by Andrew T. Whitman
When Spencer turned 12 and received his first shotgun in December, our family had a particularly good season that year.
We already had a deer and a turkey in the freezer, plus several squirrels.
We even made a toy for the barn cats from an extra squirrel tail by hanging it on a string on our porch about two feet off the ground.
The four or five kittens jumped for it continuously and batted it around when they could get a paw on it.
By then we had turned to pursuing other small game like rabbits and woodcock; when on the last day of January (which was the last day of the Virginia squirrel season), Spencer announced that he wished he could shoot just one more squirrel with his new gun.
He had set a personal goal for that season, unbeknownst to me, and he was one squirrel shy.
As his coach and mentor, but even more so as his father, I was glad that he had goals (even if it was only a personal bag limit), and yearned for him to succeed.
This task seemed easy enough and we set out to find a good squirrel for him.
That afternoon we went to our usual spots, but time after time no squirrel — they were either too lazy to come out on this extra cold day, or else they were too educated by now to show their furry heads.
Finally, as the sun was setting low, I remembered one more place where we had seen a few squirrels while calling for turkeys, but we had never hunted them there.
It would have to be that spot or none, so we hurried to a big oak tree, settled down, and waited.
Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes of quiet anticipation, and just as the gray wintry sky turned a shade darker, a squirrel ventured out of a hole and sat casually on a branch.
Spencer slowly took careful aim and fired and the bushy tail dropped like a stone.
We waited another moment to see if there were any more around that perhaps we hadn’t noticed, but this was the last and only squirrel of the day and it promptly turned too dark to hunt.
We could still see, but shooting hours were over and squirrel season was officially ended.
We waited just a little longer to see if a coyote would come by, since there were no prohibitions against shooting them after dark, but after a while, we picked up his hefty prize covered in a thick winter coat and triumphantly headed in.
As we walked back to the house thinking about the warm woodstove awaiting us, I was very happy for my boy and wondered out loud if this could have been the very last squirrel taken in Virginia that hunting season.
It had all happened literally seconds before the sunset on the last day.
Afterward, that location became fondly known as the “Last Squirrel Tree,” and it became even more special when Spencer and I successfully took a nice gobbler from the same spot the following spring.