3 stories of catching gophers. At my old house last year we had gophers. I tried the poison pellets, the sulfur bombs, those stupid buzzing devices....no luck, just wasted money. So I decided to try the cheap inexpensive metal traps from Home Depot. The next time I found a fresh hole that hadn't been back filled yet, I dug it up a few inches further and set the trap. Next morning? Dead gopher. This was in the backyard. I had the same success if the front yard about a month later. BOTH TIMES I shoved the dead gopher back into the tunnel as far as I could push it and then filled it in. We didn't have a single gopher for the rest of the time we lived at that house, which was about 7 months.
Story #2 - we just bought our first place and have been busting our butts on some home improvement projects, one major project being the clearing out of the massively overgrown front yard and sod installation. I knew we'd get gophers eventually and sure enough, about 3 months after we finished we started noticing the mounds. Thinking I could just kill them using the same traps as before I tried that again and those little bastards kept filling the tunnels and dodging the traps. These bastards were good! I kept trying that for a couple weeks but the backyard was getting really bad and the front yard was starting to get hit pretty bad. So I decided to follow the next tunnel in the front yard as far as it would take me. I ended up digging a 6 or 7 foot sod "flap" that followed that fresh tunnel to the edge of my porch. When I got to the porch I was able to stick my whole hand in there and move it around so I decided this must be their headquarters. This time I didn't waste time with the trap though. Instead, I took 3 of those sulfur bomb sticks and taped them together and twisted the wicks together to make one mega bomb
I lit the fuse and shoved it in as deep as I could and covered the open end with a scrap piece of plywood overnight. Came back the next morning and filled the hole with dirt. We've been gopher free in the front yard for almost 2 weeks now. We did the same in the backyard but we just noticed a new hole a couple days ago. We'll get him though.
Story #3 - we have a dog, he's a boxer named Jackson. Jackson loves when we buy him little furry squeaky toys. Sometimes he finds his own little furry squeaky toys. He's awesome! He does a great job of spotting a fresh tunnel and he'll stand there with his nose buried deep in the hole for 20 minutes. We usually let him dig a bit when he finds a tunnel and so far he's been successful at physically pulling a gopher out of it's tunnel and playing with it to death twice! (once at our old house and once at our current house). It's funny because he just wants to play with them so he's swatting them and flinging them through the air and the whole time that stupid gopher is trying to stand up and act as big as it can but it's no match for Jackson. He'll just keep playing with it until it dies, which is good...I want those little bastards to suffer!! I have video but I don't know how to post it yet.
Anyway, getting rid of the gophers is tough!
-Seth
