What's stopping you from making vension pastrami? You soak it in a brine seasoned to your personal taste for 1-3 weeks, then smoke it. I plan to cut up a hind quarter soon and do this to part of it. In my opinion a smoker is a necessity as far as cooking most wild animals, an iron skillet is the next most commonly used tool.
For squirrel what I do depends on how old the squirrel is. A young squirrel I will fry the front and back legs. The ribs on the young ones have too little meat to be worth it. My general process for frying non fish meats is to soak in buttermilk and crushed garlic for a few hours, drain. Scrambled egg wash. Then shaken around in a bag with seasoned flour. Fried in hot peanut oil. The result is a lot like fried chicken but with a deeper flavor. I haven't tried it yet but I want to turn some pecans to dust and substitute that for flour. Should provide a nutty flavor that will work well with squirrel.
Older squirrels go to the stew pot. Boiled off the bones rendering one of the richest broths I have ever tasted. Just add some of your favorite vegetables in there and you have a really good stew as it is. If you want to impart a nice nuttiness to it, make a roux with an equal volume of flour and peanut oil whisked around in a pan until it turns the color of peanut butter. Do not stop stirring, and definitely don't walk away from it. Once it's done pour it into the stew, it will thicken it a little. I hardly ever measure so amounts are at your discretion. The roux will burn you severely if you get any on you. With the addition of dumplings instead of a roux you would have squirrel and dumplings.
I once stuffed a squirrel full of garden peppers and onions, wrapped the squirrel in bacon and threw it on the smoker for a couple hours at around 200 degrees. Season the squirrel to your taste before wrapping in bacon. Once the squirrel is about done. Take the bacon off and throw it back on the smoker on high heat until it is crispy.
Twice or thrice smoked bacon is pretty delicious. If you ever smoke a piece of lean meat covered in bacon try it. The bacon will pick up seasonings and flavor from the meat it was on and lots of smokiness.
If your an adventurous enough eater to indulge in one of the most delicious things I ever did with a bit of whitetail backstrap that had been in the freezer for like 3 weeks was to cut it into about 1 1/4 inch steaks. Coated it in a mixture of melted butter, and a sauce made mostly of smoked garden peppers and garlic. Got the iron skillet hot and just cooked it for about 30-40 seconds on all sides. Calling it rare would have been a stretch, but the goal was one step above raw. It is important to keep any meat you might do this with frozen for at least a couple weeks to kill any parasites.
We once stuffed the chambers of a cow heart full of peppers and onions that had been sauteed in bacon grease and smoked it. The result was delicious. I would do it again with the heart from a deer or other animal provided it wasn't blown apart by a bullet.
Assume that anything you can make out of cow you can make out of venison, the only difference being that venison has much less fat. It can be made more fatty with a bit of bacon, bacon grease, or both, you could add beef fat if that's your thing. A little bit of bacon grease will make any lean game meat from becoming dry try it with turkey and you will be rewarded with the most succulent turkey you have probably ever had. Other people might not be such big fans of utilizing bacon to this extent, but the deliciousness of it has me convinced.