was introduced into Europe in 1948 -- and is now considered a major pest species -- long after my grandfather left Germany. Clearly, he disliked red squirrels because, although all squirrels can be pests, he only grew up with pesty red squirrels.