For squirrels, I am a .22LR fan myself. I have an old Winchester bolt action with iron peep sights and I would not sell that gun for all the money in the world!! It is a squirell killer. One thing that no one mentioned on this post was whether or not you were using hollow point bullets or not. When I first started hunting squirrels years ago I just bought a brick of those target rounds and was wondering why the squirrels would still run off after shooting them. One of my friends told me to use hollow point bullets when hunting and I found that it really did make a difference. Since you were neck/head shooting that squirrel I would bet that you just glanced off him and stunned him just a bit and he was able to run off and hide from you. Usually a head/neck shot will drop them in their tracks!!