I'd do the same thing as a kid: Ride my bike to the local everything store, leave with a dust-coated box of shotgun shells or .22 bullets, and pedal as fast as I could back home so I could stuff them into my gun and go squirrel hunting. More often than not I'd come home at dark with one or two to skin. Even if supper were on the table, I'd still fry my squirrels.

I don't know why I stopped.

Nearly all of Alabama's wildlife management areas, national wildlife refuges and national forests are teeming with gray squirrels. North Alabama's parcels get the most hunting pressure and, accordingly, post the highest harvest numbers. Some of the best places to collect a limit are in Jackson County. There you find Crow Creek, Raccoon Creek and Mud Creek Waterfowl Management Areas, as well as the North Sauty Refuge. That's more than 25,000 acres available exclusively to small-game hunters.

Other notable tracts north of Birmingham include Skyline and Freedom Hills WMAs. All of the above routinely yield about 3,000 squirrels a year to dedicated hunters. Even Hollins WMA in Clay and Talladega counties that comes in No. 9 among producers of squirrels yielded 950 last season.

Central Alabama is loaded with opportunities, too. The ones favored by squirrel hunters are Oakmulgee and Cahaba River WMAs. Another good one is the Mulberry Fork WMA, but in spite of its proximity to Birmingham, it gets very little hunting pressure.

Way down south are the sprawling W.L. Holland and Mobile-Tensaw Delta WMAs, which encompass nearly 60,000 acres of tidal marshland habitat. But in their northern reaches there are also plenty of trees that harbor squirrels. Over in the southeast Blue Spring WMA is another hot spot for bushytails.

COTTONTAILS
I never liked being trapped indoors. Nothing within four walls could compare with hunting, building the ultimate tree house or prowling the Warrior River in a flat-bottomed aluminum boat with a dollar or two in my pocket for a cheeseburger at Buddy Vines Camp. And as the son of a beagle man, rabbit hunting was on my list as well.

My love for rabbits wasn't as deep as my passion for bushytails, mainly because I had trouble shooting them. They never stood still, especially with a wailing pack of beagles in pursuit.

This is the perfect example of why it's so important for kids to experience success in their outdoor pursuits. If I'd had the pleasure of actually shooting a lot of rabbits, I would've put cottontails at the top of my list. The added excitement of a chase was a whole lot more fun that sitting still scanning treetops for hours on end. It's also a reason I can never support a ban on deer dogging. Deer drives can be electrifying, even if it feels better to shoot a buck you've been stalking mano a mano.

As an adult and a far better shot, however, I'm better equipped to appreciate the pure poetry of a well-organized rabbit hunt. Excursions that meant so little at the time now pop into my head at the slightest provocation, and I can inhale the sweet-and-sour smell of the beagles and fresh hay in my daddy's dog box.

Later on, when I could drive myself, I'd sometimes go to abandoned strip pits in Jefferson County. I could walk the perimeters and kick up scores of rabbits.