Field Dressing Game: Grey Squirrel

Description

A simple method of dressing a squirrel in the field.

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Video Transcription

hi there guys I've been out this morning with the slingshot looking for grey squirrels because it's a very good time of year to get them hazelnuts are coming into ripen and even though they're not ripe yet the grey Scrolls actually eat them before they're ripe so if you wonder under Hazel bushes and asel trees you'll see sort of nut debris everywhere and they've cracked them in half and eaten parts of them and it's a very good time really to go out and take them when they're feeding if you go early in the morning or late at night you'll find it's quite dark in the woodlands and very bright in the canopy and that will create a lot of contrasts and things won't really be able to see you in the shadows what I did with this one is went out very early it was feeding and I could see the nuts dropping and it was just sitting up there couldn't really get a clear shot but I put a shot near it or where roughly thought it was and it began to move and call out all the other squirrels started calling saucy it's a distress signal and they're communicating but it came a bit further down the trunk to see what was going on below stuck its head I just got it with a clean hit straight in the side of the head as you can see there and put it out cold when ice using my Hathcock pocket sniper with a thera-band gold tapir from 20 to 15 mil and 12 millimeter LED bulls which are pretty hard-hitting combination gives you about 260 FPS so it's a very good combination for hunting I had a few more positive hits that morning like on this young squirrel here who takes a hit and drop site on approaching I see him out the corner my eye running away so he obviously got away unhurt in this one I either skimmed him or missed completely and hit the branch I had a similar issue on this shot or I spent a great deal of time getting within range I took a positive shot heard a thud and saw him drop but upon moving in closer I see him run away and realize that he's not hurt at all probably just dug in to excuse the fire guys there's lots of mosquitoes around and they're literally everywhere it really helps to keep them out the area but also the squirrel had lots of fleas on it I just dangled it over the fire over the smoke say make sure that the flames not obviously touching the squirrel but he dangled it quite high in the smoke the fleas will jump off and leave and provided you're not nearby they won't go on to you if we look at this squirrel here it's got rigor mortis because I've been walking around for some time and it's just begun to stiffen up a little bit that doesn't put me off filled dressing it at all and you can wait till the meat relaxes a bit but it's absolutely fine I wouldn't let that sort of deter you from field dressing it it is easier to dress them when they're warm this one's still a little bit warm obviously cuz it's only been killed this morning and I'm just checking again for broken bones and things like that things that are making an unusual sound which is generally a good sign of breaking bones but it's got a clean hit to the back of the head so hopefully there shouldn't be any bruising or breakages anywhere else on the squirrel the knife I'm going to be using to dress this squirrel is a Nessie six not the normal tool I would use to dress such a small animal as I left my azuler 2 at home and forgot about it but it's all I've got I'm sure it will work just fine so I've lay the scroll down fairly flat still got a little bit of rigor mortis as I say so it's kind of almost clinging on to the log but we've just bent the tail back like this and the tail bone just goes above the bum there you just want to make a cut underneath that tail bone just between the bum and where the tail bone ends we just drag on life in just like that you'll see you've got the bone just there and the bang can be quite tough so you can whip your blade through it just try and crack it you're almost trying to get down the leg just a little bit without going too deep now we are to split that tile off lost a little bit of the meat there but it's not too much of an issue and see there's a flea didn't get them all we just want to go down the leg very slightly either side just like that so you've kind of split the tile off and it's loose on the skin and you can almost start to see that breaking away I'm going to separate just some of that meat there tied it up a bit there we go so that's step one so now we're going to lay the tail flat like that just like this and hold on to the legs you want to move your knife right the way for this point I'm going to put my boot on the tail and tuck it right up and just start to pull the skin will begin to come off the back like that you can obviously ease it around as well with your fingers you'll know when you get to the point where it's not going to go any further because it just won't feel quite right so we've got some skin off there you can see it's all just peeled straight off the back and don't worry about any bits and stuff you'll just give it a wash it's no problem at all but what I usually do is just get my finger and just push it down either stomach like that either side of these bits of skin you can see there it's quite easy to do you're just separating the skin away from the stomach and just making like a little tunnel through so you can get your finger through just like that and you can kind of separate that out a bit and just take your knife just watch your fingers just ease that through and then you've got two halves basically if you find you're pulling on the skin and it's not coming up over the legs and you're starting to kind of tear underneath these glands here just push the elbow back like that and it'll all sort of start to unsave a lot better and you can always use your hands to UM put underneath just start freeing things up a little bit or a warm squirrel that you've just shot or trapped it'll be much much easier it's just really when they cool down the skin tends to bind a little bit better now we can just get our finger underneath the leg there just work that off of it there we go sleeve comes off do the same just like that hope it comes there and you can just leave it on the head like that until you sort of intend to remove the Hat basically so I can do now let's just take the trouser part just take that straight off

and that should come off just like that so I'm going to remove the hands and the feet too now because those aren't parts I generally eat there's a few ways you can do it you can use the spine if your blade there's a little trick someone taught me just smack the back of the bone there and turn around and cut straight through you can baton straight through the bone which I D sometimes and it's not everyone's preference because it really depends on the kind of Steel you've got for your blade or you can find the joint for example like on this hand here if the joint you can see it moves just there so we can probably joint the hands quite easily just pops right off goes through the cartilage not too much of an issue there we go no hands or feet for the guts you just want to pinch the belly I'm just going to turn this guy around just pinch the belly like this you can cut up on one of the sides there's a bile sac inside you need to watch it but you can cut up on the side just like that and then go up I just prefer to then pinch this like say don't want to go in too deep at this point and then what you can do is take two fingers like that rest on your left hand if you're right-handed just run your blade all the way up you just don't want to punch her those guts basically we've got to the top of the brass plate there you can just see it poking out so you should just take the blade crack blast brass plates very soft just go all the way up to the head just like that that's fine just pop this over the edge what I should be able to do in one motion is just pull all of the site like that and actually a knife's not in the firing line the diaphragm just there that can all come out and they're all gays like that you can see that got a little bit of poo in there too those guts can you toss the side so now if we've pulled all the guts out were left with a few other bits you just want to kind of make sure what's there you can just run your knife down usually on the left side of the leg is the safest area to go just take the rest and get rid of it you can always crack that as well once you feel feel like you've cleaned it out properly and just make sure there's nothing else in there like droppings and things and keeps it all away from the meat and that's a pretty clean squirrel we've got just a bit there to clean out just part the throat what I'm going to do now is just remove the head it's a fairly easy job just cut straight down like that off comes the head so we're almost done with the squirrel and there are a few other things we could have kept we could have kept the hide we kept the liver the heart and the kidneys I don't eat the liver heart and kidneys on squirrel I don't rub it and you know in various other things but on squirrel it's just it's just not my preference really but for those you're out there you may want to try it if you haven't done it before and see whether you like it there are a few other things we need to do to this girl but if you do want the hide of the squirrel I wouldn't really recommend this method you can be a lot more delicate about it and spend more time on it if you do want to get hide off in a decent piece so you can tell it and prepare it and make it into something but there's a few more things we just need to do underneath the armpits of squirrels you generally find these glands that'll be in there and you want to remove those before cooking ideally because it will sort of spoil the flavor so we'll just get those out there any very very small see the same on the other one you can sort of see the small glands just there you can just literally grab it and take him out yes just that

that's just tendons there now as well so that's the squirrel dressed just touching on hygiene obviously don't wear gloves for my dress game I do a 5 severe cuts on my hands and sort of like I'm looking at my hands and I think yeah that that's getting infected and I will take precautions because it's silly not to but at this time of year and throughout most of the year as a herb called hedge round water fantastic antiseptic and anti-inflammatory just grind it up with a bit of water and you're out in the field you can disinfect your hands and your tools but for a knife if I was around a camp which I probably would be if I was eating this outdoors

I was just pour boiling water over it just remove the debris with some moss like this just pour boiling water over it and you know it's disinfected and it'll be absolutely fine to use for other things so just going over what I used again to take the scroll down and use just the basic catapult or slingshots I generally call them and I use double thera-band gold tapered from 20 to 15 mil and I'll put links in the description where you can get these things and also got a website so if you're interested in more information on the laws of hunting with slingshots different combinations of banned and ammunition and you know areas where you can go and get these kind of things and you can have a look at the website and you can find various articles on there that can help you import you in the right direction

they're fantastic bits of kit and they weigh virtually nothing and obviously you can take our munition off the ground if you really needed to an emergency although I use led balls I'm using stains in the UK would be classified as stoning which is illegal so you know the appropriate ammunition is part of the legality of of using these I hope you've enjoyed the video and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask me

and thank you again for watching guys and I hopefully I'll see you in the next video take care