[Jeff Higgins]

When there is no desire to be sporting about it, when it's just a dirty job to do, every advantage is "fair". Scopes, lasers, sharks with lasers on their heads - you name it. Especially with targets that are about the same color and texture as their surroundings, and are scurrying about as they do.

I guess I'm not clear on what kind of numbers we are talking about in this infestation. Every experience I have had in shooting ground squirrels in a real effort to thin their numbers has involved several of us shooting several hundred of them per day. For days on end until we run out of time and have to go home. When we are not there, others are shooting them at the same pace we were. This goes on all spring and summer in some of our spots, and we still do not noticeably reduce their numbers.

It seems to me that if you can shoot a handful a day and feel satisfied that you are having an impact, that you don't really have a problem to begin with. If you can shoot them at a leisurely pace with an air rifle, you probably don't have a problem. Where we shoot them, by request, to help a landowner out with a ground squirrel problem, we all bring at least three or four rimfire rifles and that many handguns as well. Using up a brick of .22 ammo per day per shooter is kind of a slow day.

I'm not making this up, as preposterous as it sounds. In each and every case, once the landowner realized the futility of our efforts, they thanked us for our time and wound up poisoning. Even then it's virtually impossible to permanently rid the property of all of them. They're back the next year, we shoot them for awhile, and they guy winds up poisoning again. Wash, rinse, repeat.