There are no shortages of pine plantations in this state, particularly on many WMAs. Even where the pines are thickest in tracts owned by paper companies, the land is crisscrossed by streamside management zones, which are stands of hardwoods left flanking creeks to prevent erosion.

Some of the most squirrel-laden WMAs are near rivers, and accessing the most productive areas is best by boat. These include the Mulberry Fork WMA in Tuscaloosa and Walker counties, the Demopolis WMA where the Tombigbee and Warrior rivers converge, the Lauderdale WMA in extreme northwest Alabama, the Coosa WMA and the three preserves in the heart of the Mobile Delta -- W.L. Holland, Mobile-Tensaw and Upper Delta tracts.

My own personal favorite is the Mulberry Fork, which is full of hidden valleys that are teeming with bushytails. A person can stand on level ground, peer out at a seemingly endless grove of pines, and have no clue what's barely 50 yards in front of them. It may be a creek bottom so deep that the tops of 50- and 70-year-old oaks do not rise above the 12-year-old loblollies. Here, stuffing your vest or coat with eight squirrels can a walk in the park.

For more information about WMAs, log onto: www.outdooralabama.com/hunting/land/wmamaps.

Squirrel Dogging
Best friends Joe Ward and Ray Mitchell of Lowndesboro are among many Alabamians who have fallen in love with squirrel dogging. Medical problems have cut down their excursions for a couple of seasons, but the retirees won't be able to stay off the saddle for much longer.

Like many other graying sportsmen in the Southeast, Mitchell switched allegiances from raccoon to squirrel hunting. It is a chance for the former Montgomery fireman to still enjoy training and hunting with treeing dogs without having to do it at night and over much greater distances.

Ward, once a private investigator, became interested in hunting bushytails with dogs about eight years ago after reading a newspaper account of the American Treeing Feist Association's annual rally hunt in Marion.

"I told my wife that I'd like to have a squirrel dog for Christmas," he said. "She started looking, but about the cheapest one she found was $1,500.

"That's when I decided to send in my $10 and join the Treeing Feist association. I got their address from the article," he continued. "They sent me this yearbook that listed all their members, and I noticed one from right here in Lowndesboro."

The guy was Ray Mitchell, and a friendship was soon born.

Ward called Mitchell, introduced himself, and asked if he had a puppy for sale. But Mitchell was new to squirrel hunting, too, and he'd just bought his first dog from a kennel in Arkansas.

The next Sunday afternoon, Mitchell drove to Ward's home to show off his dog BooBoo. The two men have been hunting together ever since.

"This has been the greatest thing to happen to me in my whole life," Ward once gushed. "Without it, I don't know what I'd do."

Before Ward's eyes started giving him trouble and Mitchell's wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the two men hunted almost every weekday during squirrel season. They typically wait for February before adding weekend trips.

If they're not hunting with myriad friends who want to see the dogs work, the duo often attends competitive hunts in which feists and sometimes larger-boned curs compete nose to nose for trophies.

If you'd like to learn more about squirrel dogging and where to buy a feist, long onto the American Treeing Feist Association's website at www.angelfire.com/ga2/atfa/index.html.

Rabbits
Long-Eared Action
The same habitat changes that have negatively impacted quail numbers have hurt rabbits as well. But cottontails are so prolific that the Heart of Dixie's rabbit population fluctuates, but does not collapse. We are still unlikely to ever face a shortage beyond the cyclic dips that follow surges in predator numbers.

You don't need a pack of beagles to shoot a rabbit. You can still kick them up in fields managed in the Conservation Reserve Program, along fencerows and inside briar patches. But it's hard to collect a limit without dogs. Plus, a good race can really get one's adrenaline pumping.