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Lunting Season

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  • Weekend trip, visiting friends in wisconsin.
    Got some Lunting in at the crack of dawn as well as some squirrel hunting.
    I am hopeful this does not offend anyone


  • Only the squirrels..... only the squirrels...... :p
  • I identify as a squirrel and am deeply offended!
  • Just as long as you leave the badgers alone.

    I have a chipmunk problem over here, but I don't have the heart to kill the critters. In the spring, I'll be trapping them and releasing them elsewhere.
  • The critters were stealing our tomatoes, so I tried repellants of all kinds with no success. I bought two rat traps, baited them, and killed a lone chipmunk. It was pathetic and I felt horrible. (Dumbass that I am, what did I think was going to happen????) 

    I'll never do it again. Let 'em have the tomatoes.
  • They were eating the tomatoes from our garden two years ago. I haven't grown one since, but if we can remove them, I'll try again. Or I'll just grow hot peppers and see how they like them.
  • I aim for squirrels and those who identify as squirrels.

    @jfreedy - stay out of my neighborhood.
  • Now that I have managed to severely stub the toe(s) on my right foot, lunting and everything else requiring the use of two feet are in jeopardy.  Fun.
  • @jim102864 - My sympathies, friend. I stubbed my toe two days ago and lost a nail. No fun.
  • “We’re going to walk but Daddy is going to Lunt!”
         -My 6-year-old daughter 
    #dadwin
  • I'm sure it's just me, I can't get used to or comfortable with using the word, "Lunt".  I vote for creating a new term for the lovely event of walking with a a pipe. Especially, in the fall and spring. 
  • @Londy3    I agree, Lunt, Lunting  are just plain awkward sounding, with no root word association to smoking or walking ( not that it has to be) unless your Dutch.

  • Lunting is still a better word than Pogonotrophy, which many of us practice...... :p
  • @ChaplainCorey #TotalDadWin hahah that's awesome!
  • Squirrels are good. I like them stewed. 
  • @PappyJoe
         I tried a squirrel once (I think the squirrels here are smaller than “back east”?). I cooked it over an open fire.  I wanted to make sure it was done and may have over cooked it.  It was like chewing on a rubber band. It did not help that I used a greenish/wet pine that made him taste like I was eating a railroad tie (no I have not actually eaten a railroad tie, I just think they might taste like they smell😬).  The “Alpine Touch” ( Montana’s Best Spice), which I take with me in my truck, on the 4-wheeler, on my dirt-bike, in my fishing boxes, pretty much everywhere, did not help.
    Note:  “Alpine Touch” is great on popcorn, roast beef, beef/dove/rabbit stews, cheddar cheese, potato soup, green salad, might even be good on squirrel if it is cooked corectly🤔
  • Well in this instance the squirrel meat was added to some Dove breasts from the afternoon hunt and incorporated into a fresh Amatricana style spaghetti sauce made with the last of the plum tomatoes from the garden, it was quite excellent.
    The only way I have found to eat squirrel is to stew or braise it as otherwise it is chewy.
    Additionally the squirrel tails (once I have enough) get shipped to the Mepps Lure factory where they are used to make their lures and in return they ship me finished lures.
  • @mapletop - You are correct about how to cook squirrel. It has to be either stewed or braised to be chewable. Probably because squirrels are all muscle from jumping around trees and scampering away from dogs. 
  • @RockyMountainBriar I just wanted to say thank you, your post gave me the best laugh in a month
  • FozzieFozzie Apprentice
    When I bring squirrels home from a muzzleloader hunt my wife takes them and puts them in a crockpot with a jar of spaghetti sauce. They’re delicious.  
  • @mapletop
    Anytime, I’ll be here all week.  *pa-dum-bump*
    Yea, that squirrel was stringier than a harp.  When I tried to pull the meat off of the little leg bone, it snapped back and almost gave me a black eye and a bloody nose.
    @Fozzie
    Hmm, if I hunted squirrels with my 50 cal. BP, all I would have left would be the tail.  I can imagine how stringy squirrel tail must be, more likely to crack a tooth on a tail bone though.  I guess instead of the flintlock, I could use my percussion cap BP and try for a head shot?  I am generally a pretty good shot.  I tried to shoot my flintlock at a target the size of a door once (well maybe not quite that big) at about 25 yards....I missed....more than once.  The first flintlock I fired was out at the rifle range where an older gentleman let me take a shot with his at 25 yards offhand.....(he was the one who loaded it though)....I hit center on and about an inch low....pretty good.  I am better with my percussion rifle.  I have put three rounds in a dollar coin size group at 100 yards when shooting off of the bench with open sights, two rounds touching and the third less than a bullet hole away (of course, when you are throwing a 1/2” diameter piece of lead down range, that half an inch gives you a little better chance to get them to touch.
         Methinks, I know my error with my own flintlock now though....I need to prick the main charge hole rather than make a powder trail from the flashpan......heck of a hang-fire otherwise.  I have not tried the flintlock again to prove/disprove my theory however.
  • @RockyMountainBriar That's pretty good shooting with the percussion and iron sights, black powder is a lot of fun and yeah hitting a squirrel with one would definitely tenderize it into oblivion.
    Don't know if you have ever tried Hornady V Max varmint bullets out of a conventional firearm like 223 or 22-250, I can tell you that squirrels and prairie dogs literally explode when you hit them; obviously no good for hunting something your going to eat.
    Now flintlocks that is an art unto it self, only fired one once and the smoke from the pan got in my eye and I thru in the towel. Do you hunt with it or is it just for target shooting?


  • FozzieFozzie Apprentice
    I hunt, target shoot, reenact, and write, about flintlocks! I just finished doing an event at a local state park educating kids and adults about 18th century history including the loading and care of said rifles. I’ve hunted with flintlocks only for the past 10+ years and have done a bit of lunting with the old clay pipe as well! If you take care of the ol’ rocklock it’s almost as reliable as a centerfire.......almost! 
  • I seem to recall reading that "once upon a time" there was a "thing" called Barkin' Squirrels. Apparently for a while it was considered a sportin' trick to shoot so that one clipped the branch the squirrel was sitting on, sending a spray of tree bark outward to knock the squirrel off the branch.

    Never tried it myself, as my own muzzle loader happens to be a .58 cal and not a .36 cal "squirrel rifle."
  • I’m not sure about “hijacking” this thread? It might be getting a bit off-topic? I am not sure how to move.  Hopefully no one gets too upset.

    @mapletop
         Yea, I hunt with the percussion rifle, and plink around with my percussion revolvers.  I have not tried hunting with the flintlock yet, as I have mentioned, I can’t hit a barn door with it yet.  I have always used my own home cast minieballs, I have never shot a patched roundball that I personally loaded.
         We do hunt varmints like gophers, rabbits, and prairie-dogs with 45-70, 308, 30-06, 30-30, 223, 22 rifles, etc. and pistols like 45ACP, 44 mag, 10mm, 357 mag, 40, 9mm, 22 and so on.  I have taken deer with both my 44 and 357 mag revolvers.
         One time when out hunting elk, deer and speed goat in “The Missouri Breaks” we were not having any luck.  Low and behold there was a big prairie-dog town.  We were bored.  I had my 300 Weatherby Mag with 180 gr. Trophy Bonded Bear Claws.  A prairie-dog that thought it was too far away was mistaken........expensive shooting.......oh well.
         I admit, I don’t have the “killer instinct” I once had, and places to hunt are fewer and fewer.  I don’t hunt nearly as much as in the past.  I would like to bag some big game with a flintlock at some point though.
         I need to get to the range on a “last Sunday of the month” when the Muzzleloader guys are out and get me some learn’in.  Knaping flint, and the little tricks to loading a flintlock.  I was surprised a bit when shooting the flintlock that I never see the flash-in-the-pan or the smoke from the pan, and only the smoke from the barrel a few seconds after I have taken the shot as the smoke is wafting away.
         I really want a 50 cal. Flintlock Lancaster Rifle with a “swamped” barrel and German silver fittings......someday.  I think I need to figure out how to shoot my cheap one first.

    @AnantaAndroscoggin
         It ought to be easier to “bark a squirrel” with a 58 cal....more wood chips😬. My buddy was always trying to shoot the branch out from under the squirrels. I don’t know if he has accomplished his goal yet?
         I saw him shoot near a gopher on a big rock (on purpose) to get it to jump in the nearby creek.  It jumped in the small creek.........and swam away.  I am not sure why both of us were surprised and assumed the thing could not swim...what a couple of dummies....after he went swimming away, we looked at each other like “no $h!t”, of course they can swim, duh.
  • That word lunting really has to go. It sounds like something you get with pneumonia.

    "Ugh, I can't go right now Sally I'm still lunting from this pneumonia."

    See what I mean? It's just wrong.
  • @Londy3
    such as “I was feeling a bit under the weather and was lunting phlegm all day”?😖
  • Back on page two of this thread I had pretty much said the same as Londy3, every time I hear the word I think of Elmer Fudd with a pipe in his mouth singing "A Lunting We Will Go"
    Sooo. I have been trying to come up with a new intuitive word or acronym to supplant Lunting.       It is not going well.
    Pipe Smoking While Hiking = PSWH(ing), tough to pronounce;        Pipe Smoking And Hiking = PSAH(ing):       Pipe Smoking And Trekking PSAT(ing)
    Briarking,   Briking,  Stummeling,
    There are not a whole lot of synonyms for pipe smoking or hiking either.

     Of course another option would be to abandon the intuitive and or root wording and just make up a word we like the sound of.
    We can do this, I'm not giving up
  • I've been trying to work with an alternative to PTSD: Pipe Tobacco Smoking ________. (fill in the blank with a word starting with a D.)
  • @RockyMountainBriar - Back in my squirrel hunting days, I did my hunting with a .410 single shot. Usually I only hunted when my dad was home (he was a towboat captain and only home for about 10 days at a time.) He grew up poor in the bayous of Louisiana and they only knew hunting for food. I used a .410 because it game me a better chance of knocking the squirrel out of the tree.

    Now for a funny story on the behalf of my brother-in-law...

    Back in the late-60s, early-70s, most of the land owned by lumber companies were open to the public for hunting in SE Texas. These were the days before everyone discovered that they could make tens of thousands of dollars by posting hunting club signs up on trees and charging thousands of dollars a person for permission to hunt these same lands. 
    Anyway, the area we were in was a popular hunting area known to have some deer. Tree stands were not allowed on the property (it was owned by a lumber company and they didn't want the trees damaged.) so we would stalk the deer. Both my dad and brother-in-law used 10-gauge shotguns and either buckshot or slugs. I was mostly after squirrel and rabbit so I just had my .410. 

    When we met up a few hours later, I had bagged a few squirrels and a rabbit but they hadn't seen any deer big enough to shoot. We were walking back to the truck when we passed a tree loaded with squirrels. I guess the squirrels figured the sun was high in the sky and the hunters were leaving, so it was safe to come out and play. Junior, who hadn't unloaded his shotgun yet, stopped, aimed at the tree and fired at one of the branches. One squirrel fell out of the tree and immediately started climbing up the trunk. It made it about four feet off the ground when it started sliding down the tree in reverse and finally was just laying on the ground.

    Junior picked up the squirrel and looked to see where he hit it. There was a long, bloody groove running from the tail almost to the neck up the belly of the squirrel. We jokingly told him he castrated the squirrel with his shot and it took that long for it to die from the shock. He put the squirrel in the pouch on his hunting vest. 

    About 10 minutes later, just as we were getting to where we parked, Junior's vest came alive as the squirrel work up and 1. decided that he didn't want to be in the pouch and 2. that he was pissed about being shot where he was shot. The speed with which Junior dropped his now unloaded shotgun and climbed out of the vest was amazing. You would have though a naked supermodel was standing there saying, "What are you waiting for." 

    As for the squirrel, my dad picked up the dropped shot gun and clubbed the vest until it was still again. We had a nice pot of squirrel gumbo that night.
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