Squirrel Hunting and Deer Scouting Guide
Published: March 2026
The season doesn’t start with the deer opener. It starts the first morning you step into the woods and smell wet leaves and feel the air change on your face. Everything after that is just the season unfolding.
The Best Excuse to Be in the Woods Early
I’ve never been good at waiting for deer season. The months between spring and October feel long, and the itch to be in the field doesn’t go away just because there’s nothing legal to chase. Squirrels fix this problem better than anything else I’ve found – not as a consolation prize, but as a legitimate reason to be in the woods doing real hunting while everything else is still weeks away.
Western gray squirrels open weeks before the deer season here in California and Nevada, and the overlap between what squirrel hunting teaches you and what deer hunting requires is not coincidental. The woods you’re hunting squirrels in are the same woods you’ll hunt deer in. The wind patterns are the same. The oak groves and the mast crops and the well-worn trails through the brush are the same. Every morning spent after squirrels before deer season opens is a morning when you’re learning something that will pay off when it matters more.
I’d been hunting deer for years before I started taking squirrel hunting seriously as preseason work, and I was wasting the opportunity the whole time. The shift in how I thought about September changed how well I did in October and November. Not because squirrel hunting itself makes you a better deer hunter in some mystical way – because it puts you in the right country, at the right time of day, doing the right kind of moving and watching and listening that the season requires.
The Animal: Western Gray Squirrels
The Western gray squirrel is the largest tree squirrel in the West – long silver-gray coat, creamy belly, and a tail that seems disproportionately large even for a squirrel. They live in mature oak and pine forests, and they’re most active and most abundant in the mixed-habitat zones where oak woodland meets Douglas fir or ponderosa pine. These ecotones hold food, shelter, and water in close proximity, which is exactly what deer prefer too. Finding good squirrel country and finding good deer country are, in my experience, often the same search.
Western grays are wary animals. They’re not the suburban fox squirrels that go about their business ten feet from a park bench. They pay attention to the woods around them and they’re quick to alarm. The skills required to get close to a gray squirrel – moving quietly, using terrain and wind correctly, staying still long enough to let the woods settle after your intrusion – are the skills required to hunt deer in the same terrain. This is not a coincidence.
What you’re looking for when you’re scouting for squirrels: cuttings on logs and stumps where acorn shells or pine cone husks have piled up from feeding activity, fresh gnaw marks on branches where they’ve been working the crop, tracks near productive feeding trees, and vocalizations. Gray squirrels bark and chatter in ways that carry across a canyon, and once you know the sound, you start hearing them everywhere. On calm, sunny days they’re out and feeding actively in the early morning and again late afternoon. On windy days they den up and you’ll cover ground without seeing much – which is itself useful information about when to be in the field.
Stand Hunting vs Still-Hunting – Which and When
Both approaches work, and I use both depending on whether I’m after squirrels specifically or using squirrel hunting as a vehicle to learn new country.
Stand hunting for squirrels looks a lot like stand hunting for deer: find a productive oak or pine grove where there’s evidence of recent feeding activity, get in quietly before first light, sit down with the wind in your favor and your back against a tree, and wait. The woods need fifteen to thirty minutes to settle after your arrival before the squirrels will go back to business. Use that time to watch the canopy and listen for the sounds that tell you where the activity is – the rustle of leaves from something moving in the branches, the sound of a nut hitting the ground, the faint clatter of claws on bark.
A compact binocular is worth having. A gray squirrel sitting motionless against bark twenty yards up is invisible to a quick look but obvious through glass once you know what to look for – the tail is usually the giveaway, or the outline of the head. Stand hunting produces the most squirrels per hour once you’ve found a productive spot, and it’s the right approach for hunting a grove you’ve already identified as good.
Still-hunting is slower and covers more ground, which makes it the better tool for scouting. Move a few steps, stop, scan, listen. Move again. The discipline required to move slowly enough that you’re not pushing animals ahead of you is the same discipline that makes still-hunting for deer work – it’s harder than it sounds, and most hunters move twice as fast as they should and see half of what they could. Stop more than you think you need to. Let the woods tell you what’s happening.
When I’m hunting new country for the first time, I still-hunt first to locate active areas, then settle in and let squirrels come to me once I’ve found sign. The combination covers ground and produces game, but more importantly it produces information about where animals are moving and why.
Firearms and Gear
The right gun for squirrels depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and what the terrain demands.
A shotgun in 20-gauge or 12-gauge loaded with #6 or #7.5 shot is the most forgiving choice and the right one when squirrels are moving fast through the canopy or jumping between trees. There’s no substitute for pattern coverage when the target is moving and the shot window is brief. In late fall when dry leaves make getting close nearly impossible, a shotgun is what makes the hunt viable. The downside is noise – one shot and the woods go quiet for a while.
A .22 LR is the classic squirrel rifle for good reason. Cheap to shoot, quiet relative to a centerfire, and accurate enough for deliberate head shots from a rest or a sitting position. When you’re in a productive grove and squirrels are feeding above you, a .22 lets you take one cleanly without clearing the area of everything else. The shot placement requirement is the whole discipline – a poorly placed body shot wastes the meat and teaches you something about rushing. Most squirrel hunters who’ve been doing it a while take head shots as a matter of course, and that precision transfers directly to deer hunting.
A .17 HMR extends the range and flattens the trajectory for open-country situations where squirrels are feeding on the ground at distance. The ammo costs more, the report is sharper, but the confidence it provides on longer shots is worth it when the terrain calls for it.
Beyond the firearm: compact binoculars for picking out animals in the canopy, camo that matches early fall foliage before the leaves change fully, a small game vest to carry your take comfortably as you move, and a squirrel call for provoking a bark or movement from an animal you can hear but can’t see. The call works better than most people expect on gray squirrels when you’ve already located them and want to pin down their position.
Reading Deer Sign While You Hunt
This is where squirrel hunting pays its real dividend for the deer hunter.
Every hour you spend moving through squirrel country before deer season is an hour of reading the land for the sign that will tell you where to put your stand in October. You’re moving through the same terrain at the same time of day in the same light conditions, and the sign is there if you’re looking for it.
Fresh deer tracks in muddy trails tell you where animals are crossing between bedding and feeding areas. Well-worn runs through the brush – the narrow, depressed paths that deer use repeatedly – tell you the preferred routes. Rubs on small saplings with bright, fresh shavings and no weathering tell you a buck is working that area actively right now. Scrapes with overturned soil and a licking branch above them signal pre-rut behavior that will intensify as the season progresses. Droppings tell you timing – shiny, moist pellets mean the deer using that area were there recently.
Mast crops are the connection that links squirrel success to deer hunting intelligence. When acorns are dropping heavily from a specific stand of oaks, squirrels will be there all morning and deer will be using that same food source in the evening and pre-dawn. A grove where squirrels are busy and the ground is littered with fresh cuttings is a grove worth hanging a camera on before season. In my experience, the best squirrel spots in September become the best deer spots in October more often than chance can explain.
Wind patterns in specific drainages and hollows reveal themselves when you’re hunting them on foot. You learn which ridgelines funnel wind predictably, which low spots collect cold air in the evening, which saddles channel deer movement between feeding and bedding. This knowledge only comes from time in the field, and squirrel season is the most productive time to gather it – before deer season pressure changes how animals are using the country.
What September Teaches You
There’s a version of hunting preparation that happens on paper – scouting maps, reviewing trail camera photos, researching calibers and stands. That preparation has value. But it’s not the same thing as September mornings in the woods with a .22 and binoculars, watching the light come up and listening to the country wake up around you.
The patience required to sit still on a squirrel stand for an hour without fidgeting is the same patience required to stay in a deer stand when nothing has moved for three hours. The discipline to move slowly through brush without pushing animals out ahead of you is the same discipline that makes a still-hunt for deer work instead of fail. The precision demanded by a head shot on a squirrel at 30 yards from a sitting position is the same precision demanded by a shot on a deer at 150 yards with a rest against a tree.
The hunter who spends September in the woods isn’t just filling a game bag. He’s showing up to the deer season already calibrated – already comfortable in the specific terrain, already familiar with how the light falls through those particular oaks in the morning, already knowing where the trails run and which draws hold deer and why. None of that comes from reading maps.
It comes from being there. Squirrel season is the legitimate excuse to start being there six weeks early.
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