More than 6,400 Wisconsin records put the eastern gray squirrel near the very top of the state’s mammal list. Dane and Milwaukee counties dominate the count, and the species turns up from Peninsula State Park in Door County down through Devils Lake and Mirror Lake state parks, wherever mature oaks, hickories, and walnuts grow.
A hoarder of the hardwoods
Gray squirrels are scatter hoarders, burying thousands of acorns and nuts each fall and recovering many of them by smell months later, a habit that makes them genuine planters of the hardwood forest. They nest in leaf dreys and tree cavities and favor mature, nut-bearing canopy, which is why Wisconsin’s record concentrates in the southern hardwood belt and along wooded river corridors, thinning where conifer forest takes over in the north.
Two litters and a busy autumn
Gray squirrels raise one litter in late winter and often a second in midsummer, and they do not hibernate. Wisconsin’s counts crest in April, when leafless crowns leave squirrels and their dreys easy to see, then surge again from September through November as animals work the mast crop, cutting nuts and caching them across lawns, parks, and forest floor.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in Wisconsin, and the species is native to the state’s hardwood range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
