Much like topgun, my dad had an ongoing war of attrition with squirrels.
Back when we had the house built in the early 60s, he planted an English Walnut tree in the back yard. He nurtured it through a couple tough winters, tarring cracks in the bark and so on and, in due course (20 years or so) it started bearing nuts. Lots of nuts.
This drew the squirrels, as you might imagine.
He got a .22 from a friend and some BB caps - our hunting guns were all shotguns. Early in the morning he'd stand in the kitchen drinking his morning coffee and watching his tree through the window over the sink. At some point, a branch would start shaking, a sure sign of a squirrel raiding the tree.
At that, he'd slip down into the basement where he'd stowed the .22. The steel Bilco cellar door with its creaky hinges he left open at night, locking only the door at the bottom of the steps. The cellar steps made an ideal sniper's nest, one which guaranteed the neighbors (this was a suburban development) would not see where the gun was, assuming they heard the quiet report of the BB cap. The angle also ensured that his background was not a house.
I didn't think much of this for legal and safety reasons and told him so, but he didn't listen. These were his walnuts. He didn't care if they were in season or not, those squirrels were going to get it. One of his favorite winter projects to keep him out of trouble with my mom was to stay in the basement listening to his accordion music and shelling walnuts, one at a time, with his pocketknife. The more the squirrels ate, the more likely he'd run out of project and into trouble.
After several years of this, there were 47 dead squirrels buried in the garden. One old greybeard played cat-and-mouse with him - and the neighbor's cat - for months one summer only to get greedy and wind up next to all the younger, stupider squirrels that lasted only a week or two.
The house was sold several years after the squirrels, inexplicably, stopped coming to steal his walnuts. The folks who moved in didn't like the shade the now-huge tree cast and turned it into firewood. I never told my dad about that because it might well have broken his heart.
