What do you do when people show up at your place with 15 or 20 squirrels?
You eat them, of course.
I suppose a person should expect a number of people when you invite them to a squirrel hunting competition.
The results of the squirrel hunt were quite varied. We had young squirrels and old. We had both red and grays. We had to spend a fair amount of energy giving Damon a hard time for only getting one squirrel, since he was the organizer of the event. His excuse was he had a poodle and a three year old helping with the hunt. Between those two, they had enough energy; they should have been able to run the squirrels down and torment them into submission.
We did not accept the excuse. The group gathered around and removed things from the squirrels that were not essential to the meal such as fur and insides. My grandsons, Zane and Trevor, collected all the tails which were safely stored as trophies. I am not sure what there mother thought of their collection, or where it is now, but one tail is firmly attached to the antenna of my truck.
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While I fired up the deep fryer, Craig, one of the hunters and cooks, requested three or four old squirrels for his recipe. He was boiling a large kettle of water on another gas grill. We picked out some of the largest ones and Craig put them into his pot. Damon and I cut legs off several others. This made drumsticks and thighs about the size of a small chicken. We coated them with a pre-made mixture of batter and plopped them into the hot peanut oil. In a few minutes, they turned a golden brown and were ready to serve.
While draining and cooling on a paper towel, they were also disappearing at a remarkable rate. They were barely cool enough to eat and almost gone. I grabbed one while the getting was good and found out why they were going so fast. The meat was moist and tender with just the right amount of spice from the batter.
Craig recruited some help to remove the meat from his squirrels and his stew was well on its way. He discarded the carcasses and continued to boil what had been tough old squirrels, now turned into tender morsels of stew meat. To the cooked meat, he added two packages of vegetable soup mix. He them opened a package of flour tortillas and sliced them into strips. I had serious doubts about tortillas and soup but I need not have.
Within a half hour, he had squirrel noodle soup. The tortillas cooked up exactly like noodles and the flavor would remind a person of the chicken noodle soup their grandmother made when they were a kid.
Thinking there may not be enough squirrel meat to go around; we also fried up a batch of fish, some deer loin, and a few chicken strips. Most of the participant's wives either brought or sent a side dish that finished off a great meal. We ended up with enough food for an army, but being the dedicated people we are, we were able to polish off most of it.
If a person has the opportunity to go squirrel hunting, along with the fun of the hunt, the eating makes for a great day. It is also good to send a bunch of squirrel tails home with the grandkids. It makes their mother appreciate the times they return from the farm empty handed.
Walter Scott is an outdoors enthusiast and freelance writer from Bloomfield, Iowa.
