@ryulincoln and myself planned a trip out to the woods to do some hunting. We found a spot a few hours south of us called "West Point WMA". Places like this are large tracts of land owned by the state of Georgia and allow hunters with the right licenses to hunt on them. We applied for our small game hunting licenses and left at 5:30 in the morning to drive over to this wild life management area.
As we entered the wildlife management area we found many cut throughs and roads to walk down to go hunting on. These roads are called hunter access trails and just meant to be walked on. As it says on the sign foot travel is invited.
I brought along my Ruger 10/22 Takedown .22 semi automatic rifle along with a checkmate silencer. When using subsonic ammo the only sound this gun makes is from the spring and action inside the gun and whatever it impacts. I really love it.
A closeup of the silencer I use, obtaining this NFA item required a background check and an interview with local law enforcement. Took almost a year to get it but well worth it.
There were many prints in the found, this is from a deer, but we also saw bobcat, coyote and racoon tracks as well.
Some of the freshwater mussels found in the lake on this property were massive. I have never seen such large shellfish before.
Probably the racoon ate them, from the prints I saw near by it would make sense they would find them in the mud and eat them.
The whole wildlife management area was well marked and taken care of for the most part. We did find trash once in awhile but thats pretty normal at any public hunting area unfortunately.
Using my squirrel caller I attempted to make the sound of a young squirrel in distress. From what I have heard adult squirrels sometimes come out to investigate if they hear a young one crying.
We came across a squirrel up in a dead tree. I saw it run into the hole and we could not get to it.
A bud light was spotted in the woods, not all that old as it still had coloring to it. Sucks people would just leave their trash out here, also hunting while intoxicated is not allowed so seeing this is unfortunate.
As we walked the banks we saw alot of trash, probably from boaters dropping things out of their craft or people that live along the water. We found alot of volley balls and basket balls making me think people knocked them in the water by accident and could not get them back.
Some ant nests were found but mostly driven out by the cold or living further down into the soil to keep warm during the winters.
There were signs of life up in many of the trees, along with piles of munched on nuts at the base of the trees. A sign there is something living up in them.
The size of some of the fields in this wild life management area were many acres. I stood about thirty feet away from @ryulincoln and had a picture taken of myself.
During our walks down the hunters trails we come to a big field with some large trees around. We checked to see if anything was living inside and hoped we could get a clear shot of we scared out whatever was living inside.
During our hunt we came across an old moonshine component. It was completely rusted and of no use, probably why it was left there. We come across these old alcohol producing rigs out in the forest sometimes.
Looking into some high brush we wait to see if there is any movement coming from the plants.
Sometimes the hunting stories we have can be really funny, this is one of them. @ryulincoln finds a good place to pop a squat so to say. He takes my toilet paper with him and finds a spot away from everything.
The links to photos below contain pictures of dead animals:
After walking around the wildlife management area for awhile nature called and @ryulincoln needed to find a patch of woods to go do his business in. As he squatted he heard a squirrel up in the tree. Not quite ready to poop yet he paused his business and grabbed his near by rifle a .17 HMR bolt action rifle.
He took the shot with his pants around his legs, not wanting to take his eyes off the squirrel up in the tree. After making the shot he had to make the important decision of ether pulling up his pants first or retrieving the squirrel. Still not clear which one he did first.. lol!
It was a good sized squirrel, a healthy female. Its great to get a good squirrel as some of them are affected by Mange. Though this one had no signs of poor health
He found a downed tree to set up on and start carving out the squirrel.
The skin and meat were separated, the knife @rylincoln had on hand was not very sharp and the pelt was a little torn up but the meat was well preserved.
The squirrel was gutted, and fur removed. It was placed in the cooler for safe keeping until we could get home and cook it.
A picture of our two rifles by the kill, my Ruger 10/22 Takedown .22 semi automatic rifle along with a checkmate silencer and @ryulincoln's .17 Hmr rifle.
After cleaning the squirrel @ryulincoln goes down to the water and washes up.
The lake system inside of West Point WMA is quite extensive, we plan on returning with his canoe to explore it more.
Once the squirrel was back at home we washed it extra well and made sure nothing was missed that we needed to remove before cooking it.
We slow cooked it in a crockpot for about twelve hours on low. Game meat tends to taste much better when slowly cooked in water. We added some apple cider vinegar as well to help break down the meat.
After slowly picking through all the little bones it had a consistency of shredded chicken. One squirrel made for alot of meat and I was quite impressed. Maybe half a pound of meat to it, enough for a couple meals.
I used the meat to make a squirrel sandwich, ate some yesterday and it was quite nice. I added alot of cheese, mayo and mustard to it and tasted great. Looking forward to shooting my own as I did not have any luck this time around. But @ryulincoln did well, even if he was caught with his pants down when he saw the squirrel.
Edit: Wanting to give some of these rewards back to my friend for taking me on such a cool adventure. I am going to give him half of the rewards from this post. Though I forgot to list him as a beneficiary when I posted. So when this post pays out I plan on sending him half of the rewards.