Squirrel control - take care

[tracy]

Hi Daniel

good to hear from you. If you can make it to any of our meetings, come along, so that people can meet you.

best wishes

Tracy

[daniel070883]

Thanks Tracy,

Where and when are these meetings ?

Cheers

[tracy]

The list of meetings is on the website, under SWOG meetings ;-)

[Catweazle]

Squirrels are smart, they soon get wise to humans with rifles, that's when the shotgun comes in handy. I've been using a silenced 12g recently ( so as not to scare away everything in the woods ).

[Exeldama]

Moost of us acknowledge that squirrels pose a threat to woodland and wildlife.

Most reasonable except you cannot impose human morality onto squirrels.

Most people are humane and thus dont wish to see anything suffer unecessarily.

The only issue is what to do.... air pistols or indeed anything should only be used if you are capable and so is the equippment.

Airpistols are effective but it is quite correct to say the power must be top ended and the shot should be from the side of the head or a chest shot, but both require great skill...and i wouldnt use it.

spring traps are effective but can be indiscriminate if not set correctly.

Warfrain is awful stuff.

Personall i use a shotgun and there is absolutley no messing... but agin you must use the correct cartridge size and consider distances etc.

As to this guy getting arrested..... He committed an offence, and would have been requested to voluntarily be interviewed as part of the investigation. He obviously declined as is his right, and the investigator was then left with no choice but to arrange for his arrest as is perfectly lawful, in oreder for certain questions to be put to him/her.

Then he has the right to give a no commentinterview... which may lead to a court infering certain things.

i find it strange that someone who implies he/she is so morally defiant is suddenly unprepared to defend his/her actions.. sounds a bit hypocrytical to me.

Bottom line , why on earth would someone want to cause suffering to an animal whatever it is when there are more humane if imperfect methods available and widely known.... .. my old Dad taught me to only kill if needed and not to attempt it unless you knew what you were doing and could do it without causing suffering.

This person being prosecuted , assuming they knew of alternatives. which i guess they did being a wildlife campaigner.... has little excuse, and how disgraceful to knowlingly cause suffering just to prove his/her point..what an EGO,

[Rod Taylor]

Heather watched what she reffered to as a 'frenzy of squirrels' in the wood today. Around 6 or 7 all dashing and rolling about quite madly and seemingly mating. Seems a bit early in the year but does this mean they have already claimed their territories or just a practice run on an odd sunny day. (Sussex)

Thought the advice was to start trapping in March after territories had been claimed, or do these squirrels know more about global warming than us. Having had all of our Oak trees ring barked and killed off two years ago will try to control the numbers again this year to limit any further damage.

The question is do I start trapping now or wait till March ??

[happybonzo]

Personally I feel the Ms Amy Hardwood aka The Shadow, has the right idea regarding squirrels

[Stephen1]

Hi Rod

The decision on when to start trapping is a tricky one and depends on your woods context within the landscape, its age and your aim in terms of the squirrel populations management (i.e. reduce/remove).

If you are in the fortunate position of owning a block of woodland entirely that is separated by 200m from other woods you can realisticaly aim to remove the entire population by trapping - and then just occasionally mop up recent immigrants.

If you have 20 acres or more of woodland that is part of a larger wood then in an ideal world you get together with the other owners and come up with a joint strategy. If that's not possible then you can use trapping to select for a reduced density population i.e. manipulate the population of squirrels so that it is made up of individuals that maintain larger territories resulting in less squirrels per hectare.

Physically smaller or younger males hold smaller territories than larger older males. There is some evidence to suggest that the size of territory held goes up exponentially with the size of the male - i.e. a 20% larger than average male squirrel holds a territory considerably more than 20% greater in area than the average squirrel. It must be remembered that the damage caused to trees is not a feeding behaviour - it is a territorial one. When grey squirrels come into contact they have a stand off - following their contact they go and strip some bark. This behaviour gets out of control where their population densities are very high such as the UK - in their native america they have predators and their population densities are much lower. So the key is to manage a stable population, during the "danger-period", of large males with larger territories that are able to easily repel smaller males 'invading' from outside your bit of woodland. This way you have less swapping of territories and less marking by stripping.

This technique can't be officially recommended because technically it's illegal - and so I don't recommend it! - as it's illegal to release back into the wild a grey squirrel that you've caught. But in an ideal world you would be allowed to use live cage traps and start trapping in February - depending on the weather. Very quickly you will get your eye and nose in. When approaching a trap with a large dominant male in it you soon become able to smell it from 10 yards - they produce a strong smelling oily secretion near their testis. These are the males that you release. Smaller males, juveniles and females are all to be killed. Once a large male has established a territiory they are behaviourally hard wired not to abandon it if it is good habitat - they won't leave it to go looking for a female if you've managed to remove so many that they rarely enter it. The evolutionary history of their natural population structure means that they will wait for a female - as under normal circumstances they would come along in time. (A large male would mate with many females within his large territory).

If you own a small bit of a large wood then this technique really may be your best bet. You could clear all the squirrels out of a 5 acre part of a 100 acre wood and within a week you would often have a few more squirrels within your patch than you started with- if other owners aren't also controlling. But the situation would be worse than it was. Before you started to control any squirrels some of the territories within your bit would have been held by large dominant males. These would have been big territories and so your number of resident squirrels would have been low. When you removed all your squirrels many smaller males that hadn't managed to gain and hold territories will flood in from the vagrant population of small non-successful males that live within the wood as a whole. These poor quality males will hold small territories -so the numbers in your bit will go up - but worse than that is that these territories held by closely matched poor quality males will be unstable -lots of fighting, lots of territory changing and lots of bark stripping.

If your situation is owning a small bit of a large wood where there isn't co-operation between owners on squirrel control then your situation is a tricky one and you will have to accept some damage. You may have done lots of control in previous years and still had lots of damage - you might have thought thank goodness I trapped as many as I did or the damage would have been even worse, but that's not necessarily the case. You may have caused more damage to take place by creating a very unstable population of small males where territorial battles were more common and stripping more of a problem.

I imagine I've explained that very poorly, and the logic of the system has probably been left incomplete. It's a technique that does work well in certain circumstances but as I mentioned is technically illegal so isn't often talked about - it is popular in Wales and I believe the borders of Scotland from what I hear.

[Rod Taylor]

Manythanks for the information Stephen1. it all seems to make good sense. Our wood is connected to another where the owner doesnt control squirrels. They have also recently felled a large area alongside the boundary which presumably will also effect squirrel movement.

The aim is to reduce the population enough to prevent excessive damage. I currently use Fenn traps as the success rate with live traps was abysmal, only 1 against 54 . Damage is much reduced but still occurs so in light of your excellent information I may have to rethink my trapping strategy.

[Darren]

I've been putting out live traps for a week now and it's never been empty when I have looked. I made a small mesh feeder at the back of the trap. Like a bird peanut feeder, which I pour peanuts in from the top. You need to wire it to the cage. I find it slows down the mice from eating the bait. You need to weigh the cage down with some bricks or logs to stop the squirrels from rolling the cage over.

I have not had any success with the Kania trap.

I have set up a squirrel proof bird feeder above the trap. This attracts the squirrels in and the squirrels seem only to come down when the birds are there.