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You know you’ve wanted to. You’ve stood looking out the patio window, watching pods of cottontails mow down your garden greenery, or gray squirrels gnawing holes through your siding so they can run laps in your attic at night, and thought, Ooh, if only…. That’s because in many states, popping nuisance game animals and certain furbearers out of season is a no-no. But it’s a no-no no more in Michigan (with a few caveats).

On May 11th, acting Michigan Department on Natural Resources director Shannon Lott approved a Wildlife Conservation Order that increased the number of nuisance animals homeowners can kill without a permit to include rabbits, squirrels, beavers, muskrats, opossums, and weasels. That’s in addition to the critters previously on this list, including woodchucks, skunks, racoons, and coyotes.

But that’s not all. The order also changed the circumstances under which homeowners can take matters into their own hand. Whereas previously a critter had to be “doing or about to do damage,” now they only need to be “doing damage or physically present where it could imminently do damage” for you to take it out.

In other words, a squirrel doesn’t have to be gnawing on your siding. It doesn’t even have to have an expression on its face that suggests it’s about to gnaw. It only has to be in the general area where it could gnaw.

How does the DNR define damage? Well, pretty broadly according to Section 5.56 (1) of the order, which reads: “For the purposes of this section, “damage” means physical harm to forest products; roads; dams; buildings; orchards; apiaries; livestock; and horticultural or agricultural crops. Beaver or muskrat are only considered to be doing damage if their activities result in flooding or culvert blockages that cause damage as defined in this section.”

In other words, if a rabbit or squirrel doing any of the that, Michiganders no longer need a permit to whack it, as long “the individual abides by all legal hunting and trapping methods for those species.”