Poor thing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/blogs-the-papers-47105644?__twitter_impression=true

 

Pass

 

We have a neighbour who is from Ohio, and he complains that the squirrels in our area are too small to bother eating...

 

Taste like chicken. Seriously.

 

They are hunted and eaten in Appalachia and the south.

 

Hard for me to think of them as anything other than rats with big tails! Yech.

 

And unfortunately the Red Squirrel population is suffering due to them

 

There is a meat and vegetable stew, Brunswick stew, that in it's truest form, is made with squirrel. However, most is made with chicken.

 

A dozen years ago we had no red squirrels in this area. Now, due to development of the country around our area some of the red squirrels are moving in to our area and convincing the grey squirrels to move on. Having seen the tiny red squirrel that occasionally shows up in our yard go after the greys twice his size, my money is on the red.

 

I have used grey and melanistic squirrel tail for tying salmon and steelhead flies. And red squirrel fur for dubbing. It's great. Haven't tried eating either--I really don't care for rodents. I'd rather eat rutabagas.

 

I can’t recall seeing a red squirrel in my area since I was a teenager...in other words a long time ago...

 

Rutabaga is delicious.

 

I gather they were driven out when this area was built up in the late fifties and through the sixties. Now with building pushing up to the green belt areas I guess the poor little buggers have no choice but to join the city life. You're lucky in that "civilization" hasn't totally paved over your area yet , it used to be a five minute motorcycle ride from the lakeshore out to the farmland, now its 20 minutes. (I'm in Burlington)

 

Hear, hear!

 

I was served squirrel stew at a friend's house in rural North Carolina once. "Watch out for the buckshot," he warned. "You hunt squirrels with a shotgun?" I exclaimed. "Sure," he said, "it's just food for us. You can borrow my bow and arrow if you want to make a sport of it."

 

True recipe

 

Saw this in a Field and Stream book I bought years ago. Buff little dude

 

Canadian squirrels are at least 30% smaller...

 

If you want a larger rodent than a squirrel, try a beaver. On second thought.

 

Through several initiatives the UK red squirrel population has made an increase but the grey squirrel pox is the real enemy http://www.northernredsquirrels.org.uk/squirrels/squirrel-pox-virus/