When most people think of varmint hunting out West, minds usually turn to prairie dogs, marmots or jack rabbits. But the best high-volume hunts I’ve ever experienced are for Belding’s ground squirrels (aka, sage rats) in eastern Oregon.
I’ve been on many prairie dog shoots around the West and chased my share of jack rabbits and rock chucks. For more than 30 years I’ve experienced spring shoots for Belding’s ground squirrels and have found there to be no close second when it comes to the quality od endless shooting to be had.
On a recent shoot, the family joined up with Tim Titus, owner of No Off-Season guide service (www.no-off-season.com). Tim has access to his family’s private alfalfa fields, which is ideal as you have the shooting all to yourself.
These little ground squirrels cause millions of dollars in crop damage each spring throughout eastern Oregon. Not only do they consume a staggering amount of alfalfa, but the endless burrows they create throughout the fields smothers the plants, impeding growth and greatly diminishing the crop’s value.
As if the squirrel damage isn’t enough, predators like badgers move into the fields in search of squirrels for food. When you get a dozen or so badgers digging up a sandy-soiled field, they can cause amazing damage in a single night. Enter the hunters!
Farmers like the Titus’ elect to use hunters as a tool to help control squirrel numbers, rather than poison which would not allow their crops to remain organically grown.
On this shoot–as has been our experience on many squirrel hunts–sitting on a bench and rifling through 1,000 rounds from a single spot is the norm. The shooting can be almost non-stop, from one single position, daylight to dark.
To get the our sons prime shooting practice we started picking off the close squirrels, with .22s. They then progressed to .17s, .223s and .22-250s, nailing squirrels out to nearly 300 yards. They also practiced spot and stalk hunting with shotguns (practicing for turkey season), as well as with rim-fire guns. Being able to stalk and shoot from various positions, as well as from shooting sticks, offers the best practice I know of for developing shooters. The whole family also spent hours stalking through the fields, skewering squirrels with our Diamond bows.
In a day and a half of shooting, we burned nearly 2,000 rounds and could have easily doubled that, had we solely focused on shooting guns off a bench. There are so many ground squirrels, hunters will never take them all out of a field. There’s a reason special forces and SWAT teams travel to Oregon each spring to hone their skills through days of high-volume practice on live targets. April and May are the prime months. For hunters, there’s no better practice than the real deal, and this is it!
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