Sciurus

We had a nice surprise today, we have been controlling greys in a wood for only 12 months and have shot around sixty greys in that time, however today we spotted a solitary red! There is a small colony of reds a few miles away but reds haven’t been seen in this wood for at least 5 and probably 10 yrs, so this is an encouraging sign- all we need is for it to find a mate and keep up the grey control. Unfortunately we also spotted several greys but they stayed well out of range in the top of some tall larches. We will have another go next week.

Brodie’s Point interests me. My Mossberg hushpower is so long that 2 inches of stock sticks out of the slip. Is this legal in the back of my car?

Walker , I understand now. I thought you might be reloading them because they’re not cheap to buy! I have seen the previous thread on your feeders - clever. However, I am spoilt. One of our volunteers, who is no longer fit enough to get out in the Woods makes them by the score. They are actually very neat, light and fairly long lasting. I use a sawn off .22 air rifle to cull because I can conceal it easier when operating in public parks and woods. Deadly accurate at 2 inches! 👍

30-6 We make special feeders for the live traps, made out of stainless steel small mesh rolled up like a toilet roll with old jam jar lids wired onto the ends. The feeder is then fixed above the treadle. If you put some whole peanuts, hazelnuts or even walnuts into the bait mix then this can’t be eaten by birds and mice but will still attract squirrels. I don’t mind the tits having some of the bait because their activity will attract greys. Keep up the good work! Walker, why do you use a .410 in the trap rather than an air rifle?

Ah, but by 1949 they were masters of the quick turn round to Templehoff Airport that would shame modern airline operators!

Stalking isn’t my sport, but I did enjoy the programme, congratulations to BBC, I agree there should have been an explanation why the father shot the stag.

Very poor acorn, hazel and beechmast harvest in Windermere, practically none existent. Got to look very hard to see anything on the trees and nothing on the ground- Plenty of rain though!

Many years ago as a trainee surveyor I would be asked to deal with travellers squatting on County Council industrial Estates. Although the vehicles were untaxed and uninsured the police would not take action because if they arrested the drivers, they did not want to take responsibility for the remaining wives and children. Unfortunately although the sites would be trashed and dumped upon, no action could be taken unless the the individual carrying out the act could be identified. In the end, I would get a possession order, the bin men would help drag them off site and the police would escort them out of their area onto the next police patch. And the electorate would pay for the site to be cleared. Nothing has changed. My last eviction defied belief. The travellers arrived, smashed the barriers, dumped loads of rubbish etc. The next week,the City Council Play Bus arrived to entertain and educate the traveller children, to save them having to travel for playtime! I then had to appear in court on behalf of the CountyCouncil to explain the damage caused by the the travellers and to request possesssion and on behalf of the travellers the City Council sent a social worker to plead that the travellers were so badly treated that they were forced to live on a rubbish dump! You couldn’t make it up ! Thankfully common sense prevailed and we got possession, but in reality very little can be be done because of the practical difficulties in dealing with travellers and their families. Hence the problems at Thwaites Brewery. The term travellers is sadly an euphemism for outlaw.

The one in the middle looks identical to two I have inherited. Does it have St Etienne 1871 stamped on the top of the blade next to the handle?

Not seen the sun for more than a few minutes for the last few days! It’s wet and drizzly here and a very comfortable 18 degrees. The hosepipe ban is still in place for August

Clem, Nothing of note has changed, such as large scale felling, they were generally adult and well fed, however other areas 10miles away reported skinny greys. Our winter wasn’t great, a lot colder for longer, months of rain and a lot more snow. The one good thing is they have been caught. It would have been a nightmare if they had continued to breed, it would have set us back 5 years. Fisheruk, sorry to hear about your reds. I haven’t heard of any red losses recently. The reds around here are situated close to water/rivers ie Skelwith Bridge, Troutbeck, Kentmere and Grasmere and so it is situation as normal. However, elsewhere the becks and streams have dried up and I am guessing that the greys have gone somewhere else in search of food and water. I haven’t been in any fir woods recently, so don’t know the fir cone situation, but there is very little growth to acorns and beechmast etc due to the drought, so the greys will be hungry and on the look out for food. The reds have constant access to food and are staying put.

June 2018- 144 June 2017 - 41 May 2018. - 54 May 2017 - 18 From the above, you can see that we have controlled 3x as many greys as the previous year in May and June and last month nearly 3x as many as the previous month. This is the same four people, doing the same amount of trapping in exactly the same spots. The only difference is this year I have used an air rifle as well, accounting for say 15 per month. The other interesting thing is upto and including May we were catching quite a few in gardens and little in woodland - we would see them but they were trapshy. However, In June, they lost their shyness and were easily caught but the catches in gardens dropped off considerably. I have no idea why this happened except they were very hungry. It has now gone very quiet and the few I see are very wary.

I mentioned last month that we were suddenly suddenly seeing and catching a lot more greys in areas which are strictly controlled. Looking at our monthly figures, it is interesting to note that within a 2mile radius of Windermere village, 4 of us have removed 144 greys in June, compared to 54 in May and only 41 last June! We don’t know where they have all come from, the majority were trapped, most were adults, all we know is that for a change, they were no longer trap shy. It has all gone quiet again and the Windermere red has disappeared

Thanks, I think I will try and improve my shooting technique first.

It’s a problem I am afraid, so much woodland in the Lakes and not enough volunteers, that’s why some areas are only trapped periodically. We do tend to concentrate our time on trying to stop greys invading the areas occupied by reds. I don’t think F.C. is doing much if any trapping. Anyway, thanks for highlighting the problem, I’ll pass the message onto our sightings secretary, who will log it and pass it onto whoever covers that area. Keep up the good work.

Chris , photos of all 6

Chris , these are the W Richards 12 bore cartridges mentioned in my pm. They are made by Eley Kynoch

Hi, Grizedale Forest is within the Westmorland Reds Squirrels geographical area. It’s not my patch but am sure that trapping there is carried out by us on a rotational basis. FC used to trap, but due to cut backs, this not a priority. FisherUk is quite correct that F.C. will not allow shooting.

Thanks all, much food for thought and I think my problem might be a combination of some of the above factors, which I hadn’t thought of. In no particular order, my breathing isn’t great when taking a shot and needs practice. My air rifle is zeroed to 15 yds so shall increase it to perhaps 25 yd to give me abit of flexibility and use holdover for shots under 10yds. I have 6 feeders in 6 woods at various distances so shall take my tape measure and measure them all for future reference. I don’t think it’s buck fever, I was pretty excited when first using the gun but I’m pretty chilled now, sat comfortably listening to radio 4 and the last big miss I waited a couple of minutes for the grey to stop messing about and sit up properly. However, I do rest the barrel on the shooting sticks and definitely hold it firmly down when shooting a grey- Eureka! Thinking about it, when practicingI sit in a chair and gently rest the barrel on the sticks and often shoot one handed which is why I get good results at home. Mice, my gun has a band over the barrel and fore end, but obviously the barrel Is still flexing. Thanks very much everybody, you have saved me a fortune and hopefully my kill rate will improve.

Thanks for your many replies. I am shooting with a 177 Daystate Huntsman with Barracuda Huntsman Extreme pellets, which I thought had a fairly flat trajectory. I carry the air rifle when I am inspecting the traps just in case I see a grey loitering about, but most of the shooting takes place at feeders (at various distances in different woods). My chance encounters are generally very successful, it’s the planned shots I fail at! 3 times in the last few weeks I have missed some very easy shots. Each time, I have been sitting comfortably, using shooting sticks and have waited until the grey sits up to eat the peanut, aim for its forehead, fire and then completely miss as I hear the pellet hitting the backstop! The last time, the grey looked round and carried on eating, giving me a second shot, which I still missed but by then it beggered off.... Logically, the pellet must be hitting high or to either side, but when I take another shot aiming at a nearby thin branch or small leaf, I have no trouble hitting it. Back at home, I set up the target at (what I guess) is the same distance and then shoot very respectable groupings. Obviously, I am doing something wrong, as Walker suggested it is probably my holdover, hence my enquiry about a range finder, but it doesn’t explain why I can miss a grey but put a neat hole in the centre of a leaf at the same range. I am mystified and more than a little brassed off!

Hi I looking for recommendations for an easy to use (& hopefully inexpensive) range finder. I mainly shoot squirrels at distances upto 20m (I think) but I have missed one or two easy shots and suspect I might be missestimating the distance. Any advice gratefully received.

my son has now helped me attach the last 2 photos. Sorry about the quality. The top one is an empty Becks trap with side and feeder removed ready for sterilising after the catch.The feeder is perched on the top. The actual process of transferring the grey into an ordinary trap is abit of a pain. The mink trap is attached to the side of the Becks trap with bungee cords top and bottom. Then mink trap door is raised and then the Becks trap door and the grey is persuaded to move into the mink trap and the door is released. Ready for the grey to be culled on the ground and the Becks trap cleaned and sterilised. In South Cumbria, The red colonies are generally in valleys or remote areas like this location, because the greys won’t come over bare hills and tend to follow the streams and tree lines etc. This means that volunteers like myself can concentrate on trapping and shooting the greys In the surrounding areas and the reduce the numbers of greys invading the red areas. Of course it is not so simple, because the reds do occasionally spread out to new areas, which is good, but it does mean that we have to constantly be on the keeping the numbers of greys to a minimum, which is quite time consuming. When things are a bit quiet, this gives us time to tackle woods and properties that are further away to reduce the numbers of greys coming into our area. Keep up the good fight! Cheers.

Hi Unfortunately, It still won’t let me upload the last two photos, they are the same size (I presume) as the others. There doesn’t seem to be any way of reducing them. Anyway back to why I didn’t cull the grey in the Becks trap. Professional courteousy as much as anything, it wasn’t my trap, I had been asked to just stand guard and I neither knew how to operate the trap or had the equipment to safely extract the grey into a normal cage. I could not just shoot it because it would have bled everywhere and the traps are kept scruplesly clean and sterile. Apart from that, I wanted to learn more about the use of the trap. The amount of photos, isn’t much of a problem, if an alert is received, the volunteer only has to look at the last photo to check whether a grey has been trapped, the other photos are then irrelevant. ?

Once caught, the grey is transferred into a normal trap and culled. In this case it was an adult female. The last photo shows the trap with side and feeder removed for sterilising after catching the grey. The balance/treadle is in the foreground. An interesting morning! I can’t attach the last two photos, it tells me I can only upload 2.73mb. Can anyone tell me how to get round this? Walker, I guess the answer to your question is the Becks is better than an ordinary trap because reds will feed in the trap without setting it off and as such will attract a grey, who follows the scent and thinks it is safe to enter. Your method means a red sets off the trap and until it is released, the trap cannot catch any greys. In areas, where there is a slight possibility of a thing a red, we use an ordinary trap with an escape hatch in the door . We cover ordinary traps with builder plastic, this protects any captured squirrel from the elements and seems to stop any bird from entering - there are plenty woodpeckers here. The Beck traps have a feeder with a lid, which I suppose also deters birds from entering the trap. Sorry for so many posts- I am not very computer literate.

The next two photos show a close up of the trap door and the mechanism beneath the trap. It works like the old fashioned spring kitchen weigh scales and is adjustable for weight.