Naw man, I'd have worn out my arms, as well as my ramrod trying to exterminate ground squirrels with my muzzle loader over on our friend's ranch this past spring. While it's true that my wife's and my "main goal" was to "eliminate ground squirrels," there were (and still are)
thousands of them. We were killing about a hundred ground squirrels in a couple of hours, two or three mornings every week. My muzzle loader would have been completely impractical for that.
The fact is,
last year when our friends asked us to come over and shoot ground squirrels on their ranch, on our first trip over, I took my .22-250 along in case there were any "long distance" ground squirrels to shoot. And when we first got there, I actually
did pick out a ground squirrel that was maybe 125 yards out and shot him. But as soon as I pulled the trigger, I thought, "Man, that was stupid - all of that noise and expense when there are hundreds of ground squirrels running around within 50 yards of where we parked the truck!" So, I put my .22-250 away, got my Ruger 10-22 out, and went to work exterminating ground squirrels.