When we moved into our house six summers ago, no one had lived here for a few months, and squirrels dominated the yard. The boulder in front of the house (pictured above) had oranges filling its crack. I soon learned that this was the squirrels’ stash.
Over the course of the summer, the squirrels proceeded to strip the plum tree and every other tree that had fruit, as I scrambled to deal with them.
The best method I’ve used
Here I’ll shortcut to the best solution I’ve found for dealing with squirrels in my food garden — a yard with vegetables, and fruit and nut trees. It’s the Squirrelinator trap. I wish I had known of it that first summer.
The Squirrelinator is a device that is exceptionally easy to use and highly effective. You set it on the ground, put a little food that squirrels like inside and around the trap (I use dry cat food or whatever the squirrels have been stealing from the garden), and a few hours later you return to find a squirrel or two trapped inside. It’s as simple and reliable as that, as far as my experience has been.
(I bought my Squirrelinator through the manufacturer, Rugged Ranch, via Amazon here.)
Other methods I’ve used
Let me list other methods I’ve used to deal with squirrels and how they compare. I still use some of these methods in addition to the Squirrelinator, and one of them might work better for you in your context.
Other live traps
Havahart traps work well in catching squirrels. I’ve caught dozens with them. I still use them. But you can’t catch more than one at a time; that is the main disadvantage compared to the Squirrelinator.
Shooting
There is a certain satisfaction in shooting a squirrel that won’t stop pilfering your prize strawberries. I do shoot such squirrels with a pellet gun on occasion. Shooting is not a time-efficient way to deal with squirrels, however, and it isn’t even an option if you live in an urban area.
Barriers
The fences and nets that exclude other animals from your food garden don’t work on squirrels. Fences and nets are great methods for dealing with deer, rabbits, and gophers, but squirrels can climb and dig and run so well that such barriers are ineffective unless they completely surround the garden, including overhead.
One exception is for certain fruit trees. It is possible to use a slick plastic or metal wrap around a tree’s trunk to keep squirrels out if the tree has no low-hanging limbs and has no high limbs that are close to anything else (like another tree, wall, or roof). If all of these features coincide, then a squirrel won’t be able to climb up the trunk wrap nor jump into the tree from the ground or elsewhere.
My trees are mostly not like this so such barriers are of little use in my yard. Most fruit and nut trees I see in other yards are also not candidates for this method, unfortunately. For example, my grandma has a very tall macadamia nut tree in her yard, but wrapping the trunk would be ineffective because the upper limbs are too close to surrounding trees. She gets very few macadamia nuts; the squirrels get hundreds every year.
Ground squirrels or tree squirrels?
It so happens that the squirrels in my grandma’s macadamia are non-native tree squirrels while the type in my yard are native ground squirrels. The tree squirrels are brown and usually live in more developed neighborhoods of Southern California whereas the native ground squirrels are gray and live in more rural areas where there is open space and they can create burrows to inhabit.
What does this matter in terms of dealing with them? It mostly affects where you set traps and baits (e.g. in trees or on ground) and which kinds of traps are effective. While I haven’t used them, I’ve been told by many that tube traps are the best for tree squirrels. Here’s an example of a tube trap made by WCS. An added appeal of a tube trap is that it is a kill trap.
(See more information at the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management pages for tree squirrels and ground squirrels.)
After trapping
So I usually trap the ground squirrels in my yard. But then what to do with the squirrel in the trap?
One day I saw a man releasing trapped squirrels on the side of a road near my house. That’s not legal. I used to drown trapped squirrels by dropping them into a trash can full of water, but I hated watching them struggle — even though I was angry with them for stealing my food — and this is now an illegal act as well. (See the UC IPM links above for details on legality.)
These days I kill the trapped squirrels with my pellet gun. I know of no better way.
What happens sometimes though is that I check a trap to find a squirrel already expired inside, apparently from heat exhaustion. This makes for a clean (bloodless) removal, but I don’t know how cruel such an end to life is in comparison.
Either way, using a plastic bag to pick up the squirrel (like you would with dog poop), and then turning the bag inside out around the dead squirrel is my preffered method of pick up for disposal.
Methods I’ve never tried
I hope to find a better way to deal with squirrels. I continue to experiment. I’d love to hear from you if you can help here. I’ve yet to try out a few potentials.
Deterrents
It would be great if scary noises or automated sprays of water worked. I’ve never tried such devices because I’ve never heard of them working long term.
Toxic baits
I see some people using toxic bait stations for squirrels. These seem to be effective. I may try them someday although my experience using toxic baits with gophers leads me to be wary. I would never want to endanger neighbors’ pets or other wildlife.
If only we could coexist with squirrels, right? You either lose the fruits of your labor or you exclude them or you eliminate them from your food garden. Or you pay a farmer to eliminate them from his farm, and then buy your food from the farmer. It seems there’s no free lunch. Or am I missing something?
I support your food garden, and I’m grateful when you support me.
All of my Yard Posts are listed here.
You might also like to read my posts:
The best gopher trap: It’s a Cinch
Managing rabbits in the garden
Google tube trap. Works wonders
Hi Bob,
Looks promising. I might buy one and try it out. Do you use one on tree squirrels or ground squirrels?
I’m guessing tree ones as I’ve seen them in trees but I know there’s a bunch of them living in the ground a few blocks from me so I might have gotten some of those, too. Not too many squirrels this year but there were tons last year. Take some peanut butter and smear it inside on the top of the tube. They get snapped when they climb on the trigger to reach the bait. Also, they fit well into most roof gutters. I’ve used the squirrelinator, too. It works really well when you’re faced with lots of them at once. I think that most of the squirrel problem this year was resolved by coyotes, though. We used to have a squirrel in our yard that the dogs couldn’t catch and we called it the fat squirrel but he got old the dogs finally caught him. After he died is when we had the explosion of squirrels and I sort of think maybe he was guarding his territory and chased the others away.
I have a few ways of dealing with squirrels 🐿️.I find that “Ramik “bait is the best stuff to use inside the live traps . I do have a nice RWS Diana pellet rifle if I have a really bad squirrel that is too smart to trap 🪤. Also use a pole tube trap that is very wicked and can be dangerous to set . If I catch the squirrels in a live trap, I will drive them down to a park 4-5 miles away . Squirrels are known to come back to where they were caught. If you don’t take them far enough away ! beware. !!!
I have a vacant area where I dig a big hole for my pet cemetery. As I kill rats in snap traps I put them in the hole with just enough soil over them to stop the smell. Just keep layering them that way until you need to dig another hole. You can do the same with your squirrels.
you can lookup a recipe for cooking them, one of my favorite books as a child was The Yearling and they were always talking about making squirrel pie or pilou hehe
now I’m in the mood for bear grease cracklins
I can’t even kill caterpillars… i move them onto other plants lol
the cutest family of chipmunks just moved into my yard… but now my yellow squash is getting chewed up. I found out they don’t like anything sprayed with neem oil so I just have to keep up my spraying. Eventually I plan to have enough things growing that I can feed all the squirrels and rabbits in the area.
But I think I could murder a gopher if it was eating away at my avocado and mango trees.
forgot to add, the rabbit and chipmunk population is well kept in check as there are numerous birds of prey in my area… eagles, hawks, owls so I never get overrun with pests. Sure they eat up the kale and the collard greens but I get so much enjoyment seeing them hop around I’m happy to keep them well fed until the winged doom descends on them. I’ve seen a couple of strikes, it’s amazing they just come out of nowhere and BOOM they make their kill and fly off with it.
I love it. I’m going to try to tolerate a little more damage and enjoy the predator-prey relationships more.
I probably would be a vegetarian if I had to kill my own meat. Luckily I can be a coward and a hypocrite and let the butchers do my work for me same goes with the birds of prey
We’ve caught squirrels with gopher traps, the box kind. Set on the ground, baited with the peach they started eating yesterday. (Ground squirrels)
Hey Greg, on your advice and recommendation, i bought a 3 pack of small cinch traps for those s.o.b. gophers. Will those work on ground squirrels too? Last year the dogs killed a few for me, but plenty of damage to the pomegranates and oranges. I don’t want any critters in my pumpkin patch. Can i use those on squirrels too?
Hi J,
I did once accidentally catch a young squirrel with a Cinch trap, but I don’t think they would be effective for catching squirrels on purpose. One reason is that squirrel burrows are much wider than gopher tunnels.
Ditto on the Squirrelinator. Used it for a couple months in the summer to reduce the squirrel population in our yard that backed into a wild space. I hear you on the cruelty of it – not easy to dispatch them. My record was around 10 caught at once. That’s the beauty of the squirrelinator – once one is caught, others are lured in. Cruel, yes. But so effective.
Greg: Don’t feel bad about killing a squirrel if you are a BBQ Guy.
Look for some YouTube videos on skinning squirrels
They are somewhat hard to skin and it’s easy to mess up by getting a lot of loose hairs on the meat but once you learn it’s great.
My grand kids loved learning how to shoot and BBQ those thieves. The couldn’t wait to tell their mom when the got home, it was the first thing out of their mouths.
I didn’t feel a bit of guilt.
Hi Dal,
I love the idea. I will definitely try it out.
No poison. Not good for wild creatures.
This is my first season spraying with apple cider vinegar & water mixture on avocado trees, about 2x per week, sometimes once per week. It is labor intensive, but better than poisoning, and I’m not one for squirrel pie. I’ve been having success keeping squirrels away, mostly I use either a spray bottle for easier to reach areas, or a water gun toy for a more direct reach into hard to get areas up high. I used to watch the squirrels gobble up olive sized fruit in one bite, but no more. Now, if they still come around, they pounce on the tree (from the roof), freeze, and then jump back onto the roof. There seems to be one that gets through every now and then as I’ll notice some teeth marks on a fruit, but really not an issue. My main concern is will it alienate pollinators when that time comes, or affect flowering. So far the trees look pretty healthy, but they are a couple months away from flowering. Thanks for listening.
I’m going to try this. They have ruined my orchard and garden this year . Worst it has ever been. I even live trap but can’t keep up with them .
Hi Greg, I was unable to find a link where I can post a question about a new topic so I will leave it here in a somewhat related article.
We have several decent size avo trees, one of them is a Bacon that has a substantial crop on it this year. My wife is a big fan of leaving the fruit on the tree as long as possible and picking them as needed.
This year, it appears we have some opossums that appreciate having the Bacons readily available and we are finding several half eaten avos on the ground each day.
Do you have any experience in dealing with or deterring the opossums here in San Diego? If so, we would love to learn whatever tips and tricks you have to share!
Thank!
I have read that building an Owl box in the yard, if you’re lucky enough to get an Owl to move in, is the nearly perfect deterrent. The Owl will eat those poor critters unlucky enough to leave at first sight, and keep the overall rodent population to a minimum. I’m going to try, I have Owls in my trees constantly so it may work.
Does anyone else have any experience with this?
We were battling squirrels in our garden until my husband found someone on YouTube talking about a “C” fence. About 5 years ago, we put a rabbit fence up within a “C” fence on the outside of it, and it’s worked wonders. Hope this helps someone! 🙂
The C-fence looks genius. I hate dealing with chicken wire, but I could handle not having to deal with varmints better. They don’t say, but I would go with one inch chick wire over the larger wire to keep out the young critters better. And no electricity required.
Yes, we used a 1″ chicken wire for the “C” . It was a bit of a pain putting it all up, but it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve made for our garden!