Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Treetop pest, teatime treat On the hunt for grey squirrel
Mat Manning heads to the woods on his pest-control rounds, and shares a quick and easy recipe for grey squirrel
There are few things more gratifying than taking a walk through the woods on a sunny morning, especially if it is a walk with a gun and a purpose. I recently took a morning stroll on my rounds on one of the estates where I am tasked with keeping grey squirrels in check. The keeper accounts for a fair few with his Fenn traps, but I have had more with my air rifle — well over 150 since last autumn.
Unfortunately, our efforts have come too late for the most recent plantation of broadleaf trees. Several acres were planted with oak, sweet chestnut, cherry and field maple 20 years ago, and more or less every tree shows signs of serious squirrel damage inflicted when they were saplings. They vary from seriously deformed to virtually dead as a result of bark and sapwood stripping by
“Waste irritates me and I get a lot of pleasure from making the most of what I shoot”
grey squirrels. All bear numerous callouses and most have shabby looking tops with dead branches and bushy growth rather than a straight leader and strong, even boughs.
Sustained campaign
Our sustained campaign has had a noticeable impact and there are significantly fewer squirrels on the estate. They are not emptying the pheasant feeders as quickly as they were a few years ago, and far fewer eggs and chicks, of both game birds and songbirds, end up on the squirrels’ menu. Future tree-planting schemes should stand a far better chance of success.
I had managed to sneak a couple of precious hours for a leisurely mooch round and decided to use the time to keep the pressure on the squirrels. My main intention was to check a couple of feeding stations that I had set up. Though I wasn’t planning to shoot over them for a week or two, I still took my air rifle with me. Leave the gun at home and it is inevitable that shots will present themselves.
For the past couple of months
I’d been targeting the greys at a pheasant feeder. I persuaded the keeper to keep a hopper topped up to create a honeypot area where I could expect to find squirrels. I built a simple net hide about 25m from the feeder and the ruse worked remarkably well.
As the other feeders ran empty, more and more squirrels came to the one I was targeting, and I managed to shoot almost 30 in just a few visits.
However, my strike rate from this spot has started to dwindle. There are far fewer squirrels in the vicinity than there were at the end of the season, and the wheat is losing its appeal now that natural food is abundant.
I have set up a couple of my own feeders at different locations to keep the squirrels coming and loaded them with peanuts. They are not a cheap bait to use, but grey squirrels find them irresistible — even when the countryside is awash with natural offerings. Feeding stations like this are a great way to keep sustained pressure on the squirrels when it can be very difficult to spot them in the treetops.
The pungent smell of crushed wild garlic filled my nostrils as I plodded through the undergrowth on my way to the first feeder. I caught a glimpse
of a pair of dippers as I crossed the iron bridge that spans the river, but I didn’t spot a single grey. However, I found plenty of signs to suggest that the diners had started to home in on the peanuts.
The ground beneath the feeder was littered with discarded peanut skins, and the hopper’s contents had reduced considerably since my last visit. I took the sack of peanuts
“The meat from grey squirrels is absolutely delicious — my children beg for the stuff”
from my backpack and topped up the feeder. As I made my way into the next woodland block, a flicker in the treetops caught my eye. A squirrel leapt from one tree to another and then froze, hugging the trunk.
I settled on to my knees, taking advantage of a nearby tree trunk for added support, and steadied the cross-hairs on to the squirrel’s skull. The sound of the impacting pellet echoed through the woods, and the lifeless squirrel plummeted into the leaf litter with a crunch.
Few things irritate me more than wastefulness and I get a great deal of pleasure from making the most of what I shoot. It just so happens that the meat from grey squirrels is absolutely delicious — my children beg for the stuff — so this one would be coming home for the pot. Gutting and skinning a squirrel is a lot of work for relatively little meat, but it doesn’t take long to nip out their thighs where the bulk of the meat can be found.
Building confidence
The second peanut feeder showed similar signs to the first and was duly topped up. I will keep filling both for another week or so until I start targeting the squirrels that are raiding them. Letting the squirrels tuck in for a couple of weeks builds their confidence and the activity of every visiting squirrel is likely to attract others. Patience really is rewarded with this approach and it is not unusual to nail 10 or more on the first hit if you get it right.
If the morning were not already glorious enough, I managed to add one more squirrel on the return journey. Two bushy tails is not exactly a bumper haul compared with the sort of tallies you can expect around feeding stations but they all count, and my morning’s bag was just enough to rustle up a mouth-watering snack — accompanied by the handful of wild garlic I grabbed on my way back to the car.