Bored on Saturday flipping channels while procrastinating cutting the acreage before rain later today.
Stopped on the science channel just as a show was coming on with the show title being “attack of the squirrels”, the show itself is “This is Mark Roper” and is an hour long show. I checked, and he has a bunch of youtube videos but the squirrel ones don’t have everything that was in the show on the science channel. One minute into the show I was thinking that is what air rifles were made for, stop wasting your money on “squirrel proof” bird feeders which none work, great footage on the science channel showing them defeating all sorts of squirrel proof bird feeder designs.
So a couple years ago or so, he decided to play with the squirrels instead of getting rid of the pests. He started designing mazes, traps, launch pads(slow motion of launched squirrels alone makes the show worth it), all sorts of stuff and has great film of them learning everything and defeating it to get to walnuts he used as a reward at the end. The guy is a former NASA engineer and spends real money designing and building everything(pneumatics, computers, laser triggers, etc..), very entertaining with the exception of no squirrels ever dispatched or harmed in any way. In the end he admits to neighbor complaining about increase in squirrels and their aggressiveness. Best thing is he paid the price himself, he had used dryer vent tubes in some of his mazes/traps/puzzles and the squirrels used that knowledge to get in his house through his actual dryer vent and find his store of walnuts. I wonder if he had to finally quit playing and start killing them, and keeping quiet about that…. I learned two things about squirrels in the air, one there is no height they can fall from that will hurt them, they have enough surface area to weight to fall slow enough to be safe from any height, and when unexpectedly in free flight, it takes them less than a third of a second to be locked in on their landing place(great slow motion showing it)
If you have the science channel or can stream it, I really think you should find the show and watch it, although using the guide I didn’t see this particular episode listed at another time, but then directv program guide blows and is wrong often. It originally aired 4/27/2023 so obviously they are repeating it already.
Got an early start this year on my squirrel problem, strangely killing them out of my pecan trees that obviously have no pecans in the spring… Best yet, yesterday a resident pair of red tail hawks were hunting my yard and a squirrel was out digging in plain sight of them on their perch. They totally ignored him, I don’t know why. The wind was almost completely calm, so I went inside, found my rangefinder real quick, my dope sheet, and my uragan. Went outside and amazingly squirrel was still out there digging, locked my uragan in rest on my table on the deck, lasered 114 yards, checked my dope, one shot aimed a shade left and high but still on squirrels shoulder. Pellets at that range either drift right a small amount or go just a bit low based on wind conditions at the time and what pellets normally do when shooting paper out there. That is always powder burner territory for me, 17HMR, but I didn’t want to scare the hawks away. The thump wasn’t very loud, but the squirrel flipped on his back with legs twitching pretty hard yet slowly in the air. That made the hawks pay attention, both flew down and ripped him to shreds, it was nice to give them a good free and easy meal.
I don’t sort my pellets at all, and at that range under the best of conditions with my low power tune would probably account for a 30%+ clean miss rate, with nearly 7/10 going into just over 1.25 inch which equates to a large number of poor shots when not a clean miss, it’s why I use a suppressed powder burner for them at that range, I rarely bother. But clearly a 22 ft/lb at muzzle H&N field target trophy 14.6gr has enough punch at that range to kill a grey squirrel. Not the best choice, but squirrels are evil pests around my home.
Stopped on the science channel just as a show was coming on with the show title being “attack of the squirrels”, the show itself is “This is Mark Roper” and is an hour long show. I checked, and he has a bunch of youtube videos but the squirrel ones don’t have everything that was in the show on the science channel. One minute into the show I was thinking that is what air rifles were made for, stop wasting your money on “squirrel proof” bird feeders which none work, great footage on the science channel showing them defeating all sorts of squirrel proof bird feeder designs.
So a couple years ago or so, he decided to play with the squirrels instead of getting rid of the pests. He started designing mazes, traps, launch pads(slow motion of launched squirrels alone makes the show worth it), all sorts of stuff and has great film of them learning everything and defeating it to get to walnuts he used as a reward at the end. The guy is a former NASA engineer and spends real money designing and building everything(pneumatics, computers, laser triggers, etc..), very entertaining with the exception of no squirrels ever dispatched or harmed in any way. In the end he admits to neighbor complaining about increase in squirrels and their aggressiveness. Best thing is he paid the price himself, he had used dryer vent tubes in some of his mazes/traps/puzzles and the squirrels used that knowledge to get in his house through his actual dryer vent and find his store of walnuts. I wonder if he had to finally quit playing and start killing them, and keeping quiet about that…. I learned two things about squirrels in the air, one there is no height they can fall from that will hurt them, they have enough surface area to weight to fall slow enough to be safe from any height, and when unexpectedly in free flight, it takes them less than a third of a second to be locked in on their landing place(great slow motion showing it)
If you have the science channel or can stream it, I really think you should find the show and watch it, although using the guide I didn’t see this particular episode listed at another time, but then directv program guide blows and is wrong often. It originally aired 4/27/2023 so obviously they are repeating it already.
Got an early start this year on my squirrel problem, strangely killing them out of my pecan trees that obviously have no pecans in the spring… Best yet, yesterday a resident pair of red tail hawks were hunting my yard and a squirrel was out digging in plain sight of them on their perch. They totally ignored him, I don’t know why. The wind was almost completely calm, so I went inside, found my rangefinder real quick, my dope sheet, and my uragan. Went outside and amazingly squirrel was still out there digging, locked my uragan in rest on my table on the deck, lasered 114 yards, checked my dope, one shot aimed a shade left and high but still on squirrels shoulder. Pellets at that range either drift right a small amount or go just a bit low based on wind conditions at the time and what pellets normally do when shooting paper out there. That is always powder burner territory for me, 17HMR, but I didn’t want to scare the hawks away. The thump wasn’t very loud, but the squirrel flipped on his back with legs twitching pretty hard yet slowly in the air. That made the hawks pay attention, both flew down and ripped him to shreds, it was nice to give them a good free and easy meal.
I don’t sort my pellets at all, and at that range under the best of conditions with my low power tune would probably account for a 30%+ clean miss rate, with nearly 7/10 going into just over 1.25 inch which equates to a large number of poor shots when not a clean miss, it’s why I use a suppressed powder burner for them at that range, I rarely bother. But clearly a 22 ft/lb at muzzle H&N field target trophy 14.6gr has enough punch at that range to kill a grey squirrel. Not the best choice, but squirrels are evil pests around my home.
