FENCEROWS AND FIELD EDGES
The first time I witnessed this situation, I thought I was in heaven. While knocking around the hunting camp one fall afternoon, I decided to cram my pockets with shotgun shells and strike out for the backside of a field. All the adults were in deer stands.

When I made it to the wood lot and sat down, I could not believe there were no squirrels to be seen. I was huddled within the prettiest stand of oak and hickory trees imaginable, but I did not see the first squirrel.

Thoroughly disgusted, I started trudging back to camp well before sundown. Halfway across the field, I saw limbs dancing along the fencerow. Actually, the limbs were on a single line of trees flanking the fence. A squirrel was making its way back toward the sea of hardwoods I had just left. Of course, I made a beeline for it, but it had disappeared long before I arrived.

Barely five minutes later, however, a second squirrel was careening through the branches -- coming straight toward me from the same direction the first had come. Sitting in the same spot, I shot half a dozen in no more than 30 minutes.

The local squirrel population used the fencerow to travel from wood lot to wood lot, both morning and evening. Shotgun blasts did not deter them. The shots were all in the 10- to 15-yard range. Also, all the squirrels were on the move.

A rifle would have been woefully inadequate in that scenario.

THICKETS
Another scenario that lends itself to the scattergun involves less-than-picturesque terrain.

I was an adult before I realized -- thanks to the help of some squirrel dog fanciers -- that bushytails are not always found in areas that look squirrelly. Inevitably, when one of the guys wanted to put his feist on the fresh scent of bushytails, he would bypass gorgeous, open bottomland in favor of the scraggly pine thickets that bordered it.

These 12- to 20-year-old stands of pine served much the same purpose as a fencerow. They are the travel corridors of choice for hawk-savvy squirrels.

Back when I was a kid, there were not very many hawks. Nowadays, however, these winged predators are plentiful. In fact, the last time I went afield for bushytails, a red-tailed hawk swooped in and grabbed a squirrel that I had shot. I literally had to charge out, waving my hands in the air to get the bird to drop it.

The tangle of little branches in an overcrowded pine thicket add a safety net for squirrels. They also can interfere with the flight of a .22 bullet. However, the maze of sticks is no match for an angry swarm of shotgun pellets.

HOLLOWS AND RIDGES
God only knows how many squirrels have soaked up lead shot from shotgunners prowling hollows. But for my taste, this is where a .22 can shine.

The easiest way to cover a lot of ground, quietly, is to follow a creek coursing through a hollow. It sure beats crunching along the hillside, where you can come face-to-face with a squirrel 30 feet up a tree.

Since you are hunting in the bushytails' back yard, noise is indeed a factor. When you are in their house and not merely covering the road to it, the quiet pop of a .22 is much preferable over the boom of a shotgun.