Ground squirrels: Best deterrent? (other than shooting!)

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you can legally use a pellet rifle that works pretty well. Live traps work well, but you still have to kill them after they are caught. Any kind of grain makes good bait. Gopher poison, available at any farm and ranch store, works but I hate it. I live where it is acceptable so I eliminated all of mine with a .17HMR except for one I caught in a skunk live trap a couple of weeks ago.
 
Squirrels are in the same family as rats, thus the moniker tree rats. The same baits work for both.
For those who don't want to kill them the only solution is move.
 
I would never use any type of poison to kill them. Squirrel is a good size animal compared to a tiny mouse. If that squirrel gets into your wall, above your ceiling, under your floor and dies, good luck trying to find it after it dies and starts smelling.
 
Get a live trap, bait it with peanut butter. I've relocated a dozen this year to a local park, they do cause problems. When you relocate, use a piece of cardboard under trap, they like to pee.
Trap
 
Coyote urine works around here. Available on Amazon. Keeps pack rats, squirrels, rabbits, mice, etc away, just do not let it near any vents into the vehicle. It also helps to leave the hood open and a light on under the vehicle.
 
What I want to know is how in the heck does anyone collect coyote urine??? Ditto for deer urine and those other products sold in hunting stores.
 
I don't think it is possible to control ground squirrels or chipmunks, which are their close cousins. My mother and i jointly owned a cottage in the woods on Lake Huron, and I once took my car in for an oil change. Mechanic came out and said he had removed almost a bucket full of acorns that a chipmunk had stashed in all the flat areas of my engine compartment. Enterprising chipmunk was no doubt surprised to find his winter stash missing since I had driven 150 miles away.

I sold the property, and last thing I know, the neighbors all got together with live traps to conduct joint "chipmunk wars." The problem is that you can kill or remove all of the little critters in your area and more will come in from neighboring areas because they multiply so fast.
I think the place to attack the situation is in the car. Found a couple of articles on using taste deterrents on wiring. These apply to all rodents:

https://www.allstate.com/tr/car-insurance/stop-squirrels-chewing-on-car-wires.aspx (A similar article suggested hot pepper spray or moth balls.)

https://animalprosonline.com/nashville/rodents-chew-wires/ (This article suggests that the cause is auto manufacturers using plant-based covering for wire.)

Also, in desert areas, a lot of people leave their vehicle hood open overnight because the pack rats do not like open places. I suspect this would apply also to ground squirrels.
 
I would never use any type of poison to kill them. Squirrel is a good size animal compared to a tiny mouse. If that squirrel gets into your wall, above your ceiling, under your floor and dies, good luck trying to find it after it dies and starts smelling.
So how did you get it out of the wall, ceiling, floor? Most rat baits use warfarin, which causes them to bleed to death internally. They get very thirsty and go outside in search of water, not inside.
 
Last edited:
I owned a apartment house years ago. One off my tenants was watching the house for me while I went on vacation. To make a long story short, we had a rat that made it’s waY into our basement through a open sewer pipe. My tenant was told to feed it DeCon. As it turns out, the rat crawled into a wall and eventually into the ceiling and died. The only wAy we found him was the smell. We pulled down a section of the ceiling and found him. Now he could have crawled right back into the sewer but he chose not to.
My basement had a dirt floor and in the spring, it would get a couple of inches of water sometimes so I would just open the cleanest which was close to the floor and whatever water was there would drain into the sewer. I forgot to put the drain plug back in that year.
 
Last edited:
Don't think the OP wants to see them killed, just deterred.
For what it's worth, it is illegal in most places to relocate an animal humanely trapped. Need to have certification as a squirrel whisperer or something to do so. It's advised that you kill it in the trap rather then relocate as they don't fit in to new surroundings and die a painful death. I've neighbors that catch them and drown them in a garbage pail or in the lake. I've been trying to catch a Woodchuck (groundhog) and keep catching racoons and a skunk, can't stand to deal with them or to kill them so , not admitting to it, but hoping they find their way in their new locale. Squirrels, I just let go where I catch them, there's no end of them so I admit defeat. Better to stop them from getting in then to wage war against their population.
 
Back
Top Bottom