Did similar with a pellet gun. Used it to shoot squirrels in their backside to shoo them out of the trees above my house. They had great amusement picking acorns from the oak trees and throwing them down onto the roof. They’d stop when I came outside. A few weeks of pellet gun rebuking and they got the message and stayed out of the trees. I rewarded them by filling up the deer feeder 2 months early.