Nebraska Squirrel Hunt with my Brocock Bantam!

Not wanting to wait any longer to go squirrel hunting, I take advantage of the early season in Nebraska….. only a 6 hour drive away!

I know that it normally makes sense to wait for at least some of the leaves to start coming off the trees before heading into the woods after squirrels. These arboreal rodents tend to stick to the upper canopy for the most part, and it is thick with leaves up there. They are also not storing food yet, or doing so on a scaled down level, so listening and looking for cutting is less effective. And then there are the mosquitoes that haven’t died off yet.

But still, I wanted to go squirrel hunting! The other problem I had was that I live in Minnesota and the season doesn’t open until mid-September and it was the last week of July…… but there was a solution at hand! Nebraska’s squirrel season opened on the first day of August, fully 6 weeks before us!

I went online to look for a public land to hunt, bought my small game license, loaded up my hunting and camping gear, and set off on the 6 hour drive south. I have a video on how I zeroed in on a hunting area without ever having visited, that you can watch at https://youtu.be/oP_NuMYun5Y  if interested.

On arrival I set up my tent and scouted the area, also stopping by the local bait shop and rangers office to ask questions and look for some first hand knowledge. The woods were what I’d expected green, thick, and humid.

The gun I had along on this trip was my Brocock Bantam, which is one of my favorite hunting rifles: compact, high shot count, ergonomic, setting on a foundation of accuracy and perfect energy output for a small game gun. I’ve taken everything up to feral hogs with this gun and feel very comfortable with it. This little .22 digest the JSB Exact Heavies very well, and punches above it’s class with them.

The weather was bad, a lot of rain and I thought my tent would go airborn in the middle of the night! But I made it and awoke to a temporary break in the rain. I headed out into the woods at daybreak, and was pretty soggy within minutes. Not much was happening and after an hour I was about to give up, it looked like more rain was about to dump on me. Sitting at the base of an oak, I caught a glimpse of movement about 40 yards away. After a few minutes I saw a fox squirrel peek around the trunk of a tree, looking in my direction.

I switched the scope on, I was using the ATN 4k Pro day/night vision optic, and it has an integrated camera. I lined up on a head shot and dumped that bushytail with a perfect pellet to the noggin. I put him on my game carrier and made a few comments on video for my YouTube channel, just before the patter of raindrops on the canopy gave me warning to clear out.

When I got back to my tent the skies opened up, and the revised weather forecast notified me this would be my damp reality for the next three days. So satisfied that I had my Nebraska squirrel in the bag, I’m trying to see how many different states I can bag them in this season, I decided to break camp, go home, and wait for a drier weekend to come back again. And as soon as I have a break in the rainfall, that’s exactly what I did.

Once again, my Bantam proved itself in the field. I was an early supporter of the Brocock guns, and though the earlier ones were a bit rough in comparison to their current lineup, they have always been well made,  compact, and good performers…. They have only continued to improve!