The grays are all we have here until you get to the mountains really. I remember the red ones In St. Louis did seem less able bodied than these grays. In my neighborhood I think the squirrels got us 3 or 4 to 1 however.
Alaska supposedly has 466 per person and that’s rough. It claims there is zero in Hawaii which is not true as Mona loa has a few in the Park and Hawaiians from other islands travel to go see them as if they leave the park the mongoose go after em. I find that kind of hilarious that it’s a tourist attraction for locals
We used to have the alberts squirrel at my mountain property that burned and the first year sadly my dogs moved them out however by the next year I think they enjoyed the lack of predators and we had two on my small 5 acres. They were great to watch and maybe even more acrobatic than the greys.
The squirrels in my neighborhood are not very smart. They bury empty black walnut husks in my newly created planting beds and tear everything up around my baby pawpaws. I would be less mad about it if they were at least hiding something they can actually eat.
Thankfully no squirrels in my yard, but here we have ground squirrels and they can really tear up a meadow. Almost nothing worse than stepping in one of their holes and twisting an ankle.
I saw that and immediately thought “Someone needs to import some of those…or maybe keep one as a pet.”
Then I looked online and found two negatives:
1.) They eat fruit
2.) “Many mongoose species have a very strong, unpleasant smell due to secretions from its anal glands.”
The 2nd wouldn’t matter for import into the wild (I try not to get close enough to wild-life to smell their anal glands), but could be unpleasant for a pet.
I refuse to shoot lead on my property, except for the tiny bit of lead I use in a pellet gun.
I keep a 12 ga. shotgun in my pickup for some varmints. I only use duck steel shot loads. I hate the idea of spewing lead shot all over the property. Occasionally my kids and I have a trap shoot competition on our property. I only allow steel shot.
Lead, the end product of radioactive activity, (and which proves the universe had a ‘beginning’), must have been put in place by a Creator. So, it’s not to be sneered at any more than trees or water.
As for hunting/fishing…I’d probably buy something heavier than lead if the option were available at the store.
i prefer to use a semi auto .22 with a scope. less damage to the trees and it doesn’t spray shot in places i don’t want it. surprising they banned lead in the watersheds where the chances are very low of waterfowl actually getting the pellets and yet use of it for upland game is legal and the pellets are everywhere on the dirt roads and on the ground where grouse and other birds go to get their grit they need to digest their food.
After the mass of squirrels I got this year I am thinking of more “wholesale” ways to trap them. One big problem I have is birds stealing the mast, it means I have to re-bait too often. Here is my new mass trapping idea:
Step one is to put out a huge pile of something they love but which will take a week or so for them to take all of. It should be enough so the birds can only make a small dent in it. Then, do nothing for a week, just let all the squirrels in the neighborhood show up to get their goodies. Each day more squirrels will home in on it. Finally, put several dozen traps on the path to the mast pile baited with something even more tempting, and spend a few days of intense trap monitoring to capture 30-50 squirrels. Make sure there is still a big mast pile to keep them in the neighborhood. Repeat this every month or so. By not keeping the traps going all the time the birds won’t be hanging out in the area ready to eat the mast.
We had a terrible chipmunk problem here this year. Never seen anything like it. They would run up to me gleefully to show me what they had found. They ate our peaches, nectarines, and figs. I netted the peaches and pears, but they still got a lot of my Chinese Honey peaches. We tried water traps, sticky pads, rat traps - nothing worked. Even put electric poultry netting around the peaches but they climbed neighboring trees and got over it. I’m going to try that Squirellinator trap mentioned above.
Someone also wrote on another post about placing a dish of plaster of Paris with cornmeal, etc. in it and a dish of water nearby. But you have to be careful that outdoor cats, other animals don’t get to it. No other animal is in our high tunnel except the voles and the chipmunks so I figure it’s safe to try in there at least.
@scottfsmith I know you are now using lethal traps, but at one time I used to use pecans attached to the trip plate of live traps to keep the bait from being stolen without the trap tripped. I would drill a hole in pecans and use a self tapping screw to screw the pecan to the trip plate.
I wonder if that could be adapted to your lethal traps?
Moose,
The reason I don’t like to use lead shot is because it never goes away. I looked it up once and for most soils there is about 60 lbs. of naturally occurring lead per acre, as I recall.
A box of 12 ga. shotgun shells has about 2 lbs. of lead. During a trap shoot we run through quite a few boxes of shells, so it would add quite a bit of lead to the soil, over the naturally occurring lead. Even just shooting varmints would add significantly over time on my property.
Lead doesn’t wash out of the soil profile. I figure that the next person who owns my land may build a house and have children who play in dirt. Or they may want to grow garden root or leafy vegetables in the places we shoot. They would probably never test their garden area for lead.
I’m not judging anyone for shooting whatever shot they want on their land, but for my part not using lead shot is my small way of being a steward of my land.
This is an old fable passed around for many years which probably has no effect on squirrels. It has been discussed extensively on fruit forums. I once tested it on one squirrel, which I kept in a cage and fed it 1/2 plaster of Paris, and 1/2 peanut butter. It appeared to have no effect on the squirrel whatever. Even those who claimed the plaster of Paris worked to kill squirrels never really saw evidence of dead squirrels. They just claimed it worked because the squirrels disappeared. However those who have poisoned squirrels with rat bait, generally saw dead squirrels as verification that the poison worked.
why i shoot at the local rod and gun club instead of in the woods. it was built in a old gravel pit . should it ever close it could be buried with the piles of gravel left, trapping all that lead under ground forever.
I got my Fuji apples out of storage this week, and they just weren’t prime at all. But if I hadn’t picked them when I did, the damn squirrels wouldn’t have left any untouched. Fuji tree had 2 layers of nets over it.
There are literally hordes of squirrels around here this year. I see them everywhere. I think this battle will never be won. I might have to surrender. I had a box of pears sitting in the garage month or so ago and i went out and here is a squirrel in the garage eating a pear. The word is out…i’ve got the good stuff.
Ackshually, we need more research into corona viruses so as to identify those strains lethal to squirrels. We could live-trap them, spritz a little aerosol at them containing the live virus, and release them to infect others without our activities becoming obvious to the squirrel lovers in the neighborhood (or having to dispose of all the carcasses).
Once upon a time, an inventor developed a red elephant gun. He went hunting but failed to bag anything because all he saw were pink elephants. Being the ingenious sort, he dug a pit and filled it with boiled rice. Sure enough, along came a pink elephant, who discovered the pit of rice. The elephant was delighted because, as everyone knows, pink elephants just love boiled rice. The elephant ate all the rice and went away.
The next day, the inventor filled the pit halfway with raisins and covered the raisins with half a pit-full of boiled rice. The pink elephant returned, expecting to find more rice. Sure enough, there it was, and he ate all the rice down to the raisins. The elephant was ecstatic because, as everyone knows, if there’s anything pink elephants love more than boiled rice, it’s raisins. The elephant polished off all the raisins and went away.
On the last day, the inventor once again filled the pit with boiled rice. The pink elephant returned, ate all the rice, and was so enraged at not finding any raisins underneath that he turned red, and the inventor shot him.
