World Champion Squirrel Cooker hopeful Addie Hayes preps her dishes on a Coleman stove.
Professional chefs and amateur cooks compete for Arkansas pride in the annual World Champion Squirrel Cook Off
As the kitchen manager at the Odd Soul, a pizzeria and bar in Springdale, Arkansas, Addie Hayes is used to spending Saturday mornings in front of a stove. But today, she’s a little out of her element. This morning she pulled a ball cap over her bleach blond bob, tied a short floral apron over cutoffs leaving her thigh tattoos exposed, and sent a message to her staff to make sure they could handle brunch without her. Then she drove out to the Ozark Highlands Nature Center, where she traded her commercial kitchen for a tabletop Coleman stove and joined her sous chef for the day, her brother Rex.
“My brother’s the hunter,” she says.
When asked what they’re cooking, Rex laughs and states the obvious: “Squirrel!”
“Ravioli,” Addie specifies.
In just a few hours, Rex and Addie, who go by the team name Deez Nuts, have to present six styrofoam boxes of squirrel ravioli to a panel of judges, who will measure the dish against squirrel birria tacos, “limb chicken” salad, squirrel egg rolls, and other squirrely items cooked up by 31 teams, with names like Gnawty by Nature and the Frying Squirrels. Competitors come from across the country, converging upon Springdale to pursue the esteemed title of World Champion Squirrel Cooker in front of thousands of attendees.
The chefs, a mix of amateurs and professionals, begin the day with meat inspections. Squirrels can be whole, halved, or quartered, but they must start out cold and bagged, and they can’t be marinated in anything more than a salt brine. Most competitors are pretty outdoorsy, plucking their squirrels straight from a tree with a shotgun or .22 rifle. Those lacking the aim to harvest their own squirrels or source them (most teams use 10 to 15 squirrels total) are allowed to supplement their stock with critters donated by event organizers and volunteers.
From top: Competitive squirrel skinning is another big draw event; Judges take into account texture and taste, percentage of squirrel meat, and squirrel-based side dishes.
The chefs are then given three hours to assemble a dish that highlights the smallest of small game. Officials award points for texture and taste, and the percentage of squirrel meat versus other proteins in main dishes, as well as squirrel-based side dishes. Judge Maudie Schmitt, chef and co-owner of the Fayetteville institution Cafe Rue Orleans, says that even though dishes are served in plain styrofoam boxes, presentation is also critical.
In one of the first dishes to cross her path in the judge’s room, a miniature Mexican blanket serves as a placemat beneath a braised squirrel empanada. There’s also a lush bed of kale and a side of Mexican street corn, dusted with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, presented in a pepper-shaped bowl.
But, garnishes aside, what does squirrel even taste like?
“Sometimes it’s gamey, sometimes it’s real chewy,” chef Schmitt says. “But they call it the tree chicken for a reason. It’s sort of basic.”
Outside, competitor Jeff Williams, chef and managing partner of the Press Room, a neighborhood wine bar in Chicago, offers more nuanced tasting notes for anyone tempted to turn their nose up at squirrel.
“I like to remind people that Iberico pork is finished on acorns, and squirrels eat acorns all the time,” Williams says. “It has that richness to it.”
Williams puts the finishing touches on a gumbo and prepares to serve bite-size samples to attendees. While the cooking competition is the main attraction, the free, family-friendly event also includes live music, activities, and side competitions, such as squirrel shooting (at targets, not live squirrels), squirrel calling, and even squirrel skinning.
Attendee Laura Kato of Fayetteville leaves a box knife clipped to her tank top after spontaneously signing up for the squirrel-skinning competition, despite an utter lack of experience. While standing in the beer line talking to her friends about the event, a stranger had overheard her, handed her a knife, and advised her to watch some YouTube videos on proper butchering. Though Kato competed with plenty of grit, she was eliminated early. Nevertheless, she and her friends, drawn to the event out of curiosity, are leaving with a story to take back to the city.
“Sometimes you have to get out of your bubble,” Kato says.
On its surface, the World Champion Squirrel Cook Off is a deeply unserious event. The whole thing emerged from a joke. In 2010, producers for Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern searched for folks who were versed in squirrel cooking for an Ozark episode. They got in touch with local small-game hunter Joe Wilson, who joked with them that northwest Arkansas was known for its “world champion squirrel.” The producers took him seriously and asked for more info.
“We throw the world championship right here,” Wilson says he told them, bluffing. They asked when the competition was held. “When y’all comin’?” Wilson asked.
That first cook-off, held in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2011, was hastily thrown together in time for filming. Still, 24 teams from multiple states showed up to present dishes like squirrel fried rice and squirrel gumbo. The town continued to host the event for years before it relocated in 2023 to the Ozark Highlands Nature Center in Springdale. The new venue, operated by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, aligns more closely with Wilson’s true mission for the event: connecting people to hunting and nature. To outsiders who only search for food at the supermarket, hunting can seem cruel and outmoded, but Wilson hopes the cook-off can change their minds.
“People will show up for the oddity,” Wilson says. “But hopefully, when they leave, they have a little more respect for hunting or maybe even want to go out and hunt their own food.”
From top: The annual event draws thousands of attendees each year; kids get prime viewing of the squirrel skinning competition; cooks take a celebratory shotski after a long day.
The barriers to entry are low. Squirrel hunting is not a gear-heavy sport. It doesn’t require silently stalking prey, so it’s great for groups of chatty friends and kids. And, as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission notes, “squirrels are so plentiful in Arkansas, hunters typically have a good shot at filling their vest.”
Celebrity hunter Clay Newcomb, a seventh-generation Arkansan and host of the MeatEater podcast Bear Grease, believes that, at its foundation, the celebration of squirrels and hunting hearkens back to regional poverty.
“So much of the stories that are in our cultural history go back to poor people eating squirrel because they had to,” Newcomb says. “And now we don’t have to. That’s kind of the point of this.”
Northwest Arkansas is now known as a destination for backpacking, mountain biking, and other outdoor recreation, but the rich natural landscape that hosts those pastimes also prevented the state from developing at the same pace as the rest of the country. Though Native peoples like the Osage had long used the area for seasonal hunting, relatively few settlers made their homes in the heavily wooded countryside for around 150 years following statehood in 1836. Those who did put down roots in the area, which was sandwiched between the Mississippi floodplain to the east and Indian Territory to the west, had to rely on hunting and fishing to survive.
From the rugged terrain, a rugged people forged a path of survival. But by the 1930s, primary sources of game like deer and black bears became dangerously scarce due to unregulated hunting and population loss, leaving fewer sources of sustenance.
“Squirrel was the crux of cuisine during this survival period,” says chef Erin Rowe, author of An Ozark Culinary History: Northwest Arkansas Traditions from Corn Dodgers to Squirrel Meatloaf.
While squirrel hunting and other practices helped people survive, they also fit stigmas that were developing against early Arkansas settlers. Outsiders who visited the area sent letters back East describing a backward population who remained isolated and out of touch while the rest of the country modernized. In 1954, a piece in the magazine the American Mercury noted, “Arkansas stands for watermelons, the unshaven Arkie, the moonshiner, slow trains, malnutrition, mental debility, hookworm, hogs, shoelessness, illiteracy, windy politicians, and hillbillies.” The popular image of the Arkansas hillbilly has proven difficult to shake.
The cook-off may initially seem to feed those stigmas, another opportunity for city dwellers to mock rural habits. But the competition has become a counterintuitive point of local pride, a chance to reclaim that hillbilly heritage and shift perceptions.
“This ain’t no joke. When we crown you as a world champion, you should never serve that squirrel on a paper plate again. It’s fine china,” Wilson told Clay Newcomb on a recent episode of Bear Grease. “Seeing urban people show up and have their nose pointed up in the air when they get there, and by the end of it you watch them walking around nibbling on a squirrel leg or something — that’s my success story.”
The winning team, Razorback Muffler, also own a muffler shop of the same name.
Squirrel puns abound in team names like Three Squirrel Mafia and Gnawty by Nature.
“The main thing to understand is that squirrel has always been part of American culture and cuisine,” says Rowe, who places squirrel meat among the pillars of High South cuisine, a burgeoning movement highlighting the foodways of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. “This is something worth celebrating, and everyone is there to celebrate.”
Though many show up to the cook-off to celebrate squirrel and pursue the title of champ, only one team can walk away with the crown. Today the honor goes to team Razorback Muffler.
“This is my greatest accomplishment ever,” says Ethan Gazaway, clutching a wad of cash and an engraved Case pocket knife.
Gazaway and teammate Chris Eiler, who run a muffler shop of the same name in Farmington, Arkansas, hauled a wood-fire pizza oven out to the event. In between prepping squirrel bacon ranch pizzas and deep-fried raviolis, they hawked hats and hoodies that read “Razorback Muffler: No Muff Too Tuff.” By the end of the day, the duo are positively giddy with their win.
“We love to share with people and for people to love what we share. It’s the top of the list. It’s the best it could be,” Eiler says. “My wife never had squirrel before, had a piece of pizza today, and said, ‘This is the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life.’”
Meanwhile, though Addie and Rex’s dreams of domination didn’t come to pass this year, they leave with new friends and optimism. Many of the winners seem to be repeat participants, so they hope to score higher when they return as seasoned competitors next year.
But Addie doesn’t leave entirely empty-handed. She takes away a pamphlet she picked up at the Women in the Wild booth, an organization that offers safe, affordable, educational hunting and fishing excursions for women.
When asked if she’s thinking about signing up for a trip with the group, she replies, “I didn’t know it was an option, but I’d love to!” For a competition intended to promote an interest in hunting and pride in regional foodways, that in itself is a win.
Jess Brent is a freelance writer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her writing about food and culture has appeared in the New Territory, Edible Tulsa, and Mid-Level Management Literary Magazine.
Connor Cockrell is an outdoor lifestyle photographer based in the beautiful hills of the Ozarks. To keep up with his fly fishing and outdoor adventures, follow along @wolfandpine
Copy edited by Laura Michelle Davis
