“Squirrel Hunters” is a traditional American old-time fiddle tune with a distinctive Civil War connection. The song’s title commemorates the Squirrel Hunters — the irregular force of armed civilians, around 15,000 men, who hurried to defend Cincinnati, Ohio, from a Confederate threat in September 1862. After Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith defeated a Union force at Richmond, Kentucky on August 30, 1862, word reached Cincinnati that Smith’s troops were advancing. The civilian volunteers came armed with whatever weapons they had — mostly squirrel-hunting rifles — and a Confederate scout reportedly described them as “farm boys that never had to shoot at the same squirrel twice.”
The fiddle tune itself has older roots than the 1862 namesake event. The folklorist Samuel Bayard collected versions of the tune in southwestern Pennsylvania, identifying it as part of a “very old tune family” with widespread variants across the British and American traditions, including the related Irish air “Welcome Home,” the Scottish “Haughs of Cromdale,” “Oyster Wives Rant,” and many others. The Civil War title attached to the tune in the Ohio border region but the melody itself probably circulated across the Atlantic for at least a century before the Cincinnati event.
“Squirrel Hunters” gained wider modern popularity through John Hartford’s recordings, which carried the tune into the contemporary bluegrass and old-time repertoires. It remains a regular feature at jam sessions where pickers want a piece with classic American historical-narrative weight.