That sounds like a ton of work. Have you thought about setting up a “trap” that squirrels could get into but would keep out neighborhood cats/dogs? Then keeping a regular supply of poison in it would be a lot easier than several dozen traps and intense monitoring.
Another possibility would be a larger version of the wheel of death. I used it this spring for Chipmunks and it worked pretty well. The big benefit of it over traps is that it can keep catching them. There were days I found 3-4 in it. Getting a squirrel was rare, as I suspect that they are large enough to either get out, or hold on to the edges. But, you could make a larger version. Not necessarily easily, but a lot easier than maintaining several dozen traps.
Chipmunks or squirrels? It wasn’t very good for squirrels for me, but a bigger version could have worked. If you got almost nothing from it, I’d suggest a game camera to see how they are defeating it. I bet a small tweak would have improved things greatly, but it is hard to know what to change without some idea of where it is going wrong.
We failed on this with chipmunks. The squirrels had a normal sized pop this year. But the chipmunks were literally in the 100s. (Seemed like thousands of them.)
Our set up looked a lot like yours. Not sure why the fail. But rat traps, sticky pads, electric poultry netting and netting all failed, too.
Yes, a camera would be helpful to see how. It could be as simple as bigger animals like squirrels and raccoons getting there first and either eating the peanut butter or knocking down the ramp. I saw that happen more later in the season and it lost a lot of effectiveness. Also, the bottle became quite worn from all the claws. I think the rougher surface also gave them more to hold onto. A really quality setup could probably use a metal cylinder tor better durability, instead of the old bottle I drilled holes into.
I’ve heard that floating a piece of Saran Wrap with some sunflower seeds on it in a barrel of water will catch and drown squirrels. Have never tried it. I have used your set-up for mice with good success indoors, but outdoors it would catch frogs,or larger animals would steal or lick off the bait.
I put bait in clear plastic containers just less than the height of the traps and rocks over the containers on top of the traps to stop birds from taking that bait, at least. For most of the season I kept spreading lots of sunflower seeds to lead squirrels into traps that I had to replace every day because of the birds but when my last bag ran out I didn’t choose to buy another and relied on the seeds and peanuts in the plastic containers.
I ended up losing half of my Goldrush apples because of at least one squirrel that wasn’t tempted into the traps. I’d been losing one or two apples I day, which I could afford, but in a single day the entire crop disappeared.
Tough year. Hopefully I haven’t bred a trap shy strain of squirrels.
Most will starve over winter anyway. There is no mast left in the woods. The squirrels have taken everything.
Another vote here for the peanut butter on a skewer setup. We use it to catch mice living in the basement of our office and it is much more effective than setting actual traps.
Same here…nothing left to eat in the wild…even robins have eaten clean the honeysuckle bushes with red berries…normally something the Starlings get to eat after it gets cold.
its the 1st year i can remember that the chokecherries and high bush cranberries were picked clean. usually the cranberries hang most of the winter. i guess our summer drought is to blame. its going to be a long winter for the animals that rely on those berries to survive. maybe why i haven’t seen any squirrels lately.
I’m kind of hoping squirrels get COVID-19 and it is more viral than in the minks…be fun to see if large cities call in country folk to shoot squirrels!
be careful what you wish for! wouldnt want hundreds of thousands of infected squirrels running around passing covid to everyone in the country before dying themselves!
Yeah my biggest concern was this would pass from humans to rodents and there and back again. We are extremely lucky the main vector is weasels who stay away from humans and in general are only with other weasels for breeding.
At least here there are a few diseases that can be spread from rabbits to your dog
