As @jrd51 said, you have to trap them, very diligently, starting in early spring. In my old property I had a ton of squirrels, and one year they stripped an apricot tree that had 200-300 apricots clean in a couple of days. After that incident, I had 5-6 traps (squirrelnator, havahart, tube trap) around my yard entry points (you need to understand what their routes are. The baited trap should be the first attraction to them when they enter the yard. If they discover ripe fruit, or almost ripe on the trees, they will ignore the traps and go for the fruit), and I used to bait these traps twice a day (birds steel the bait, and sometimes a lucky squirrel is able to take the bait and escape). I used to trap 50+ squirrels every season. After trapping the best treatment is to shoot them. Relocation will become very tedious and is not allowed in many places. With this strategy, I was able to harvest full crops of tree-ripe nectarines, pluots and cots for several years till I sold my old house.
Electrifying your fence might be something to try. Alternatively, a couple of tube traps on the fence may help. If this is their main entry point, then this should work as long as you remove the dead squirrels before new comers arrive (I typically check my traps in the morning before leaving to work, immediately after coming from work, and shortly before sunset.
If it is legal to exterminate squirrels who raid fruit trees/gardens in Idahoe (I think it should be legal in Idahoe) I would not worry about neighbors. If one of them had squirrels chew his/her car’s electric wires, or make a nest in their attic I am sure they will not show that affection towards them. I actually like squirrels and like watching them, but when they become a pest to my crop, I have to take action. Also, squirrels are not an endangered species so that we worry about preserving them, I think it is quite the contrary, their numbers have grown massively due to near extinction of their natural predators from suburban areas.
That fence looks pretty porous. The mesh is wide enough to admit mice, voles, squirrels, even rabbits. Woodchucks will burrow under it. And raccoons, possums and squirrels will climb over it. Deer can jump it. Birds will fly over or through. So for pest control, it seems ineffectual. It might confine a pet dog.
It seems that you could trap squirrels without the activity being obvious to neighbors. Squirrels will come to a baited trap, even if you locate it someplace obscure like the corner off the fence.
It sure does look nice
As i have talked about before i have dogs. In my front yard (my new orchard)… i have a bird feeder on a shepard hook and somehow the squirrels scale it or jump onto it and then the dogs ensue chase. The squirrels usually head up a telephone pole then.
Yesterday i watched as they jumped about 40 feet and landed in the creek… then the dogs ran them further.
Its a cycle… the dogs love the chase…and the squirrels cant help to be thieves.
An Aussie Shepherd or two that has the desire…will spend its life chasing things out of your yard… thats their happy place. They just killed two fawns last week and they hate everything about deer… they killed a skunk over the weekend and one got skunked. They are like a Wolf on my land. And as loving and friendly and loyal as you can imagine. Brutal relentless killers of everything that runs from them.
Final Note- my mom was an avid bird lover and so was her neighbor… and they got tired of the many many squirrels that destroyed their feeders and bullied their birds and ate their feed. They used a peanut butter flavored rat bait as suggested by a local Southern States… which declined the population substantially. Some folks say it works in (Just One Bite II) but i dont recall the name… im not a fan of it other than areas where my dogs cant get to.
Look up Critterfence- one inch squares- I use it. Then a hot wire (and maybe a ground wire) on top of fence.
They seldom jump higher than about 6’ and usually only 5. You need to train trees differently and start scaffolds at the right height. Better to start over than fighting squirrels forever.
Either that or get the right dog or small shotgun.
Squirrels are probably a little different in different parts of the country. I think this video has been posted before, but the highest this guy could get his local squirrels to jump was 46".
Like many others, I trap squirrels year round. I generally trap about 60 per year in my backyard, which generally slims the population down enough to get a reasonably acceptable fruit loss from them.
Haha could be, but from @spudlytater post it sounds like they’re all already there, and he needs alternate ideas. I have a number of things I do as well including trapping them using seeds and nuts as bait. You gotta try everything, and if one thing doesn’t work try others.
In my experience acorns/seeds/nuts seem to distract them. I live in Ottawa, Canada and to survive the brutal winters here squirrels target high protein, high fat foods over things like apples. Granted everyone’s situation is going to be different though.
Beautiful fence aka squirrel enabler.
Sure. This is a good short-run solution. The squirrels may be distracted for the short period when protein-rich foods are available, such as ~3 weeks in October when white oaks ripen their acorns.
And if a grower waits until the harvest is ready before addressing the squirrel problem, then yes “they’re all already there” and distraction may be the only tool.
But in the long run, anyone using this strategy is doomed to fail. In contrast to the dead female squirrel, the well-fed and living female squirrel will have 1-2 litters per year of 2-4 babies each. So that’s 2-8 more squirrels next year. Let’s assume 4 with two males and two females. Those two females and their mother will then have 6-24 more babies. And so on. So long as you keep feeding them, they’ll keep reproducing. In the long run, you won’t be able to buy enough feed to keep the horde of squirrels happy.
No, it’s mostly the food they store or otherwise have available over winter that determines the population the following year- thus the importance of nuts, or acorns as oak nuts are called. Birdfeeders keep them alive over winter when mast is scarce. Also other food intended for other animals, whether dogs, cats or chickens.
I should have mentioned that an electric fence can keep all raiders out of an orchard if constructed to the right specs. However, only one with a constant charge will keep out starving squirrels. They will take their chances with a pulsating current over starvation.
Incidentally, in my region squirrels are very scarce this year after very wet spring destroyed the mast crop last year. I assume about 95% of them starved to death. This is the first year that spring is almost over and I haven’t seen a single chipmunk on my property, so they suffered as much as the squirrels.
@alan – Of course, the amount of stored food will determine upper limit of the the surviving population.
But there’s no reason to assume that the existing population of squirrels stores as much food as possible or that the population approaches its upper limit. Around here, there are at least 10 x as many acorns as the population of squirrels could store. Acorns that are not harvested by squirrels are eaten mainly by deer (but also by chipmunks and mice). When I shoot a deer in October, its stomach is stuffed with acorns. If I were tp eliminate the deer, the mast crop would support a winter population of squirrels much larger than what we see. If I don’t eliminate the deer but merely feed the squirrels during summer to keep them away from fruits, it’d just make more squirrels to steal a bigger proportion of the available acorns from the deer and store a larger proportion of the available acorns for the winter. The squirrels will take more; the deer will get less.
Predation plays an important role in population dynamics. In the wild, such predators as hawks and fishers and minks manage to keep the squirrel population below the carrying capacity of the land. In modern suburbia, human trapping and removal can serve a similar role. At least that’s how it seems to me.
Nope! Major nope! Squirrels reproduce so rapidly that they are always in a boom and bust cycle. Oaks, hickories, pecans, and other nut producers produce a crop of seed every other year in part because that starves out the squirrels in the off year. More seed survive to grow into plants as a result. In suburbia, people feed squirrels either direct or indirect via bird feeders. The result is that suburban squirrel populations far exceed normal carrying capacity. The only people who trap squirrels are those who have crops to protect as above in this thread.
I think you’re looking for conflict. You’re attacking a position I didn’t take. Note my use of the word “can” – as in, it can if it happens. Your response assumes that I think trapping is widespread, which it isn’t.
Besides, there are predators. I’ve seen hawks eat squirrels. Saying that humans can serve as another predator seems non-controversial.
And FWIW, white oaks – the main mast crop here – are definitely not biennial bearers. There is an annual crop. Some years are better than others but the variations seems related to growing conditions the prior summer. And anyway, squirrels are not enemies of oaks. Squirrels “store” many oak seeds by burying them, but then they can’t find everything that they’ve buried. So new oak trees sprout. The interaction is symbiotic. The oak has no motivation to kill off squirrels.
As I said, survival over winter is mostly about the amount of stored food… but I’m speaking for where I live… The boom and bust of the overall population seems entirely linked to this. Predator populations reflect the availability of their prey, but on boom squirrel years they are never adequate to control them at the orchards I manage. The years they go after fruit the most are when mast is very low but their population is high. However, they are almost as bad when the population is normal but forest food supply is abnormally low- but then the problem comes in late summer when they have no acorns to gather.
You seem to be looking for reasons to surrender to squirrels. I agree that distracting them from fruit by providing other food sources is a bad idea, except if you use the food to lure them to a site they can easily be shot. However, I had to learn to control squirrels or my business would have failed. I install baffles in at least 60 of the orchards I manage, sometimes only to protect stonefruit but other times every fruit species, and if the trees are trained right the baffles work.
Squirrelnator traps are not as affective but I have had clients use them when established trees are trained too low for baffles- grey squirrels here seem much more willing to enter these traps than others and they love dishes filled with black oil sunflower seeds… the only problem is birds getting in. I’ve devised ways to stop that from happening but the easy thing can be to use filberts, walnuts or pecans in their shells as bait. If you have chipmunks you may have to trap them out so they don’t take the shelled nuts.
My customers never opt for an electric fence, which seems to me to be the most practical way to keep the marauders at bay. I once made electrified fence boxes around individual trees and it worked for me at one site, but was too much work. I have no experience with fencing an entire orchard but it still seems like the most practical way to protect fruit.
I’m speaking from 30 years experience of fighting squirrels professinally to defend fruit, but they’ve been a problem for me for 55 years. When I grew pot in S. CA half a century ago I had to construct chicken wire cages tight enough to hold a parakeet to keep the ground squirrels from destroying my plants.
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I use a big chicken wire cage with a door to keep birds from my blueberries- it also keeps the squirrels away. I’ve actually seen such a system in larger scale used to protect peaches. Squirrels here will usually cut open plastic netting but are stopped by chick wire. Someone told me that in Texas rock squirrels will gnaw through it- truth of legend, I don’t know.
FWIW, I have a plastic deer fence with a chickenwire skirt. The skirt is effective at keeping out squirrels and rabbits. For a while I was injured (Achilles tear) and couldn’t complete the skirt so there was nothing but a layer of plastic. Rabbits quickly bit holes.
I totally agree that “survival over winter is mostly about the amount of stored food.” But around here (and I think much the northeast), white oak acorns are abundant and the amount of stored food is mainly a function of the number of squirrels working to store it. I suspect (without proof) that the bigger challenge here is finding food in early and mid-summer, which is what make my fruits and berries so attractive.
I’m definitely not looking for reasons to surrender. The ~80 squirrels removed last year and ~15 this year are proof of that. I find the squirrelnator very effective for home use if used consistently but I can readily see that it would not be ideal for a commercial orchard.
Anyway, I’m not arguing any of there lessons that you learned in your business. But here the mast crop is massive and fairly reliable. Even a “bust” year is adequate to support a bigger population of squirrels that my fruit trees can tolerate.
My business is in NY and my customers are within 100 miles of me, mostly less than half that so I’m talking about the east coast. Acorns and hickory nuts were very scarce in my area last fall, I assume because relentless spring rain rotted the flowers I am surrounded by woods and have been studying squirrel activity closely here for 30 years.
I would be surprised if you had a heavy acorn crop last year. I have numerous oak trees on the edge of my 3 acres- I’ve cut down the ones on my own to make room for my nursery and orchard. I also check mast levels in my entire region which has a relatively wide range between the hills miles away from big water to the edge of the Hudson on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other. Squirrels are scarce in all places after a brutal presence last season.
Are you seeing a lot of squirrel activity where you are. Maybe in your part of the NE conditions are different, but I’d be very surprised if mast yields are consistent- it’s not what I’ve heard from wildlife experts who theorize that starvation cycles are part of a pattern that assures that more nuts survive the squirrels after starvation winters created by lean years. .
I’m seeing plenty of squirrels – just not near my yard, where I’ve caught ONLY fifteen.
I have two white oaks in the yard and neighbors have more. The woods across the street and in a nearby state park are full of them. I hunt deer with a bow, so I pay close attention to the acorn crop.
We had a very decent acorn crop last year, at least near me. I literally watched the crop from a tree stand. It was a very dry summer, so I could imagine some higher, drier spots were adversely impacted.
OK, I believe you. I see that you are in Rhode Island so that’s quite different and quite a ways from my location. I’m guessing you are close to the water with a lot of moderating influence. My advice likely still pertains.