BY DANNY BLEVINS

STAR CORRESPONDENT 

I have a love-hate relationship with squirrels. On one hand, I know they are an important part of the ecosystem.

Thousand of trees, especially oaks, are growing right now because some squirrel buried the nut from that tree and never came back. Plus, when they are prepared correctly, they are delicious.

On the other hand, they can be very annoying. They squeak at you when you are trying to stalk that big buck.

They sound just like a deer when they are scampering in the forest and they also have a dirty habit of raiding bird and game feeders leaving them void of all seeds and nuts that have been put there for birds and other animals.

Love them or hate them, you have to admit they are an important part of who we are.

For hunters, they are the introductory animal that hones our hunting skills and sharpens our aim as we stalk them with a .22 rifle or a .410-gauge shotgun.

For outdoorsmen and women who hike the mountains, they give endless photo ops as they scamper in front of you making that irritating chirping noise.

For city dwellers, they are their connection to the wild world even if it is through the cost of extra bird feed.

Oh, and have I mentioned they are delicious with a few dumplings and gravy?

Tennessee has three types of squirrels to hunt in two different hunting seasons. You can hunt the gray, red, and fox squirrel during a Spring and a Fall hunting season, and all three of these are common in most forested areas of east Tennessee.

The gray squirrel is the most hunted squirrel, but the fox squirrel has the most meat on it.

The red squirrel is just an annoying bully to me because they will gang up on gray squirrels and run them out of their neighborhood.

Old-timers even claim that a red squirrel will remove a gray squirrel’s reproductive organs if they can catch them. I can recall old-timers shooting red squirrels and leaving them for the bobcats and foxes because they hated them so badly.

They would not even eat them.

Fox squirrels are not as common in this area as they are in other parts of the state, but they are here. You can distinguish a fox squirrel from a gray squirrel by the size. They are almost a third larger than a gray squirrel.

Two other types of squirrels are found in east Tennessee but are usually not hunted.

The Northern Flying Squirrel is rare in Tennessee, but there is a small population in these mountains. The Southern Flying Squirrel also lives in these woods, but they usually only come out at night and are rarely seen or hunted.

In my 40 years of squirrel hunting, I have only seen a Southern Flying Squirrel once. I was so amazed at it that I did not try to kill it.

One interesting fact about these squirrels is the flying squirrel does not fly but spreads its legs and glides from tree to tree.

They have a small membrane behind their legs that opens when they spread them out, and this allows them to glide. Once they make it to another tree, they will go to the other side of the tree to keep a predator from finding them.

Squirrels, especially gray squirrels, can be a joy to hunt, and they are a perfect way to sharpen your skills for bigger game. We will discuss how, where and when to hunt them in our next column.