A young fried squirrel is some very fine eating. For years I hunted them diligently. My favorite was a good .22 shooting sub-sonic LR solids. Hollow points to me were too destructive of the meat & unnecessary for clean kills. The sonic crack from High Speed shells will clear the woods far, far quicker than the report of a 12ga shotgun. I have killed quite a few with shotguns as well. Here I prefer anything from 12 to 20 with either 1oz or 1 1/8oz of either 5's or 6's. At one point in my youth I owned an 870 pump with Poly Choke. It was a great squirrel gun but was absolutely the only thing I ever liked it for. It didn't "Point" like a double but more "Aimed" like a rifle which was fine for squirrels. It was generally loaded with the old heavy field load of 2˝de-1oz-6. Certain members of my family thought squirrel brains a delicacy & preferred me to use the shotgun as when shooting the .22 I insisted on head shots. Personally the back was my favorite piece. A lot of folks like Squirrel & Dumplings but to me if it was too old & tough to fry it wasn't worth eating.
