>>677327OP, are you worried about the emotions of the squirrel you kill, or its family members?
If it's about the squirrel you kill, take the advice of
>>677334. As long as you're taking an ethical shot within your ability to quickly dispatch it, don't worry. Taking a head shot with a .22 or slingshot will kill the squirrel instantly, and it will feel no pain. Any twitching is just nerves firing, and not the squirrel fighting death. If you use a shotgun, get the right bird shot size and choke tube for the distance you will be shooting, and test the pattern on a paper target.
It's healthy to have a concern about killing things ethically. Just realize that you will give them a better death than they would have had, because they won't even know what happened. Nature is cruel: it would die otherwise from illness, starvation, dehydration, or animal attack; none of them is a good way to die. Coyotes and dogs will eat sick deer alive starting at its anus. Cats will terrorize mice for hours, by repeatedly catching and releasing it, before they get bored and kill it.
The squirrel had a good life, and you are giving it a great death if done ethically.
If you can't reliably take head shots, and always gut shoot them or take a shot at their hind end because its the only shot you had, you shouldn't be hunting. Hunting isn't about killing, it's about harvesting in the most painless way possible. Ethically killing it just happens to be the most humane way to harvest.
If you're worried about its surviving family members, don't. Just hunt during the legal season, so there aren't any pups that starve if the mother doesn't return. If you just left the dead squirrel (which is wanton waste and a crime) other squirrels might take interest and 'mourn' over it. But if a squirrel doesn't come home, the other squirrels won't really notice, and will forget about it.
Remember you're an apex predator, whose hunting license fees support conservation.
