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Advanced & Specialist Squirrel Hunting Advanced

Squirrel Dogs: The Feist & Cur Tradition

Lesson 37 of 41 · Module 8, lesson 1

Assumes the Hunting Primer. New here? Start there first.

Your objective

By the end, you'll be able to explain how a squirrel dog finds and trees squirrels and describe how a dog hunt differs from still-hunting or sitting a stand.

Concept ~7 min

It’s a cold December morning. Instead of easing into the woods and freezing on a stump for an hour, you turn a 20-pound little dog loose. She vanishes into the leaf litter, and three minutes later you hear her: a sharp, steady bark from a big white oak two ridges over. She’s got one treed. You walk to her, look up, and there he is. Welcome to the oldest way to hunt squirrels in the South.

Quick recall

Quick recall from the Tactics module — what does the 'feed tree sit' ask you to DO with your body and your noise?

Quick recall from the Tactics module — what does the 'feed tree sit' ask you to DO with your body and your noise?

A Southern tradition with deep roots

Hunting squirrels behind a dog isn’t a gimmick — it’s one of the oldest hunting traditions in the southern United States. Both the feist and the cur trace back to the southern Appalachians, where settlers bred small, sharp-nosed dogs to put meat on the table and keep vermin off the farm. The mountain feist is a living link to a time when many families hunted to eat.

These dogs got so rare in the 20th century that fans organized in the 1980s to save them, founding breed associations that keep the bloodlines alive today. When you hunt over a feist or cur, you’re stepping into that lineage.

Deep dive Feist vs. cur — the quick difference

Both “tree” squirrels, but they’re built differently. A feist is small (roughly 12–30 lb), fast, and tends to hunt close and busy — great in tighter woods. A cur is bigger (roughly 40–60 lb), with more range and a deeper voice, often favored where a dog needs to cover a lot of open ground. Neither is “better” — it’s a fit to your woods and your pace.

What “treeing” actually means

The word that matters is treeing. A treeing dog uses its nose and eyes to find a squirrel on the ground, then chases it up a tree — and here’s the key part — stays at the base and barks to tell you exactly which tree the squirrel went up. That bark is the dog saying “here, this one, right now.”

A good squirrel dog hunts with nose and eyes together, unlike a hound that works almost purely on scent. It winds the squirrel, trails it, trees it, and then “looks up” — keeping its eyes on the quarry so it doesn’t lose track and wander off to hunt something else.

The dog finds them — you still make the shot

Here’s what a dog does and doesn’t do for you. The dog finds and pins the squirrel. It does not aim the gun. Once you walk up to a treed squirrel, the job is the same one you already trained for: spot it in the canopy, and take a safe upward shot with a solid backstop.

Picture the hunt

This is the same “stop and read the woods” frame from the primer — except now a dog is doing the finding while you move to her bark. (Diagram, not a photo.)

Explore

Tap each marker to walk through how a dog hunt unfolds.

Schematic woodland ridge with a standing hunter and a wind arrow; markers show where a dog ranges out, winds a squirrel, trees it, and where the hunter walks in to shoot upward.

Check yourself

Knowledge check

What does a treeing squirrel dog do that a feed-tree sit can't?

What does a treeing squirrel dog do that a feed-tree sit can't?

Safety check

You walk up to your dog barking treed. Before you take the shot, what's the safety priority?

You walk up to your dog barking treed. Before you take the shot, what's the safety priority?

Take it to the woods

You don’t need to own a dog to learn from one. Find a local squirrel-dog hunter or a breed-club event and ask to tag along on a hunt. Watch one thing specifically: how the dog trees and stays, and how the handler reads which bark means “treed.” Note how different the tempo feels from your still-hunts.

Tag along on a dog hunt

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Sources

If you remember nothing else

  • Squirrel dogs are a time-honored Southern tradition — small feists (12–30 lb) and bigger curs (40–60 lb) bred to wind, trail, and TREE squirrels.
  • A 'treeing' dog drives a squirrel up a tree, then stays and barks at the base to tell you exactly which tree it's in.
  • Dog hunting flips the script: instead of staying still and quiet, you cover ground fast and let the dog find squirrels for you.
  • The dog locates the squirrel; you still have to spot it in the canopy and make a safe upward shot — the dog does not replace marksmanship.
  • It works great in mid-to-late season when leaves are down, squirrels are on the ground caching, and a dog can wind and chase them up.

How ready do you feel?

How ready are you to explain what a treeing squirrel dog does and how hunting over one differs from sitting a feed tree?

Before you go — a quick look back

Distributed practice: one fast recall from an earlier lesson keeps it from fading.

Quick recall

From The 'Feed Tree' Sit (Ambush) — what's the core idea of that tactic, and how is hunting over a dog the opposite approach?

From The 'Feed Tree' Sit (Ambush) — what's the core idea of that tactic, and how is hunting over a dog the opposite approach?

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