North Central Indiana, I and all the farm/private land around me has been overrun by black squirrels. Anyone else seeing this?

I just want some squirrel gravy!

Black squirrels' lives matter!

No but is sure like to kill some black squrrels!
Colt

Well, that stinks but black squirrels make gravy too.

"...just for laughs." The peckerwood says.

Those black squirrels are just a phase of the gray squirrel. They will make fine gravy. In fact, gray squirrel makes better gravy than fox squirrel. Stop whinin' and bake biscuits.

Hal

I'm in central Ohio, 20 years ago never saw a black color phase, but the last few years I'm seeing more and more
of them. I agree with Hal, they make fine gravy.

I’ve noticed the same thing, but with red squirrels. I never saw any while hunting 10 years ago, and we always filled our bag limit with fox squirrels. Now it’s the other way around, and you can hardly eat the red ones lol.

The only black squirrels around here are fox squirrels.

There used to be a decent population of fox squirrels in my area of southeast PA but I haven't seen one in decades, just grays. Two years ago I was surprised to see a handful of black squirrels where there had only been grays for a long time.

I didn't know fox squirrels had a black phase.

We have black fox squirrels here also.

Search for pictures of southern fox squirrels and you will see several color phases, including black. They are strange looking.

I wonder if it's a southern thing or if northern fox squirrels have a black phase too.

I don’t know. Every fox squirrel I see around here has a face mask and is considerably larger than a gray squirrel. They are always close to a stand of mature longleaf pine.

A black face mask from pine sap like ours get from chewing on green walnuts?

I've heard gray squirrels will overtake fox squirrel territory, I'm seeing that happen, plenty of grays around here, it's getting rare to find fox squirrels in this area.

40 or so years ago a pal of mine saw two black Fox squirrels in central Michigan. He bagged one of them. This was before the Grays took over that area. Now you see more Grays than Fox. A good number of the Grays are jet black.

See a black fox squirrel around here once in a while. Its more common to see them with just black bellies.

Never saw a fox squirrel as a kid in NC. Now I see them many times per year, but 40 miles from my old home town. They are not widespread here, but where they do live they are in healthy numbers. Move 5 miles away, and none.

Gray squirrels have nearly replaced the fox squirrels in this part of the country. It's really been noticeable in the last 12-15'years.
Had been for years that you had to go to a large section of hardwood bottomland to find large numbers of grays. Now they are predominant up on the ridges and hills as well. They've even displaced the fox squirrels in most towns over most of NE Texas. Have killed a few black fox squirrels in the past, but never seen or even heard of an off-colored gray one in this area. The color variations in some species are puzzling to say the least.