Ground Squirrel

Ground Squirrel

Try Our Favorite Squirrel Recipe

Many hunters take a look at the hunting regulations guide for their state and just glance over the part about squirrels despite many areas in the Northeast having open season on them all year long.

For many, a squirrel just happens to be that noisy critter that is constantly running through the leaf piles and disturbing the tranquility of a nice hunt in the fall and chittering and squawking like mad whenever a sportsman enters the woods.

What you might not realize, however, is that squirrel can prove to be one tasty little dish. With the sheer amount of them in a variety of places, it often is not hard to take a few while out for the morning or afternoon and have them in a pot and ready for eating for dinner that evening.

There are a variety of ways to cook them up and enjoy them, from simple pan frying to roasting and even grilling them. One way that we particularly enjoy is turning squirrel into a nice stew.

First and foremost, go out and bag yourself three squirrels. Depending on the day, that might take as little as an hour or less. Skin them, dress them and quarter them. Fresh meat, in our opinion, is the best to cook with, but you can refrigerate or freeze squirrel meat like any other game you hunt. Just prep it, wrap it up and store it away for future use.

Besides the squirrel meat, here is what else you are going to want to gather for one heck of a stew.

5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 onion, chopped

4 potatoes, cubed

5 cups water

Quarter cup red wine

4 strips thick cut bacon, diced

Three Quarter cup flour

Half stick of butter

Salt and pepper

Once you have got everything ready to go, grab your squirrel meat and rub it down with a nice mixture of salt and pepper. We like to use fresh ground pepper out of a mill and some kosher or some sea salt. The former is because of the taste and the latter is because of the ease of use and it reduces the chance of over salting.

Grab a pan, preferably a cast iron Dutch oven, but you can use any strong stock pan and heat it over the stove on medium high heat. Drop the butter in and let it begin to melt and toss in the diced up bacon.

While that starts to warm up, roll your squirrel meat in flour and then toss it in the pan. You are going to want to let the meat brown up nice and evenly. Avoid rolling it around too much. The brown bits of flour will just mix in well with the stew base and help give it that golden color.

Once the meat is browned, remove it from the heat and set it aside. Toss in the garlic, onion, pepper and celery and saute until the veggies are soft and the onion is translucent.

Add the meat back to the pan, add the water and the potatoes and bring to a boil before reducing the heat and simmering for about two hours.

Use a pair of prongs and pull the squirrel pieces out of the pot. Use a fork to pull the meat from the bone and return back to the pot. Discard the bones.

Turn the heat back to medium high, add the wine and bring back to a boil before reducing heat and simmering for a final 15 minutes.

If the stew is not as thick as you would like, add some corn starch to a half cup of milk and mix and then add to the pot while stirring.

Serve while hot.

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what is ground squirrel hepatitis b virus?

can someone please tell me what it is? i hav a major project to do on it and i cant find anything about it. i need to know what it is, what it does, how it affects people or animals, how many people or animals are affected a year, and facts.
OMG if you can do this for me i will love you forever

First of all, there should be better answers out there but this is the best that I can do for now. Mostly I provide links you can use for reading and documentation. The limited information available is found in these links and certainly others but YahooAnswers limits the number of links in an answer. (I had to remove a few already)

Begin with these:

http://www.vetpathology.org/cgi/reprint/45/3/388.pdf

http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol59/mono59-5.pdf

GSHV = ground squirrel hepatitis virus - it is related to or similar to Hep B but not the same.

http://www.pnas.org/content/77/5/2941.abstract?ck=nck

from 1981:

http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/38/1/393

from 2008:

http://apt.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1043%2F0300-9858(2008)45%5B388%3AHGNICW%5D2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1

It may or may not be related to the woodchuck virus
It appears in squirrels in northern California - the Beechey Squirrels. It is interesting that other breeds of squirrels are not susceptible or do not develop quite the same progression.

Scroll down to other hepadenaviruses this might help:

http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol59/mono59-1.html

Although there HepB can cause cancer (liver) in humans, there is no evidence available to suggest that GSHV is transmitted to humans.

http://www.pnas.org/content/83/12/4543.abstract

This is a Hepatitis B page but since there is a similarity - who knows:

http://www.hepatitisbviruspage.com/history.htm

scroll down to TEXT:

http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/74/11/5377?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=genotypes&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=320&resourcetype=HWFIG

You can find other information that the Woodchuck model (WHV) is being used because of its similarity to human HPB. But as the 2nd link mentioned the GSHV model is also being used because HBV does not grow in tissue culture. I think that is the real link you need as your thesis.

http://www.microbiologybytes.com/virology/HBV.html

The affect of GSHV on people is that together with WHV can be used for culturing where HBV cannot. The number of affected ground squirrels is limited (There are also artic squirrels but I did not check that ne because it is a different virus)

Good luck - let me know how your paper turns out.

Ground Squirrels tease a Cape Cobra - Wild Africa - BBC