Where have all the squirrels gone?

[FishDFly]

I have had squirrels kill baby birds in bird houses. Two years I had squirrels kill 2 Screech Owls in one of my houses.

I have no good answer and why and what they do.

They are just mean I think.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

In reality I think critters tend to cycle in population.

Makes sense. You have a couple of years with an abundance of food, you get an increase in critter population, THEN if the following year you get a decrease in the food due to very dry weather....those critters are then competing with each other for the scarce food supplies. So you'd have a pretty good chance at a good die-off..., from low resistance to diseases as well as starvation.

LD

 

[larry wv]

Just a farmer here. I have a 30 acre hollow here by the house. It's full of Squirrels. I go through it one swipe one time a year with a Brush hog to have a trail if needed for an emergency. No Game has been hunted in the hollow for 30 years or more. No walk throughs either. I hunt the downwind edge where two small valleys dump into one at a pond. As best I can tell the Squirrel population is steady year after year. The Wv DNR game report I turned in for 20 years was always close each year on the numbers of Squirrels seen per season. Deer Rabbits Fox Coons Possums ect are all gone. Coyotes are about the same for the last few years. When the Coyotes learn to climb the Squirrels will be gone also.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Deer Rabbits Fox Coons Possums ect are all gone

Over the last several decades I have seen a reduction or completed decline in many species....
Some species haven't been seen in 30 years....
This is largely due to a significant change in farming practices over the last 30 years.....
Now deer and turkeys are beginning to decline.. It's going to reach a point like it did in the 50's and 60's, where seeing one was a rare event, and someone saying they saw one might have been called a liar.

Coon, possum, and skunk numbers are also way down in my area, but this mostly is attributed to heavy hunting and trapping in the last 5 years....

 

[Patocazador]

They eat bird eggs also. Dan.

And shed deer antlers .. maybe for the same reason????

 

[FishDFly]

Squirrels eat shed deer antler for the calcium in the bone, same as they do for eating dead cow bones.

When the ranch was first purchased we had numerous covey's of quail. They ended up leaving, the locals blamed it on "fire ants.

We had all the 9 banded armadillos, for the most part a person would want, they are coming back slowly.

If a person can keep the hepatitis out.

You can tell a 9 banded if it has the it because it does not have a complete tail.

Foxes are gone, coyotes killed them off.

We cannot have Eastern Turkeys, the hogs destroy the nests.

Time changes the land, very slowly.

If you own the land long enough, you see the changes.

 

[larry wv]

For any one interested Squirrels will kill and eat small birds.

Larry

 

[FishDFly]

Yep, sad but true.

I have no idea why, but it is a fact, I have slowed down on building bird houses.

 

[Carolina_Skinner]

For any one interested Squirrels will kill and eat small birds.

Larry

Yeah, I've heard this! I wasn't sure if it was true though. Is it when there is no other food available?

 

[larry wv]

Squirrels will kill and eat(or not eat) small birds with plenty of other food around. I don't know why guess they are just different personalities like people.

Larry

 

[zimmerstutzen]

On any day, I can see three or four grays at one time. Have not seen a chipmunk in 5 years and the flying squirrel population seems up. Not that I see them, but they sure carry on at night.

We had red squirrels here 50 years ago. Probably 30 years since I saw one.

I have heard that Delmarva Fox squirrels , an endangered species, has expanded their range and are now sometimes seen in se pennsylvania near the Delaware border.

 

[Boomerang]

The fox and red squirrels seem to be doing ok in NE Indiana. I have hardly ever seen a grey squirrel in NE Indiana. Sometimes I will see black fox squirrels in towns, but not in the woods.

 

[Carolina_Skinner]

On a slightly different subject, I've also heard that deer, when there is no other food, will eat baby birds. I've actually seen evidence of this, feathers in deer pellets, but I haven't actually seen them eat any.

Well, on my property, here in Madison County NC, we've got a TON of grey squirrels (hence my worry at not really seeing any recently) a bunch of red squirrels, and a very few amount of fox squirrels.

Those red squirrels are annoying little guys, they ran off a deer this past season, because he saw me and started squeaking and cussing at me.
And they ran off a couple big gobblers last turkkey season. They just love messing up my hunts :haha:

 

[nhmoose]

Turkeys will eat anything including squirrels they love meat. We fed them 1 winter in the field by the house, shoot a red squirrel under the feeder and the fight was on between the turkeys pulling them apart!

Our F&G re-introduced them and the flourished here in NH but since our ruffled grouse have plummeted as the turkeys also eat their eggs and young add our woodcock to that. Turkeys IMHO in NH are rats with wings and should never have been brought back.

However they are money maker for the F&G like the moose tags and lottery till the moose population has also plummeted from over killing by trucks, cars and permits. F7G claims the usual .gov excuse "global warming" sorry for the off topic ranting

 

[Patocazador]

If the turkeys were re-introduced, they should eventually establish a situation like it was before the turkeys disappeared.

I have read that deer eat suckers (fish) but have never seen any evidence of it myself.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

If the turkeys were re-introduced, they should eventually establish a situation like it was before the turkeys disappeared.

We often think that's what will happen, but often we don't figure in the changes that have happened in the mean time like "no hunting areas" due to human dwellings and businesses which the turkeys have no problem exploiting, and thus their population rises to an artificial high do to the "protected" areas, yet they still compete for food, and thus impact the neighboring, competing species. My brother in law had three large jakes strutting in his back yard in suburban NJ, and although it was turkey season, they couldn't be harvested....and brother did I ever wish for a super powerful slingshot that day! :shocked2:

LD

 

[Kansas Jake]

Good point Dave. We had someone turn loose a small bunch of turkeys in the area where we live about 12-15 years ago. It is housing development around a Corps of Engineers lake that was built in the '50s. I've been in the house for more than 20 years and we had quail in the area back then, but not since one bad winter about 10 years ago that was hard on them and the excessive growth of the turkey population. The turkeys don't really have natural predators in the area where we live and hunting is impractical with the closeness of the houses and keeping on neighborly terms with "wildlife lovers" who feed them like a flock of chickens.

 

[Grumpa]

I live about 7 minutes from Pgh's Golden Triangle (The Point, Fort Pitt) and have counted 30 turkeys flying up to roost, near my daughter's house. Sometimes 6 or 8 big Toms walking up the street, beards down to the ground, and the only way you're going to get one is to reach out the window as you're driving by, and grab him by the neck. :haha:

 

[Zonie]

Although it's interesting to read about turkey and deer eating all sorts of things, this topic is about squirrels.

Lets get back to the original subject.

If someone wants to start a "Turkeys Eat" or "Deer Eat" topic that's fine but let's not do it here.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Did breeding season occur to anyone?.... :hmm: