I've got 4 large pecan trees in my yard. My neighbor to the north has 5; my neighbor to the east has 3. It is Squirrel Heaven. We get enough pecans each year that we don't have to worry about the tree rats eating a bunch of them. Howsomeever, I cannot and will not tolerate having the nasty things gnawing on the eaves of my house and wrecking the screens on my porch as they chase one another around. I trapped a bunch of them and took them to the city park and released them, but hardly made a dent in the population, and, they finally got "trap wise," and wouldn't enter the trap for nice treats like pecans and peanut butter. So I decided to wage real warfare on them, and to that end, I bought one of the new GAMO SWARM MAXIM's in .17 caliber. It came with a rather poor 3-9X40 scope, a two stage, adjustable trigger, and a 10 shot magazine. It has an advertised MV of 1300 fps with the ultra light platinum pellets. I was fresh out of platinum pellets, so have deployed 8 gr. "Predator PolyMags" with a plastic tip that give me 1100 fps. I'm quite happy with this new rig; the squirrels are not quite as happy as I am. It's accurate enough at 20 yards that I can get "minute of squirrel" groups, and those nasty pellets cause severe damage, even if slightly off target. I removed 9 of them from the breeding pool in 10 days. They're now so gun shy that when I walk out into the yard they haul a$$ for the neighbors' trees! Luv it!

put up a pop up blind

I'm glad I live in the country. My neighbor is my 90 y/o Mother and she shoots more squirrels than I do. We both have pecan trees and did I mention how much I love PECAN PIES. Smokem ifen you gottem. Squirrels that is.

Shooting squirrels in my city backyard gets me through the off season. Benjamin .22, dead nuts on at 20 yards. I upgraded my rings, stock ones were worthless. It ain't bragging if you can do it, but my longest shot on a squirrel was 62 yards. Couldn't believe it.

Good shootin'! 62 yards is a long way for this old, shaky dude to try to shoot a pellet gun. Gotta have some great Kentucky Windage ability which I don't have. 20-25 yards is my usual range for my tree rat pot shots. But it is a way to keep your trigger time going during the off season.

They were destroying my house. Neighbor was feeding them, thought they were cute. I've shot 30+. Definitely thinned them out.

Neighbors house was ransacked by squirrels, a few of the neighbors were cleaning them out of the area.

Have issues with Squirrels? Well folks I... " Have gun(s) will Travel".. both my guns are PCP (pre charged pneumatics), .22 and .25 cal....and there is nothing the size of a fox or under they will not anchor! Have access to .357 cal PCP too if needed...yes thats right PCP go all the way up to .50 cal actually look them up on YouTube The .357 is cool Cal for PCP Airgun...there is a 66 grain round ball(also there are many pellets and slug options) for them Perfect lil item for pesting Chicken thieves.

Two words:
Squirrel Pole - and yeah, it probably should be illegal.

The only problem I had with it was having to check it every hour or two before fire ants found squirrels and reset the traps!

I built one of them, set it up at the 45 degree angle recommended, and never caught a thing except some grief from my son and my wife about how ugly it was. I haven't had fire ant problems, it's just that the "magical" 45 degree platform never resulted in a tree rat kill or capture. I set a game camera out to try to get "the action." Squirrels ran around, smelled the angled board, and never, not ever, did one of them climb it. It's been set up for months, so the human scent is long since dissipated, I bait it with pecans; the tree rats ain't buying it at my house.

WOW!
I used an old treated 2x4 and two old Conibears on an oak tree by one of my feeders plagued with tree rats.
I caught 11 the first day and 39 in 7 days out of that one tree.
My feeder started lasting a lot longer between fillings too.