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Foreword - This book deals with small game hunting, a sport which makes a direct contribution to big game hunting skills. The relationship between big and small game hunting is seldom stressed, and when it is stressed, it is seldom that tech­niques are examined in detail to show how small game hunting improves big game hunting skills. One cannot be a mediocre squirrel hunter, and at the same time a skillful deer hunter. The two techniques go together.

1. Plinking - When Art Richardson dropped us at the starting point of our hunt near Myrtle Creek, Oregon, there were six miles of mountain, meadows, sage brush and forest between us and camp.

Art looked up across the mountains where a ravel of morning mist still toyed with a peak. "You know," he said, "before we hit camp we are going to get mountain goat shooting, some brush shooting like we have on deer each autumn, open mule deer shooting, and some long range elk shooting."

2. Basic Hunting - When Art   Richardson   rolled   that  jack rabbit with a running shot at seventy-five yards, it wasn't just happenstance that he and I were easing around that small basin where the first spring warmth had touched off the grass and clover, the tender bitterbrush sprouts. It was sign reading-relating expected game to available forage.

All types of hunting have many things in common, other than actual shooting.

3. Sight Picture - When a ground squirrel or woodchuck sits up to consider the advisability of modestly retiring to his burrow, out there at an actual 200 yards, and an experienced hunter takes the shot with a .220 Swift, .22/250, or some other excellent sniping caliber, he is seeing that target in reference to rifle performance and not in reference to actual 200 yards of range.

The fact of a 200 or 300 yard kill is always established after the shot, when the distance has been paced.

4. Field Shooting - The trail lead through a frost-touched multicolored forest, the oak and maple trees a riot of crimsons, deep reds and browns. A golden autumn haze filled the val­leys, and if you listened you could hear quail calling lonesome-ly for the lost summer. Grant Hartwell and I were walking this ridge trail, as men should be doing each autumn, our minds on deer, light overnight packs on our backs, wholly content with the world.

5. The Center Fires - At first glance the problem of selecting a small game and varmint rifle would appear a relatively simple undertaking. A hunter has clean killing in mind, which means hair splitting accuracy and fair ranging qualities.

Hunting rifle weight must be a good compromise for steady holding and portability, say eight to nine pounds, for a field rifle is carried much more than it is shot.

6. The .22 Rimfires - No matter if a hunter is primarily con­cerned with elk hunting in the Alpine meadows of the Rocky Mountains, still-hunting whitetail deer in Maine, long range varmint sniping or just tree squirrel in a farm woodlot, his most important field rifle is a .22 rimfire. It is not only a beau­tiful caliber in its own right for small game hunting, it also has a definite place as an understudy and stand-in for all the differ­ent calibers carried afield.

7. Iron sight - A soft whisper of dawn wind accented the autumn stillness, and stripped an occasional leaf from the maples to drop it gently on the small stream at the foot of the hardwood ridge. It was such a day as hunters dream about. Woods were gold, brown and incarnadine with the first touch of autumn, and grey squirrels were at their nut harvesting in the wide spreading oaks.

8. Telescope Sights - When Art Richardson and I angled around those mountains on the prowl for ground squirrel, jack rabbits and other targets of opportunity, our rifles were scope sighted. When I worked the autumn ridges for grey squirrel, my .25/35 sported iron sights. These two type sights, receiver and scope, complement each other in small and large game shooting. A woodsman must become top hole proficient with both or his ability to keep his hunt in hand is drastically lim­ited.

9. Sighting Rifle - There is a best sight setting for every rifle, from .22 rim fire to the wildest wild cat caliber, a range, once your sights are zeroed in, which gives you the best possible accuracy at all field distances. Careful study, plenty of shooting, and an intimate knowledge of exterior ballistics will give you the know-how to arrive at the best possible distance to zero your particular rifle.

10. Handguns - It was the end of the trail. Before us the wilderness stretched toward the headwaters of Pistol River in Southwestern Oregon. Across the divide, you could, by traveling the rugged back country, eventually drop into the Rogue River drainage. But it was plenty rugged going. What we had in mind was fishing, hiking, exploring—being in the back country be­cause it was back country, beautiful and unspoiled

11. Shooting Handguns - East of my cabin the hills rise fold on fold, a mixed forest of firs, and hemlock, with hazel and huckle­berry on the open ridges. It is a boss setup for squirrel in autumn. Before you come to these ridges, however, you will cross my not too well cared for upland pastures, a patch work of grass and clover, thickets of berry vines. It all adds up to some very good small game hunting. I hunt squirrel in the woods with a model 39-A .22 lever action Marlin.

12. Shotguns - It has been said that rifle shooting is a science, shotgun shooting an art.

A hunter can have no quarrel with that, I suppose. But like all generalizations it is subject to qualification. AH great game shots are more artist than scientist. They all have the subjective viewpoint of the artist, both in the selection of firearms, and in their use. I have never known any outstanding field shots who didn't have individual peculiarities of shooting and stalking which affected their choice of calibers and gauges. This, in large measure, accounts for the diversity of opinion on proper field guns.

13. The Making - Out west they call it the "makings." If you have tobacco and cigarette papers you have the "makings" of a smoke. If you have killed a brace of blue grouse, you have the "makings" of a stew. The "makings" of a small game hunter are those essential bits of equipment which make a definite con­tribution to the success of a hunt.

Take the item of proper clothing for example. How many small game hunters actually wear clothing which makes a direct contribution to the overall success of their day afield? Not many.

14. Cleaning Guns - Good firearms deserve good care. That would seem obvious, but it is surprising how many rifles and shotguns are not at top field shooting proficiency because they have been abused or neglected. Much of this neglect stems from the fact that many hunters believe that with the inception of non-mercuric, non-corrosive primers there is little reason for cleaning firearms. But that isn't so. Non-mercuric, non-corrosive primers have simplified cleaning, but they have not eliminated it.

15. Rabbit - The cottontail rabbit is our most universal game. There isn't a state in the Union in which he isn't hunted. Farm boy with his single barrel mail order shotgun, sportsman with his imported, expensive double, they all go for cottontail rabbit hunting. He is an excellent target taken in front of beagles or basset hounds. He is a good target for riflemen still hunting with a .22 rifle. The number of rabbits killed each season reaches astronomical proportions.

16. Raccoon - A raccoon's comings and goings, to an in­experienced hunter, are deeply clothed in mystery by his noc­turnal habits. While occasionally he will be found abroad during overcast days, for the most part he starts his activities at dark. And what a range of activities they are!

Ever find fresh coon tracks along the marge of a swamp, and try to unravel the intricate wonderings? It is a most interesting and rewarding experience. For you will learn much about raccoon habit, and plenty about reading sign. Fact is, raccoons are your best teachers of sign reading.

17. Ruffed Grouse - What is ruffed grouse cover? By that I mean ruffed grouse cover which produces more than an occa­sional bird—cover which has so many natural attractions that ruffed grouse naturally gravitate there. Something of the re­quirements were touched upon in Chapter 2, Basic Hunting. But that was merely relating these favored game hot spots for all hunting from cottontail, squirrel and ruffed grouse to deer. Here we are concerned with the requirements of ruffed grouse cover alone.

18. Squirrel - Early American backwoodsmen took squirrel with their long barreled flint-lock rifles by aiming at the bark of the tree directly beneath a squirrel's head, the con­cussion of the ball killing their quarry without leaving a mark. They brought an uncanny ability to the simple task of shooting a mess of squirrels. But this shooting skill alone wasn't the greater part of their hunting ability. The knack of reading sign reading and clever still-hunting, made an even greater contribu­tion to their squirrel hunting

19. Woodchuck - Here is game of the open pastures. Here is game that can live under a farmer's barn, raid his garden season after season and live high, despite the best efforts of the landowner to lay him by the heels. Woodchuck hunting is all things to all outdoorsmen. It has many of the elements of long range big game shooting, such as mule deer and elk in the more open western mountains. At times the ranges at which he is taken are more in keeping with the whitetail deer ranges of eastern and northern hunting.

20. Deer Hunting? - Deer is the most prevalent big game in the United States. Its range is extensive, and for every type of deer hunting, from long range mule deer shooting, to the hunt­ing of eastern whitetail deer in heavy cover, it has its counter­part in small game hunting of some type. It is the logical out­growth of those days spent afield after rabbit, squirrel and grouse. There comes a time when the small game hunter na­turally turns to big game. It is the testing ground of all the woodcraft he has learned and his ability with a rifle.

THE END