I've had this in my files for years. It's an obituary, kinda. From 2008.
In Passing, Woodchucks Get No Peace
By Ed Shamy
Free Press Staff Writer
June 19, 2008
Chances are, there won't be many Lamoille County woodchucks today at the Holcomb-Des Groseilliers Funeral Home in Johnson to say goodbye to Shirley Perkins.
Shirley died Saturday. She was 81, and lived for many years in the white house close to the side of Vermont 15 a couple of miles from the center of Johnson.
There she and her husband, Richard, raised six children and entertained 11 grandkids and 16 great-grandchildren and countless others over the years.
The memories are not quite so happy for the woodchucks that strayed onto or near the three-acre Perkins spread.
Shirley Perkins took on a hobby half a century ago or so that involved drilling woodchucks with the .22 caliber rifle she kept close at hand, says her daughter, Linda Hemond of Williston.
"For as long as I can remember, she shot woodchucks," Hemond said. "I've shot a couple myself."
"Spring, summer, fall, whenever they were out, we just popped them off," she said.
Vermont doesn't regulate woodchuck hunting. We can, and do, shoot them as we see fit, as we often do. Woodchucks dig deep, wide burrows that can injure livestock. They bedevil gardens. Besides their dubious forecasts every Feb. 2, there is not a whole lot good to be said for woodchucks. Even in these economic times, their stew is dicey at best.
Shirley Perkins championed woodchuck population control.
When her children were young, Linda Hemond said, Shirley adopted ultra-safe practices. When she spied a woodchuck on the sloping pasture that drops from the back of the house, she grabbed the .22, stepped outside and dispatched the varmint.
As she grew older and less mobile, Shirley chose the shortcut.
She'd sit in the living room and watch the green space. If a woodchuck presented itself, she'd open the window and fire from there.
"For the last several years, she pretty much shot just from the living room," her daughter said. "She was a pretty good shot."
Shirley Perkins didn't wear glasses, except for reading glasses in the last couple of years of her life. She did use binoculars from her living room perch to sight 'chucks.
Ever the responsible shooter, Shirley strolled outside and crossed Vermont 15 before firing if she saw one of the groundhogs in the open field across the road.
"If a woodchuck came out there, it was pretty much gone. That was, like, her entertainment," Linda Hemond said.
Now that Shirley Perkins is gone, Lamoille woodchucks may think it's safe to wander once again.
It would be a fatal miscalculation.
"My brothers were at the house Monday morning," Hemond said, "and one looked out there and saw a woodchuck. He popped it off."
"He said, 'Must be they thought it was safe now that she's gone.'"
It's not.
Shirley Perkins is gone, but she left a large number of very well-trained woodchuck snipers behind.
