Traps
There are a lot of different traps for different uses on different animals. Fortunatly, that is the past. The choices are easy for the 21st century man. The galvanized steel box trap and the amazingly effective blast from the past bucket trap.
Squirrel
I think this is a Havahart 1078 box trap. I borrowed it from a friend. It’s looks small but it does the job. The most recommended trap is the Havahart 1040 double door box trap. Neither trap kills so if you catch something you don’t want, you can let it go.
Chipmunk
This is a bucket trap. Simple but very effective. As you can see, it’s a five gallon paint bucket and a two by four. The trap is set by filling the bucket with water to within about 8 or 9 inches of the top then floating a layer of black oil sunflower seeds on the water surface. The trap is chummed by putting some sunflower seeds on the ground around the end of the two by four then on the two by four leading to the bucket mouth. This trap kills so disposal is relatively easy assuming you can stand the thought of drowning a chipmunk.
It doesn’t look like it works but I set the trap before I went to work and when I got home, there was a dead chipmunk in the trap. It took three weeks to get the squirrels. Less than nine hours to get the chipmunk.
Bait
Squirrels love black oil sunflower seeds. The peanut butter on bread bait did not work for me. Chipmunks love them so much they apparently loose all sanity to get them.
Disposal
Getting rid of the squirrel is the nasty part of live trapping. People use different methods and I suspect the choice depends either on how much empathy they have with the squirrel or how outraged they were by the squirrel’s home invasion. The bottom line though is just as there is no good way to die, there is no good way to kill.
I mulled over several methods and settled on carbon monoxide poisoning as the most humane. However, circumstances forced my hand and I ended up using a point blank head shot with an air rifle.
Air Rifle
This is a relic from my childhood. It’s a Crosman 2200 pump up air rifle. It will fire a standard Crosman flat head pellet 600 fps with 10 pumps. It’s been about 27 years since it was last fired and it pumped up and held the charge just fine. I think the charge was weak the first few times but then it started charging almost like new. Later on I lubed the oiling collar on the pump and it now pumps up just like new. Amazing.
These are the pellets I used. These are the only pellets left from the past so my guess is they don’t shoot particularly well in the 2200. Flat heads or domed should be better but these were available when needed and did the job.