The Squirrels Have Been Asking For It

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Walter Rego

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I recently moved to a small mountain community. I enjoy feeding the Steller's jays, a western species of blue jay. They are smart little birds and will come up and sit on the deck railing in the morning and wait for me to throw a few roasted & unsalted peanuts out for them. My yard also is home to chipmunks and a few fat gray bushytail squirrels. The squirrels are greedy rodents and sometimes get the peanuts before the birds do.

I figure they need some aversion therapy. I bought this vintage Wham-O on ebay along with a couple of new bands. It's just like the one I had as a kid. This one is marked So. Pasadena so is an early one, they moved to San Gabriel by about 1965. Mine as a kid was a pre-'64.
If the squirrels want a free lunch they are going to have to provide some target opportunity for me.

I use the single nut peanuts and try and choose the ones that look like they would have the best ballistic coefficient and ft/lbs of striking energy. I have not yet connected on one of those rats with bushy tails but I am getting their range. If the peanuts fail to stop I may have to move up to solids. The original Wham-O ammo was .25 cal steel ball bearings.

I knocked plenty of big bullfrogs right off of stumps and rocks back in my youth with my trusty Wham-O. I live in a residential neighborhood so a .22 even with shorts or Colibri loads is out of the question. This should provide some entertainment for me.
 

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I had to buy rubber for my original Wrist Rocket to feed some baby squirrels. Momma squirrel put them in a sable palm next to my old place knowing I'd figure out how to wean them. She went off to die. I really miss her and her little ones, She was a great mom.

You can see she was blind in her right eye and after a few years it got infected due to her teeth. She was getting old.

There's a lot more to the story of "Squirt".
 

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marbles work good too. we had a bad cat problem in Turkey my last tour there. I had to re-educate some cats as to where they were not allowed. I used a wrist rocket. when I ran out of marbles I used small round rocks. lee
 
Some squirrels are pretty smart. My second or third year deer hunting, I found a nice little hide overlooking a small glade. A squirrel saw me and began barking at me. I tried to ignore it but it was really making a racket. I threw a few things at it but it just kept barking. It was barking so hard it was kind of bouncing up and down and turning from side to side. I had enough and decided to shoot it. I put my crosshairs on it and got ready to shoot. The squirrel got quiet and starred at me for a moment. It then turned and started high stepping through the grass away from me. It didn't bark anymore and stayed away from me after that. Smart squirrel.
 
When we were kids a friend of mine had one of these, we were at a small pond shooting frogs, his hands were wet and it slipped out of his hand and hit him in the forhead, split him wide open, be carefull.
1943e206a3ed6de8632238ece14b2598.jpg


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Grandpa showed us how by making the first one . after that the right oak branch, bike inner tube and a good pocket knife and we were in business . great memories , thanks for sharing . kenny , texas
 
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So now we have pre-64 slingshots? What are the Winchester guys gonna say? I actually had one, handmade by my grandfather, when I was about 5-6. It is one of the earliest memories I have of him. I was visiting and he decided I needed a slingshot. So, he climbed an oak tree in the backyard, cut the perfect branch, whittled it down with a knife, and cut some rubber tire tubes to fit to a leather pouch. That thing was deadly. I later replaced the original rubber with surgical tubes and kept it for decades. When my first wife's dog decided it made a nice chew toy I was so dismayed I threw it out. Should have carved out the tooth marks and kept it. The first wife is gone, too!

Edit: Kenny, my story was from San Marcos, Texas. Sounds like grandpa's knew what to do in those days.
 
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we were on an 80 acre farm in northeast louisiana . and yes , those Grandpas new a thing or two . Great men . they sure don't make em like that anymore as they say .
 
I remember my dad leaning out of the window of our ‘56 Chevy station wagon with his Wham-O trying to discourage Jack, our family mutt, from chasing us down the highway, as was his habit. (Hmm. Don’t know who was drivin’... Maybe mom was leaning over to put a hand on the wheel and an eye on the road?)

Don’t think it worked. Jack was a good dog in most ways, but an incorrigible car chaser...

(I admired that Wham-O, but being five at the time was not allowed to mess with it.)
 
Grandpa also showed us how to make a paddle out of scrap wood to swat bumble bees with around a giant wisteria bush . big fun unless you were the one that caught said bee down a shirt . still fun and funny to the rest but not so much to the catcher . thanks for sharing , haven't thought of those things in too long . thanks again , kenny
 
We made sling shots from forked branches as kids we were hell on squirrels, chipmunks and pheasants. we were pretty good with a sling, a couple on leather thongs a leather pouch. wrap one thong on your little finger load a marble or round stone in the pouch the other thong between thumb and index finger get a good spin going and let lose of the thongs. with practice you can get pretty good. things like this keep us busy and mostly out of trouble.
 
Onomea said:
I remember my dad leaning out of the window of our ‘56 Chevy station wagon with his Wham-O trying to discourage Jack, our family mutt, from chasing us down the highway, as was his habit. (Hmm. Don’t know who was drivin’... Maybe mom was leaning over to put a hand on the wheel and an eye on the road?)

Don’t think it worked. Jack was a good dog in most ways, but an incorrigible car chaser...

(I admired that Wham-O, but being five at the time was not allowed to mess with it.)
Click to expand...
Car chasing dogs - a memory of a rural upbringing - a neighbor's dog once flattened the tire on my father's truck by biting at it as we passed......

Car chasing canines did not typically die of old age.

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Squirrels

a .22RF with CB .22 shorts makes less noise than a sling shot




Walter Rego said:
I recently moved to a small mountain community. I enjoy feeding the Steller's jays, a western species of blue jay. They are smart little birds and will come up and sit on the deck railing in the morning and wait for me to throw a few roasted & unsalted peanuts out for them. My yard also is home to chipmunks and a few fat gray bushytail squirrels. The squirrels are greedy rodents and sometimes get the peanuts before the birds do.

I figure they need some aversion therapy. I bought this vintage Wham-O on ebay along with a couple of new bands. It's just like the one I had as a kid. This one is marked So. Pasadena so is an early one, they moved to San Gabriel by about 1965. Mine as a kid was a pre-'64.
If the squirrels want a free lunch they are going to have to provide some target opportunity for me.

I use the single nut peanuts and try and choose the ones that look like they would have the best ballistic coefficient and ft/lbs of striking energy. I have not yet connected on one of those rats with bushy tails but I am getting their range. If the peanuts fail to stop I may have to move up to solids. The original Wham-O ammo was .25 cal steel ball bearings.

I knocked plenty of big bullfrogs right off of stumps and rocks back in my youth with my trusty Wham-O. I live in a residential neighborhood so a .22 even with shorts or Colibri loads is out of the question. This should provide some entertainment for me.
Click to expand...
 
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