I've been looking at squirrel recipes as I plan to go squirrel hunting this weekend. Some of the recipes say that young squirrels are better for frying and old squirrels are best stewed due to toughness.

So how do you tell? Bottom jaw them like a deer??lol

you can tell when quartering them on how tough they are.

also if they are a boar, straight to dumplings whether young or old

Yup.....

Thanks! makes sense. I've only shot a handful of squirrels in my lifetime, fixin to change that hopefully. I love eating them.

Good luck!!

our neighbor growing up had about 30-40 pecan trees and asked me to thin the squirrels out (she said kill them all), so either my pellet gun or .22 get 4-5 in a sitting, take home and dress out & quarter ... mom made the call on whether to German fry or make dumplings, I didn't complain either way.

Killed and ate a lot of squirrels growing up, fried or German fry for the youngsters. Dumplings, potpie or stew for the older/tough ones. In the fall after a week or two of season we would often spend a day cooking a squirrel Brunswick stew with them in wash pots those were fun times.

Brunswick stew as we cooked it took lots of squirrels to make, 20lbs squirrels, 10 pounds of taters, 10 pounds of onion, gallon of tomato, gallon of green peas, gallon of corn season to taste. I still have the pot and cooker we used for that and thinking about making a pot next week one day to fill the freezer with a bunch of meals but will probably use ground venison and chicken since I don't have 20lbs of squirrel available. Big bowl of that is a meal. Takes a while to cook it down to a thick cooked down stew though, at least 4 hours of stirring and minding the pot.

Squirrel is the one of the few things I have not eaten, want to try some squirrel dumplings

You will know which ones to stew when you skin them.

Always makes me laugh hearing a "boar squirrel". Seems like a big name for a tree rat lol.

Anyone of you know the best way to skin them with one cut?

rear ankle to rear ankle like a coon, then turn the skin inside out over the head ...

I've never seen that. I learned to cut under the tail, leave the skin on the dorsal side of the tail area, put your foot on the tail, grab both hind legs and pull. About half of the skin will come off, leaving a V on the chest. Grab the point of the V and pull the rear half of the skin off.
You still have to cut the feet and head off.

I have no idea how true this is and I have no scientific data to back it up. But...When I see a squirrel and think, "Dang, that's a skinny tail." it's either a young female or a young buck. First year production run. Those are your fryers. Big bushy tails? They've been around a couple years. Those are the stewers.

You can fry an older squirrel just have to parboil it first.

Fry them up and then turn the heat down and leave em for another 30 minutes