Sap Sacs and Squirrles

[sherwoodm]

The squirrels win. We tap 135 and last year they ruined 90. This year 50 so far. We have tried everything including wide gorilla tap on the bottoms of the bags.Even sprinkled cyan pepper on the sticky side of the tape. Squirrels just go above the tape. Anyone interested in trading some good buckets for sap sacs and hangers? No more sap sacs for us!

[MapleMark753]

Believe me, I feel your pain. Or anger and frustration. We do sap bags as well, and the squirrels hit pretty hard every year. It IS a battle. We just include in our plan for a certain number of replacement bags (well, going to tubing eventually though). Anyway, we've found that they are trainable animals to an extent. When they start, we'll replace em all right away. Next day notice where they start FIRST, and replace all but one there (leave one leaker). Next day same thing, for a few days. Ends up with 4-7 bags we'll leave with chews in them, and they "forget" about all the others and habituate to the leakers. No, I don't like ANY leakers, but this is what works for us. Good luck!
take care, Mark

[sherwoodm]

Hi Mark,
Thanks for your input. We had one area this year where they got every bag. (29 of them) If they would be happy with a bag here and there we would live with it. Last year we returned to one sugarbush after a cold spell and they had ruined 89 bags out of 90. Sure wish we could train these greedy critters.

[Wannabe]

Sure wish we could train these greedy critters.

Train em with .22 lead.:)

I don't have near the trouble you guys do but I put the new bag inside the old/chewed bags and that seems to help.

[sherwoodm]

We have a hired gun! So far squirrels are too smart for him. Putting ruined bags outside of new ones does work. Just a pain to hitch them in place. Thanks!

[Trapper2]

2000320004

Lets see, 2 bags, 2 squirrels, Which one can chew or scratch a hole through first?