I got rid of 75 squirrels to get the population under control. I couldn’t get any ripe fruit or vegetables from my trees and crops.
The first few were given a fun joy ride about 5 miles up in the hills and released. It was costing me about $3 in gas at the time to take them to their new home in the woods. After wasting $10 or $15 in gasoline and my time, I decided a huge bucket of water worked just fine.
I don’t have a problem with squirrels eating my veggies-but this is a rural area, so the squirrels have plenty to eat in the woods and from livestock feeders-as well as predators to keep down their population naturally-dogs discourage them from coming into gardens, too.
As a born-and-raised country person-we were taught not to kill anything unless we intended to eat it, or it was about to do harm to us, the pets or livestock-and I don’t kill animals any way but with a gun-it is quick and does not cause suffering-I have used a hoe or shovel to kill a rattlesnake-I happen to like those marinated in a nice sauce, cooked on the grill...
Some people eat squirrels here in the winter, even now-I don’t care for the taste myself...
My brother had the same problem. He set up a baited spin wheel over a 5 gallon pail. On the plates of the wheel he glued some nuts. Put the pail in his backyard next to a tree. The squirrel would climb down the tree, get on the edge of the bucket and when it stepped onto the spin wheel, it would fall into a foot and a half of water. Two weeks later there was only four squirrels around and they wouldn’t even get close to the bucket.