A nutty old downfall

If there’s one thing grey squirrels cannot resist it’s a feeder filled with peanuts, which makes essential control much easier for Mat Manning

If you use an airgun to control grey squirrels, winter is the time to make a real impression on their numbers. Like many conservation-minded shooters, I do my best to keep these invasive rodents in check throughout the year but it is much easier to bring them to book during the cold months.

The fact that most trees are bare during the winter is a great help when it comes to spotting grey squirrels in their woodland habitat. But their real undoing at this time of year is their weakness for a free meal. These highly adaptable rodents are greedy opportunists with a reputation for bullying less boisterous wildlife away from food sources. Their domination of feeding places is more aggressive than ever through the winter, when natural pickings can be perilously thin on the ground.

Countless woodland birds and small mammals must perish as a result of squirrels hounding them away from precious sources of nourishment. But this is a habit that can also lead to their own downfall.

Boost

I have been using feeding stations to control grey squirrels for years. The idea first occurred to me after realising just how many tree-rats I was shooting around pheasant feeders through the winter and it has given a huge boost to my results.

My experimentation has seen me offering them everything from wheat and maize to sunflower hearts and peanuts, and the last is by far the best. All will attract squirrels when natural food is scarce but peanuts will get them queuing up at pretty much any time of the year.