Squirrels - repopulation of trapped area

Howdy.

I have been working a nuisance job for a person who has a fairly decent size garden on a city block. The property has Concord grapes, pear trees, and two apple trees. The homeowner wanted me to knock the squirrel population down so they quit doing so much damage to their vegetables and fruits.

So here is my question - I have been knocking the population down between 30 - 60 squirrels a year but it seems like it is such good habitat that new squirrels seem to migrate in about every six days. Is this normal? Should I just keep knocking these disspersing males down in hopes that I will get to a point where there are no squirrels or eventually give up because there are so many in the city?

Thanks in advance.

Brian

Have a similar deal in my area. Been working it for 10 years in a medium town. Drive a couple of blocks and see a dozen more squirrels. Never put a dent in the population for more that 2 or 3 weeks.

I'm almost surprised it takes a whole 6 days. They will fill a void quickly.

Interesting statistic , if all of a sudden everyone thought squirrel hunting was the greatest thing and everyone went out and shot enough squirrels to knock out 90% of the population , the following year with breeding the population would be 100% recovered. Squirrel population is controlled by available food sources. Bad mast crop year , squirrel litters are small , good crop year , big litters.

Nature abhors a vacuum, Squirrels will shift areas and move in where there's room.

And it ain't just squirrels! I had an area that for some strange reason had a real distemper problem. I took a bunch of sick raccoons out of that area and figured I wouldn't be going back for a while! Wrong! Next year that area had an excellent population of healthy raccoons getting into trouble all over again. That's why I love this job. It's fun to be wrong!

And lucrative! LOL

Yup, new family will move in. You could take them out non stop for decades!

I know fur trappers that consistently take 2000 plus coon a year off the same traplines...and been doing it for more than 10 years straight

Thanks for confirming my beliefs. I think it is almost impossible to trap or shoot out quality habitat.

Are you paying attention peta?

2000 or 200 ?

I removed 15 from half acre, and 1 just came back. 3 weeks later, but there is definitely a new coon on the property.