We have a lot of Mississippi Kites around our house.

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/mississippi-kite


Cool birds that do a lot of soaring. Evidently they eat mostly insects, and some mice and small mammals. I hope they get all the mice they can eat.

When we moved from California to South Carolina, one of the guys I became friends with had a hunting farm near two towns in rural SC: Wagner and Salley. Salley is home to the Chitlin Strut Festival. https://chitlinstrut.com/

Don't knock it!

Anyway, his Dad and Grandfather had the 200 or so acres humming with stuff, dove, quail, deer, etc. It was the first time I ever hunted with honest to god bird dogs. It have never enjoyed hunting more.

So Mike and I are out there in the Fall and he goes, "lets go shoot dinner."

Ok.

Two squirrels later, a couple of Budweisers and Mike's culinary skills on display, ate my first squirrel. Not my last. They are really good done right.

First time I have heard of that bird.

My favs here are the barn swallows, best fliers on the planet.

chitlins. the dish?

Yup.

I never ate them: ok, maybe a nimble:cool:

Heinous.

Anyway, like a lot of small town festivals, an excuse to light the candle before noon.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595438573.jpg

hahha...yea. they dont even smell right in the cooking process.

There were White Kites up on the Mendocino vineyard I once worked on. Really something to see a bird 'hoover' in mid-air, waiting to drop down on some unsuspecting prey.
I'm looking forward to watching the big hawks at my brother's new place. There's a pair that come around on an almost daily basis. He has what they'd call a target rich environment.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595439333.jpg


This is a 4 foot long black snake swallowing a juvenile squirrel in an apple tree in my backyard.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595439812.jpg

Same snake one day earlier.

that is awesome!!!

Ah, ok, understand. Well, here’s plan B:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595445041.jpg

Like soft-shelled crab with fur. Sounds, uh ... delicious.

This area used to be thick with the larger fox squirrels. Every tree would have half a dozen nests in the wintertime. They would get in the feeder and I used to think of them as pests in that regard. Times change. Flash forward a few decades and the acorn oaks are almost gone at least in my new neighborhood. Same went the Fox squirrels. There are also foxes in the vicinity which have probably contributed as well. So many less these days. The small highly aggressive Red Squirrels are now a new feature to SE Michigan from what I remember back from my youth. They will chase the Fox squirrels everywhere and chatter constantly at everything.

Now flocks of 50-100 English Sparrows clean out the "no mess mix" feeder in a few hours and I rarely see other types of song birds. I'm going to change my feed back to whole seed to get the others back before the winter. There used to be a gathered cornucopia mix of all types of critters before.

I've use a wobbly cone on the feeder pole which seems to keep all the squirrels off most of the time.
Greasing it with some Crisco below also helps.
They and chipmunks help clean up the shells.

Very hard decision to make - killing an animal.

If it has to be done - please do it as humanely as possible.

I had a family of rats living in my garage and tried 3 different brands of live traps before resigning to the usage of snap traps.

Even though I have an outside cat here (going on 14 years now), it didn't help.

In every one of the kills it appeared to be a quick death for the rat, thankfully.

We have lots of squirrels here but mostly at my neighbors because she has a bird feeder...lol. I don't. There is one squirrel that comes around when he sees me outside and will take peanuts from my hand. Thankfully they are not a problem for me.

The rats were destructive and smelly so they had to go.

Dad had a friend with a few hundred yards of riverfront on the North Platte in Nebraska. He had this black lab, smarter than probably 95% of the people you meet. It was like she was psychic.

Not sure how she would have been with squirrels

At my old house I had two huge pecan trees in my back yard. Lots of squirrels pigged out on my pecans. I am allergic to pecans, so to me they are just poisonous trash. My friends all wanted me to pick them up to give to them. I would just laugh, and tell them it is self service, as I am NOT going to go to the effort to pick up pecans I don't want just to give them away. It drove my neighbors nuts to see the fat squirrels eating the pecans. I did not want to touch the dang pecans.

The neighbors did come over and pick up some of them. I would give some to my parents.

Squirrels chew their way into your attic, and chew phone and cable wires and basically anything else they can. The rodents and can carry disease. I understand not wanting to kill them but they will destroy your house now that they have found a nice place with food.

Hav-a-heart traps are good but then you have kill it anyway. If you release them down the road they come right back and it sounds like there is just too many of them.

If you can shoot in your yard, try these:
CCI Mini-Mag Hollow Points
High velosity, good size, Hollow Point will do more to kill whatever it hits.
https://www.cci-ammunition.com/rimfire/cci/mini-mag/6-31.html

I have, somewhat, been buzzed. Was just chewing the fat, drinking a beer with the neighbor in the driveway, and it swooped down over our heads, grabbed the squirrel out of the street and headed out in one smooth aerial assault. Sounded like a golf ball whizzing by on the swoop in, but we heard his wings when it was time to get elevated again, and of course the squeal of the squirrel firmly clinched in its talons.

I had an owl do a fly by at dark when I was in my tree stand. I just felt a breeze as it flapped its wings going by. Yeah that was close.

Get a better scope. Like Higgins said, a well placed .22 round should knock them dead.

I take out squirrels with a Ruger .22 air rifle. The round is traveling about 200 fps slower than a .22 LR, and head or center of mass shots knocks them dead. Yes, if you wing them, they will flop around or run off. 40 years of hunting, I must admit to being somewhat immune to watching things die. All you can do is endeavor to be as ethical as possible.

I also have a bunch of kites. They come back every year. They swoop through my yard

Fact is...there aren’t enough 22 rounds on the planet to kill them all. This is not a solution...it is a sport. As long as food is there, squirrels will invade. There is an unlimited supply.