Shot Placement on Small Game (Head Shots)
Assumes the Hunting Primer. New here? Start there first.
Your objective
By the end, you'll be able to explain where to aim a rifle head shot on a squirrel and which up-tree shots to pass for a clean, meat-saving kill.
A fox squirrel lies stretched along a limb, side-on, perfectly still, 30 yards up. You have a clear shot at the whole animal. Where, exactly, does the crosshair settle so this squirrel dies instantly and arrives home with every ounce of meat intact? On an animal this small, that answer has almost no margin for error — so we learn it cold, before the shot.
Quick recall
Quick recall from the Optics lesson — with a 50-yard zero, how far off your aim does a .22 bullet land at 20–40 yards?
The rifle rule: aim for the head
On a side-on squirrel, the precise spot is just behind the eye and ear — that covers the brain. The kill zone is brutally small, about the size of a golf ball, which is why the rest of this lesson is really about when not to shoot.
Read the angle — and the backstop
The head shot is only ethical when three things are true at once:
- The squirrel is still. A moving squirrel turns a head shot into a body wound. Wait for it to stop.
- You can clearly see the head and have a real aim point — not a guess at a shape behind leaves.
- There’s something solid behind the head (the trunk, a thick limb) to stop the bullet — never open sky. (You’ll go deep on this in the next lesson.)
If any one fails, you pass. This is not timidity; a squirrel is small, the window is tiny, and a wounded squirrel vanishes into a den hole where you’ll never recover it.
The shotgun exception
The head-only rule is a rifle/air-rifle rule. With a shotgun, the spreading pattern is meant to put several pellets into the whole head-and-neck area at once, so you center the pattern there rather than threading one bullet behind the ear. The trade is the one you already know: pellets in the body and meat to pick clean. With a shotgun you accept that for the forgiveness of the pattern; with a rifle you aim the head to avoid it.
Make the call — where do you hold, or do you pass?
Image check
A squirrel is side-on and still on a limb, with the limb behind its head. With a rifle, tap your aim point — or tap PASS.
Knowledge check
A squirrel is bounding along a limb, only flashing into view between leaves, directly over a den hole. With a rifle, what's the call?
Take it to the woods
The squirrel shot checklist — run it before every rifle shot
Sources
- AmmoToGo — Where to Shoot a Squirrel. https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/lodge/where-to-shoot-a-squirrel/
- Outdoor Life — Shotguns vs. Rimfire Rifles for Squirrel Hunting. https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/best-squirrel-hunting-gun-rimfire-vs-shotgun/
If you remember nothing else
- With a rifle, aim for the head — it kills instantly and leaves all the body meat clean and shot-free.
- The aim point is just behind the eye/ear on a side-on squirrel; the kill zone is tiny, about golf-ball size.
- Take only still, clearly-seen squirrels with a backstop behind the head — never a moving one, never a guess through leaves.
- Pass the shot when the squirrel is screened, on the move, hanging over a den hole, or at an angle you can't read — a wounded squirrel disappears into a hole.
- A shotgun is the exception: with a pattern you center the whole head/neck, but you accept pellets in the meat.
How ready do you feel?
How ready are you to pick the right aim point on a squirrel — or pass the shot — in the field?
Before you go — a quick look back
Distributed practice: one fast recall from an earlier lesson keeps it from fading.
Quick recall
From the Optics & Sighting-In lesson — at typical 20–40 yard squirrel shots, how much does a 50-yard-zeroed .22 bullet rise or drop from your aim point?
Done with this lesson?
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