Most every thing I have seen about using hot peppers to control gophers starts with "I think maybe" so evidently no one that has tried it has written about it, and those that have written about have not tried it. Minute amounts of capsaicin are known to help repel insects and a bit more has been successful in repeling rabbits and voles so more may well work at repeling gophers. I doubt that sprinking pepper flakes over the ground would be a cost effective method of control since you would need many pounds and more than likely that treatment would be more harmful to domestic animals then the gopher who would tunnel under where that barrier was. Much more effective would be spraying the gophers food source.

The gophers' food source is an acre and a half of weeds, I've been working hard to prevent them from getting to anything else. I refuse to use poison because of the dogs and cat who like to eat the gophers, and I don't plan on buying and setting traps either. I'm happy with just keeping them away from my fruits, veggies, and roses with gopher wire but my mom heard about chile pepper getting rid of them and wanted me to try it. I think I'll try to convince her that it's a bad idea.

No research I have seen indicates that pumping a vehicles exhaust into a gophers, or a moles, tunnel will do much more then potentially damage the engine because of the restriction placed on the exhaust system.
Some gardeners report success in deterring gophers and other burrowing critters by placing tight mesh fence fabric in the ground in a reversed L about 1 foot deep and 1 foot out from the garden.

To Kimm what research have you done into gopher gassing? It is a very widely accepted and well used practice I think the report from someone that has used it and is trying to help is worth a lot more than "research"

I have never seen buried wires kill a gopher or stop them from multiplying

Garlic and green onions work better. They will eat even hot peppers if they are hungry enough.

The reversed L should work, but the site I searched said to put the last foot of wire at a 45 degree angle.
Garlic & onion works on ants too.
The best thing next to moving EAST, is having a dog.

I use a gallon water jug and place it tightly over the hole of every gopher I see go in. They climb out and end up in the water jug as you hold it over the hole. After that it's up to you how to dispose of them.

my daughter said she saw a video of this technique with the gallon jug. I have to look for that. I put the end of a hose down a gopher hole, Its one I've been trying to block with wire,etc, but they just dig around it. anyway, I had the end of the hose with water on full blast for I think about a half hour, and the water never came up to the top of the ground. This must be a gigantic gopher den. This was right at the edge of our house foundation too. WHAT??????

This may be of interest to some.

http://modernfarmer.com/2015/06/varmints-getting-your-crops-three-humane-ways-to-keep-em-out/

kimmq is kimmsr

Someone suggested using green onion, which I know does not work. As I have a lot of green onion in my garden and gophers are eating them from time to time!

I'm redoing the whole yard. I wonder if we need to install gopher wire all over the yard, which is not cheap. I hope there is a better solution.

I have the same problem! We actually did line our entire yard with gopher mesh before we laid sod and the buggers have actually popped through it in a many places. Just tried searching again to find a natural solution. Let me know if you do!

At my old place in the country, we had to do raised beds with hardware cloth, but the little buggers still smelled the veges and came looking!

We started using the mole/gopher "chatterers" and in about 2 weeks they realized that the annoying noise wasn't going to go away! The only time we would have trouble after that was if the batteries went dead.

We have since moved into town and still there is gopher action! We had some mounds show up, and noticed a lot of activity in the neighborhood.

We installed a chatterer in the front yard, and a couple in the vege beds......nothing!

Our new neighbors next door were over run with the suckers. We told them about these things, he bought several......no gophers!

Several neighbors have since bought them and.....no gophers!

When people pooh pooh these things they don't realize that it does take a couple of weeks for the critters to figure out that the annoying noise isn't going away!

I don't know if it would be effective for underground pests but I used to raise Burmese Pythons and they got quite sizable. I would toss some of their feces and urine around in my garden (urine hardens to calcium carbonate) and it completely stopped the rabbits, groundhogs and squirrels that were harvesting before I got around to it. My ex-wife was having issues with squirrels in her attic (sounded like they were bowling up there) so my son stuffed handfuls of Python poop through the access holes the squirrels made and apparently they departed. Humans can't smell it and it is not water soluble so will last a typical NC gardening season. I would think any Zoo would be glad to get rid of it.

Anyway, good luck with your problem