Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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When I was about nine or ten years old, I began going pheasant hunting with my dad. I didn’t carry a gun, of course, but I walked not far from him and tried to “kick up” a bird, maybe along a fencerow, or some place like that. I guess I was kind of like a hunting dog in long pants. Then, when he shot a bird in flight with his 12-gauge shotgun, I would retrieve it just like a well-trained golden retriever.
A year or so later, my dad took me squirrel hunting for the very first time. I really looked forward to that. I thought it would be fun walking through the woods to “kick up” a squirrel. But I found that my dad hunted squirrels in an entirely different way.
He would walk deep into a quiet woods and find a comfortable place to sit. As he sat there in silence, he scanned the treetops looking for fox squirrels. He might sit there for 20 minutes or more, with his back resting against a tree trunk. If no squirrels appeared, he began making a squeaking sound by kissing the back of his hand.
You might think that would be a pretty soft sound, but in the silence of the woods, you could hear it for a long way. My dad told me that fox squirrels were curious animals, and when they heard that squeaking sound, they would come out into the open to see where it was coming from. Then when he had a good shot, he could shoot them with his single shot 22-caliber rifle, and we would have fox squirrel for dinner the next night.
Once I learned how to make that squeaking sound myself, I became his official “squirrel squeaker.” We might enter a woods and sit there in silence for 15 or 20 minutes. Then he would say, “Squeak ’em, Bill,” and I began making my very best squeaking sounds.
That might not sound like much fun to you, but for a 10-year-old boy, it was wonderful. I was no longer just a little kid who went along for the fun of it. I was actually a part of the hunt. I was the one who drew the squirrels out of hiding so my dad to get a good shot at them.
I don’t like to brag, but I think I became very good at squeaking squirrels. I practiced it often when I was sitting on our front porch on West Fifth Street. We had a large pear tree in our front yard, and the squirrels in the neighborhood liked to eat the seeds inside the pairs. So I had plenty of squirrels to practice on. It’s no wonder I became such a good “squirrel squeaker.”
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com