Groundhogs / woodchucks are strong hungry muscular aggressive rodents. The only two ways to stop them are impressive fencing and shooting. If you are in competition for the same food, and you need that food, you will know what to do. Other methods are not effective.

Or an equally strong dog who loves to hunt. My dog makes short work of them. Can you borrow a dog for a few nights?

There are not too many repellents that will deter woodchucks. And for vegetables, nothing. I feel your pain, every year I battle woodchucks, finally we put a 6 ft chain link fence around our veggie garden. For my flower beds, I use a repellent that I think is called Woochuck Stop, its in a red bottle, HD sells it and other places I'm sure. Thats the only one that worked for me, but I wouldn't use it on food items. Despite my 6 ft fence, I was finding my kale and cucumber plants eaten, couldn't figure it out. Then, I went out there early in the morning and found a tiny baby bunny in the garden, once he spotted me, he was able to squeeze right through the fencing and ran off. So, tonights project is to install chicken wire along the perimeter of the chain link fencing. Hopefully that will keep the little critter out, cute though he may be, the veggies are off limits. I'd recommend a fence or a dog.

Fencing around, and hardware cloth underneath. Occlusion is the only sure-fire method to keep them from getting at your produce. Trap and release, kill, deter, etc... they will just come back, or another one will just take the last ones place.

If you are wanting to permanently get rid of the whistle pig: watermelon bubble gum. I know. I thought my local feed store guru was trying to make me look stupid or see how gullible I was. Throw some pieces in the whole with one unwrapped he said. They can't digest it and it kills them he said. I did the live trap and release thing and of course they kept coming back from 5 miles away. Alas, I tried the bubblegum thing. Did it work? I don't know. What I DO know is I don't have any ground hogs. Can I say with 100% certainty that the gum killed them. No. Can I say with 100% certainty it was something else? No. All I know is I don't have whistle pigs anymore and I don't care how they came to be no more. But it has to be watermelon flavored apparently.

I heard juicy fruit works too. I bought some, but never tried it. Guess I will tomorrow. Too hot today. We don't have wood chucks or ground hogs, but we do have gophers, voles and rabbits.

Great--I'll add to my garden chewing gum collection:
Juicy Fruit for the voles and Watermelon for the ground hogs!!

If the burrow is on your property, run a pipe/hose from your car/truck/bike exhaust pipe and gas 'em. No muss, no fuss.

Those ***!!**#*@!!! woodchucks! I have found a method that has worked for two days/ 24 hrs…first, six SONAR solor powered pegs that give off sonar waves when something is within several feet, AND, second, a flashing SOLAR powered light in our garden! I make certain it is blinking at dusk and into the night.

All this is behind a triple fenced garden - the fence buried six inches around perimeter, the main grid 5’foot fence + chicken wire over that, and deer netting to extend to 8-feet height )… great to keep out the deer but ineffective for woodchucks ( since our village has declared a moritorium on the coyotes that used to run about the woods here eating the woodchucks, I believe.)

Anyway, my husband works tirelessly on our wonderful garden, only to see the small plants get eaten up in the night! I have seen a family of woodchucks descending the hill several homes away, the triplets small enough to get into our garden. Now they are bigger and cannot get through the fence, but can borrow under…

Bottom line, TRY the SOLAR FLASHing light found on Amazon. So far , so good…our row of green beans has survived, as have the squash and tomato plants. we aren't allowed to shoot anything in our Ohio town, although we are tempted to invite our Montana relatives with 22,s to visit! ….or get another wonderful Dog!

Sign me, ”Mad as a Hornet”

Not a deterrent, but if you want to trap them, I've found that a groundhog lure from DIY Pest works great, smear it on a piece of apple and use it to bait the live trap. We've caught 9 so far this year, they are burrowed under the pole barn and the cement floor is cracking in a couple of places where the groundhogs have excavated the sand/soil that the cement was poured on. I replanted 2 rows of green beans that they destroyed, all 6 of my broccoli plants, all 6 brussels sprouts and a couple of heads of cabbage. I did buy some Liquid Fence deer and rabbit repellent, foul smelling granules, and it seems to work but must be reapplied quickly and diligently each time it rains, and it's kind of expensive.

Annie

Ka-Boom!

Mothballs worked for me. I threw 5 or 6 in the hole, and haven't seen him since. I'm sure he just moved over to my neighbor's property, but that's ok. He's a retired sheriff and still enjoys target practice.

Fortunately, the woodchucks I have here are not around my garden....just my shed/barn and back yard. I don't think woodchucks come out at night.......just a bit during the day, but mostly late afternoon and evening. I would never put mothballs out for any reason. They're poison and if the they kill the woodchuck and another animal eats the woodchuck (i.e. Owl), they will be poisoned too. I have considered the sonar/solar things, but don't really want to scare away birds and squirrels and chipmunks. But if I were desperate, I would try them. I really try to scare things away without relocating them or killing them.

Well cat I was all set to recommend Kaboom for relocating or scaring them away then you said "without killing them". That brings us back to getting out beating on pots and pans but be forewarned that neighbors are apt to think you've gone off the deep end.

Hi klem.........I'm not opposed to scaring them with noise. Fortunately, I live out in the country so I don't have to worry about close neighbors. But even something like a radio playing all the time might work near where you see them most of the time. When we had beavers coming up on the yard and chewing our trees, and building dams in our creek, we were using smoke bombs in one of their holes.........thinking that they always had other exits to use. But then we found a dead one in the creek. :( It's really hard trying to live in harmony with other beings, but I think it's worth the effort to be as gentle as possible. And know that they were probably in the area even before we were. I've learned to outsmart lots of wildlife who were damaging things that were important to me. But it does take a lot of thinking and work, and it doesn't always look great........but I don't care about looks, so I'm lucky in that respect.