OK....Time for a good story. Friend of mine's parents live on the edge of a small midwestern city. The dad planted some seedling trees only to have them eaten by squirrels. So his son (my friend) gifted him a nice pellet rifle to solve his problem. But, the friend's mother objected to harming the squirrels, so he gave up that idea, planted more seedlings and tried some of the afore-mentioned solutions. None of them worked and all of his seedings again became squirrel food. One day when the tender-hearted wife was away, the frustrated dad got out the pellet rifle, whacked 3 squirrels, and discretely disposed of the dead critters. Day or so later the wife wonders where the squirrels are and starts to look around, but is reassured when she sees more live squirrels scampering about. What? says the husband and he vows to renew his secret battle. Now each time the wife is away, the sneaky husband disposes of a couple more. That was about 3 years ago. The body count, all completely unknown by the wife, is up to about 190 squirrels! And they just keep coming!! By the way, he has managed to start some trees.
When we first moved out to the country the wife loved the deer.....we moved in July 4 weekend. To the fall (I think, might have been spring) she wants to plant tulips along the drive....the 880+ foot long driveway. She orders from Holland....thousands of bulbs.....a screw like thing that goes on a drill....so out we go with a little gas Generator and we are planting bulbs like crazy. Thousands of bulbs, and Thousands of dollars here.
Then come the deer....and they are digging up the bulbs and eating them.
We try everything, fishing string across trees.....lights, sounds.....nothing works for long. And now SHE is replanting....and getting upset. Now you likely know that just walking out on your front porch and smoking a deer or 4 is kinda looked down upon......so what to do.
Well she gives up on the tulips down the drive and switches to Daffodil's...nothing eats those....but we still have tulip bulbs around the house....right next to the house and those deer are still coming up.....so here is what I ended up doing.
First open the door and yell....off the go....then they get use to that and only run a few yards away.
Now run outside in my tighty whities (enough to make anyone go into shock) and they run off....about 3 days and they are looking at me like I am insane and not leaving.
Grab ice and chuck it at them....they soon learn Ice range and that it really does not hurt....they do look at you as if to say.....Hay bro, you hit me with ice.
Ok out comes the red ryder....now I got pretty good at lobbing a bb out to 50-ish yards.....again they learn what bb gun range is and stand right outside of it.
Now remember we are still planting bulbs to replace this.....and remember if momma ain't happy no one is happy.
Now she is wanting me to kill them....ahh hon.....they kind of frown upon that......
So we move to fire arms....a few rounds into the ground by the front door and they are gone.....but they come back.
And we get to the same point.....they will run a few yards away and look at me and say....dude you can't shoot for sh____
We now have bushes around the house.
Point of this long story is....they will never leave as long as there is food there and no natural thing to keep them away.....they eat my apples, my peaches (I never get one peach and those bastages know when they are ripe)