Hunting: Grey Squirrel & Woodpigeon

Description

In this video I do some hunting down by the coast and shoot Grey Squirrel for the pot.

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Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game,Eastern Gray Squirrel (Organism Classification),Squirrel (Animal)

Video Transcription

Oh

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and I've been out doing some hunting this morning as you can probably see by the footage and got myself a nice gray squirrel

it's got got it quite early in the morning I was actually after wood pigeons and I was sitting in that woodland just over there and saw a pigeon land I couldn't see the pigeon so I sat there and waited and just had eyes on trying to determine where the sound was coming from see whether I could see any slight movement I thought I saw the wood pigeon because I saw this gray blob sitting in the tree I took a shot at it and I knew immediately as soon as I hit it that it was a squirrel because it darted down the tree and ran into the ivy and I knew it had been hit a lot of the time when you shoot squirrels they're adrenaline kicks in and they make a dance for as a lot of animals can do and it takes a little while for them to drop out the tree so I sat there and waited for a while because every time you fire a shot round here lots of pigeons suddenly take off and fly around and they get quite confused and sometimes you can actually get lucky and get one after you know you've had your first shot you've got your second shot to go and nothing really flew around so I heard the squirrel drop went over and grabbed it and as I spent a bit of time in this woodland here in fact there's a pigeon just they're out of range but a lot of other pigeons started landing but they're so difficult to see because of the i'veeen when they move around here they move with incredible speeds because of the coastal winds and they can travel very fast but my shooting today on pigeons has been terrible I just had a perfect shot coming straight for me missed it with both barrels it's graceful it was terrible but I'm really just out because I've been down here for about a week on my own and um I really just wanted to get quite a lot of food in one hit over a couple of days just so I could store it and put it alongside other supplies I'd brought with me and so far it's just been the squirrel but I'm being a bit lazy not doing too much work then we'll have burned him any resources hiking all over this place I've done that the last day or so and it's exhausting and I'm just kind of taking my time but it's a beautiful day I think what I'm going to do is now the tides heading out and that's cooling off a little bit now I'm going to go into this course over here just set up a bit of a hide and spend some time there because this is a good flight path that pigeons follow or wood pigeon follows on this particular plot and I'm going to spend some time there and see whether I can get some shots but there's no shortage of pheasant that's for sure but they're out of season unfortunately right I'd be eating very well

it's been a long and hot day I've decided to take shade and call it a day underneath this conifer I was hoping to at least come back with a couple of pigeons today and I could off if I was a bit more switched on and I hadn't done so much sloppy sheathing what my shooting was rubbish today there was some textbook shots I could have easily had three or four pigeons perhaps if I was George Digweed or to come back with ten but unfortunately I'm not that good but you're that last bird that came straight for me crikey and when I was an easy shot I should have had that and I was hoping to get some meat to go along with the supplies I brought with me and there's quite a lot of wild edibles around here as well that make great a great salad good roughage to go alongside whatever you catch but it's pretty beautiful down here I'm going to do some fishing later on in the week do a bit of foraging on the coastline maybe even get the Fulton out and see what I can get early morning to mine but I think it's about time I got this squirrel prepared because he's been hanging around on me for the best part of the day my normal technique of dressing a squirrel usually involves slicing under the tail and then standing on it whilst pulling up to peel off the top half like a jacket then the trousers can be done and then slice gut and the meat is basically ready than to eat but in this case I want the hide I want to keep the hide of the squirrel so I'm going to be dressing it in a very kind of delicate way by slicing here taking the legs out taking the legs out there and hopefully taking the skin off in one piece with tail attached

scroll skin

sticks to the meat so much more than rabbit if you have a dresser squirrel and a rabbit the difference is quite noticeable

there's a small piece of shop just that another piece just there it's trapped in the skin he rarely finds shot but sometimes you do yeah

not a bit of mess coming on it here we are so obviously we've got some trauma that's just a fact of life you know hit it with a shotgun a relatively close distance so it's taken a bit of a pelt around this area and if you're trying to just take the hide off and prepare the hide and be pretty careful with the hide sometimes it does get a bit messy because obviously this holes in the animal and you're going to squeeze things out but it's a bit of a balance when you prepare things this way there are easier ways of dressing a squirrel you just want me in this case I want hide I want meat I want the lot really so I'm just taking my time with the whole thing because we've got some punch of holes here quite a lot of trauma from where the shotgun hit it I'm going to get the guts out to keep this a lot cleaner go through the ribs

you can see the loads of blood they're obviously in straight into the lungs a lot of that shot one so it was a fairly clean kill

so just got all the guts out a bit clotting there there's a few things we'll have to do to the meat we do have glands under the arms we need to get rid of but primarily I just want to be able to get this fur off the tail like so you can see the tail bone just there a bit like a rat really it is a is a rodent after all so we've got tail been skinned we've got the legs there what I'll do is are cut up the leg like this so yeah that's one leg opened you the other one

just like that so the back legs are all good you need to get it all off of the head now there we go so we've got a very nice piece of hide there I'm gonna lightly scrape that now and then leave it to dry in the Sun the latest stage uses the brains of the squirrel which I've left in the head to make a solution to rub into the hide to make it very supple almost like very thin suede but for the time being I need to get this cleaned up obviously I've got blood all over my hands and Scrolls fairly messy although it is ready for storage just like this and I've left the brains in the head there because it's the most logical place to leave the brains until the latest stage where I have time to process the hide but I'm going to go down to a stream and wash my hands and hygiene is something I think a lot of people are concerned about especially when dressing animals and you want to be careful of cuts on your hands even the smallest of cuts disease can get through in certain parts of the world preparing game without gloves on is a big no-no but with this particular squirrel I'm sure it will be absolutely fine I've dressed squirrel my whole life for that gloves never used gloves to dress game really art from one or two occasions where I've had serious cuts on my hand and I've never had any problems but there are a lot of things you can do for hygiene I've got a bottle here and it's got a liquid in it you're probably wondering how it is and this is the sap of a very common plant that you find here in the British Isles common English ivy Adira helix and it contains saponin and saponin is found in many different plants in many different trees and it can be used like a soap it helps kill bacteria fungicides it's basically like nature's pesticide and it also can deter insects from feeding on various plants soap worked is the most typical one and traditionally used like a soap that it foams up like a lot of saponin does and that's where saponins well the name saponin derives from for me from that particular plan but if you look at this I've just simmered a load of ivy leaves then a little bit of Ivy bark in a big pan but probably about thirty minutes and not boiled just simmered I've bruised the leaves up before I did it and all the water reduces down obviously as you as you boil it and you're left with a much thicker liquid than you originally had and if you look at this liquid here you can see it foams up a little bit like soap and even if you take the lid off obviously the bubbles remain and this is probably not the most effective source of saponin but it is one of them and you can make these liquids up around a camp area if you have a big enough pan and make a makeshift soap that you can use to wash your hands and tools with out in the wild or in the wilderness one thing I normally do with my knives after skinning is pour boiling water on them after I've removed the debris from the knife and that's a very good way of disinfecting and obviously don't want to pour boiling water on your hands but one of the most simplest forms of Hygiene I use is just fresh flowing river with a coarse stone or grit at the base likes like almost like a sand that can be used as a pumice stain to clean your hands and I always make sure I clean underneath my nails with this knife prior to doing so and you can obviously clean the knife again afterwards or beforehand whichever way around you do it but I think what we'll do is we're going on the river and get this piece of meat cleaned up and my knife and what I'll also do is wash my hands and clean them off down in the river and I'll get this scraped and hung up somewhere and now I use the brains at a later stage to actually preserve the hide a little bit more and then we can smoke it after that have a nice piece of squirrel hide teas before I put this knife back in the sheath I'll just let it dry this way the leather won't absorb the moisture and harbor it actually rust my knife but this is ready to go in storage night and this meat will last quite a few days just in a bag just out here provided the temperatures then get too warm but if I wanted to make the fridge and makeshift fridge out in the wilderness it's very easy to do you just put it in a ziplock bag and weigh it down in a river and make sure the bag doesn't leak you can always double bag it just in case and it will keep the meat nice and cool especially if in the shade and in deep water bye guys I hope you've enjoyed this video I finished with the squirrel for the day I've taken the hide off scraped it and stretched it just a little bit but it's in the Sun drying now I can prepare that at a later day the squirrel I can store away and eat that in a few days or so keep quite some time the thanks again for watching and I appreciate you taking the time to check out this video and you've got if you are interested in any of the gear that I'm using or wearing or the clothing etc in this video do see the links below because some of it is listed there but any questions you may have our try ons thanks again for watching I'll see you very soon in another one take care