Want a challenge? Hunt squirrels with a handgun. Woodsmanship, patience and marksmanship all count.

In an Oklahoma woodlot last fall, I paused in my still-hunting to glass the top of a gnarled hickory that had several cavities. My Zeiss binocular showed me the glint of an eye. Nonchalantly, I moved away from the tree and into cover that would shade my eye and conceal the movement of my pistol. Careful aim and a steady crush of the trigger could not, alas, ensure a hit. While the bullet missed, the hunt had all the elements of success. I’d found where a squirrel lived and spotted its eye and fired before it understood the threat.

Do that often enough, and deer hunting will become easy.

Indeed, squirrel hunting is splendid practice for hunting whitetails. Whether you ease through the thickets, rising sun to your back, or sit, motionless, inside the silhouette of a shadowed bole, the skills you use to disappear and to see animals skilled at disappearing are the same as those most useful in deer season. Then too, the mast that supports squirrels also attracts deer. You might well find a buck near the spot where you saw squirrels cutting acorns.

Not that squirrels eat nuts alone. Like deer, they’re fond of corn. The first squirrel I skewered with an arrow fell on the fringe of a grain field. My first rifle kill came at dusk, the animal scampering too late up an oak limb overhanging a corn crib.

Squirrels reward patience. Compared to big game that commonly moves when dawn is still just a promise, squirrels do not rise early. They’re reluctant to leave nests on cold mornings until the sun warms a limb, and they rely a great deal on vision to detect danger and find food. That doesn’t mean you can sleep in. To become invisible, you must arrive close on the heels of night, sans flashlight, moving slowly so you stay quiet. Go to a tree that will hide you, in whose shelter you can shed your humanity. Or move to a part of the woods that puts the sun to your back when at dawn you start ghosting between the oaks, beeches and hickories. As when deer hunting, give the woods time to settle, to forget that an intruder has broken a twig. An hour being still is a difficult assignment for most of us, which is why we need to practice it more often. Perfecting the drill during squirrel hunts prepares you for whitetail season.

Patience also helps you find fertile woodlots. Not long ago I hunted in a Midwest bottomland with tall pecan trees shading an open understory. “There are hundreds of squirrels here,” insisted my host. “Fox and gray both. Bring lots of ammo.” I found few squirrels. With my Smith & Wesson .22 revolver, I bagged one and missed two. “Not a banner day,” said I. “Still, great fun.” I meant it. Squirrel hunting is always great fun. My host was dismayed, however. “We’ve never seen it so quiet.” He shook his head. “Maybe it was the weather.” Skies had been overcast, temperatures uniformly mild. Squirrels are most active in sharp air, and sun seems a catalyst. “If you could come back in a week...”