Smart little beasts. They scatter from the bird feeders when “I cock the pellet rifle even when I am still inside the house. Incredible hearing and sense of awareness at every sense.”
You/we are seeing the DNA of the surviving squirrels becoming the dominant gene pool.
My son is seeing that with the wild pigs in California. He hunts with a bow/arrow, and the surviving hogs now never get closer than 50+ feet or more. They sense where he is and keeps that space between them open..
Yea, no joke. Squirrels at my house see me grab the bb gun through the back window and scatter before the door’s even open most of the time..