Nanadoll,
I am jealous!
kay

I dunno. I only ever saw one badger in my life, and he was scary. I admit he was confined, which might have made him madder than usual, but my first impression wasn't so good that I would actually want one....:-))))))

Susan

I investigate the first hole. There's usually a tunnel going two ways. One trap goes in facing one way, one trap goes in facing the other way (back-to-back). The first hole is usually the main tunnel, and the gopher is going back and forth in that tunnel. They are either at one end or the other. So the back-to-back traps get them. After they establish their tunnel network they can avoid the traps, so that's why it's important to get right at them as soon as soil disturbance occurs.

It is important to never touch the traps with your hands. I use a fresh pair of disposable nitrile gloves to handle and store them in a clean bag or under the eves of the house in the open air.

Thanks, Hoovb. I need to hone my gopher getting skills. My traps have definitely been handled (my helper has never believed me when I've told him not to handle them with his bare hands....a a r g h), so I think I'll haul them in and sterilize them and then start fresh.

I also have several of the cinch ones coming this week...

I AM going to get those bleeping gophers !!!!

I've handled mine and it didn't seem to make a difference. Actually I recommend using leather gloves to protect your hands when setting them. I had one snap on my thumb because I wasn't careful enough. It left me with a huge bruise for days.

Remember, the cinch traps are not baited traps that lures the gopher. They are booby traps that get the gopher when he is trying to close a tunnel and block out the light. The lure is the light.

" --that lure the gopher", not lures. Sorry folks, I edited that sentence to make more sense and didn't remember to take the S off. I hate it when I do that.

Dontcha just hate that?
Dontcha just wish we could edit our own posts?
Egg is not my favorite shade of make-up.....:-))))

Susan

Rosefolly !!!! I can't believe I totally missed your message from Friday about the cinch trap guy at Love Apple Farm. and then I got really excited to see that they were on Vine Hill Road which is just spitting distance from me, but....boo hoooooooo That Vine Hill Road is in Santa Cruz which is farther south of San Francisco than the 50 miles I am north of SF.

Thanks for thinking of me, but I think that's more driving than I'm gonna do. I will, however, go back and watch the video.....:-)))))

Susan

The gopher story takes a new turn. After removing five gophers, I haven't seen any more of their characteristic mounds of dirt. However, I am seeing lots of new holes. I studied them carefully and looked it up -- now I have voles! It seems that voles will often move in and take over abandoned gopher runs. So now I need to learn a new method of trapping.

Sigh.

I'd like to say, "I feel your pain", but I have come to realize that it's always something. My dream rose garden has been restricted to my back yard because of the deer. Now that I have caged the roses out from that Mrs J planted, the dang deer are eating everything else they can find ! More plants to move.

Like Mendicino rose, I don't have gophers, moles or voles. All of which are smarter than I am. I am sweating and fighting to dig rose holes in glacier slurry. They are wise enough to know that is HARD work, so they don't tunnel in glacier slurry.

I tell myself as I am laboring to create a big rose hole, that I am creating something beautiful. I say it over and over while I dig and dig.

I have decide to take a season off from digging in rock to work on the rest of the garden and maintenance. Gardening is supposed to be fun, and it is most of the time.

I am totally convinced, Susan, that if you didn't have gophers to fight, there would be some other problem to deal with to create the garden of your dreams. I think is all a part of the process.

Smiles,
Lyn

Cast of characters:

Beauregarde - 7 year old, 10# "Deer head" Chihuahua with bad eye sight.
Paddy - 7 year old, 6# Toy Fox Terrier
Gopher

This happened about two weeks ago...

I've battled a gopher by the front curb for five weeks. I've done everything I've always done to get rid of him, including every poison on the market. Nothing has worked. This weekend, I ordered the Cinch Trap from Oregon as the videos show it the easiest to use.
Late last night, I took the Toy Fox Terrier and the Chihuahua out to do their bedtime business. The Terrier acted very oddly, butt straight in the air and both front feet frantically drumming the ground. The Chihuahua, who has bad eyesight, tip toed around strangely. I tried to see what was wrong because the Terrier doesn't growl, but she was. I suddenly noticed something running along the base of the retaining wall toward Beau, the Chihuahua. It was the bloody gopher! He was down in the entry court and out of the ground! Beau and the gopher ran square into each other, knocking the gopher over and shooting Beau straight into the air as if he'd been shot out of a canon!
The gopher turned and began running toward me. The path is a bit over three feet wide between the smaller retaining wall and the front of the house. The only thing I could do was stomp him and it worked! Beau screamed, hit the ground, flew to the door and rammed it open to get inside. Paddy, the Terrier began barking as if she was going to eat somebody and was REALLY interested in the convulsing gopher. While I hollered at her "NO!", I ran to get the poop scooper to pick up the gopher and toss it into the large trash can I have to the side of the house before it could get away. The gopher was quickly dispatched. Paddy had refused to go into the terraces to do her business but went as soon as the gopher had been moved. Beau came back outside and was tip toeing as if he was truly grossed by the whole experience. I've never seen him as twisted as he was, trying his best NOT to come face to face with that awful thing again! Even this morning, he is tenderly tip toeing around front, making sure nothing is going to run into his face! I fear It's given him a complex. I can't stop laughing at the image of him twisted into a pretzel, tip toeing down the front walk, making sure he wasn't coming face to face with that thing again.
At 3 this afternoon, my gopher traps arrived!
Beau still steps gingerly out the front door and turns to make sure I am right behind him. He continues to cautiously walk down that walk, where he has done his business multiple times daily for about seven years. I guess to him, that danged gopher was the equivalent to a bear! Poor little guy. Paddy continues to hunt the thing. I guess she can still smell him there, though it was a clean kill, no mess to it at all. Yes, I have put his carcass back into his tunnels, as well as every cigarette butt, all the dog poop and the four cat box liners I was holding to put out on the back hill in hopes of diverting Purina (the danged rabbit)from the garden area. I'll continue washing that "stuff" into the now empty tunnels because I'm never digging out there! Kim

Rosefolly, go to the post on skinks. There's a link to an excellent video on how to catch voles using mouse traps from Wal-Mart

Here's another video on catching voles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9cFspBjb-U

I tried this method and all I have to show for it are a lot of dirty rusty old traps and some very nice long nails.

Lyn, you are right. It's always something. Today it's the 27 degree weather after weeks of spring bringing out all of the beautiful new growth. A A A C K.

Gophers, moles, voles, weather.....Last year I considered paving it all over, but decided instead to just fight harder, and this year (if we survive this cold snap) it is going to be the most glorious display of roses I have ever had !!! I've converted all of my efforts to building, planting in, and replanting in gopher baskets.

Susan

Susan..........

That's why I am taking a year off from digging rose holes in rock ! I ran out of determination, but it will be back .. next year.

Don't worry about the cold snap. It was 15 degrees here this morning and it's predicted to be colder tonight. The roses are fine. I don't have any die back. Of course, I haven't pruned, yet, and it's been too cold for new growth ... and too cold for me to even think of working outside, so I am just enjoying the break. I'll be working too hard soon enough.

Just keep reminding yourself that you are creating a beautiful garden to enjoy .. it's the only way I know to keep working as hard as you have been working this year.

Kim ... your story is a hoot ! I do wonder if I would have stomped the thing, tho'. I would probably have levitated and run inside before I opened the door and smashed right into it ! The dogs would have had to fend for themselves !

This morning a flock of robins feasted in the garden. Both my cat, Scamp, and I watched as they ate all of the berries and the few rose hips that had survived the winter months. It was a time of bliss for me ... then I had to go inside to do chores.

It is always something. 'o)

Smiles,
Lyn

Oh, Lyn, when you've experienced what they've done to my roses over the past nearly thirty years, you'd be surprised what you will do! LOL! The danged thing's body was nearly the size of Paddy's and poor little Beau! He was terrified, and he's such a loving little guy. I couldn't leave them to do this battle by themselves! Kim

Kim... I understand completely, but I really don't think I would have had a working brain in that moment and would have just freaked out as badly as they did !

I felt the same way when Scamp brough me a bably rattler to admire. YIKES ! What was I thinking ????

Yeah, I saved my cat and myself, but was totally surprised that I pulled it off.

Smiles,
Lyn

i had moles like crazy but now have a gopher . I put the victor easy set wire trap in the hole and left it open . the gopher within minutes came by and tripped the trap and filled in his hole . I had also put a piece of juicy fruit gum in to entice him along . He took the gum .
I again put in the trap . this time I dug a hole further back and down to his tunnel . placed in the trap and the gum and covered it up good so the light was coming from a foot away from the original hole . He tripped the trap took my gum and buried his hole again .
this time I put 3 sticks of gum . Melted them in the microwave . Added in a spoon full of that mouse poison that comes in the green granules in the paper pack after grinding them up. We will see what happens . I will go out tomorrow and open up his hole and see if he is alive to bury it again .

On another front . the moles took a lot of this stuff and canned cat food with poison in it . I still have some so maybe they are saving it for winter time when food is scarce . The juicy fruit alone got rid of most of them one time .

Aha, a resurrection of my old thread, and what an opportune time. I of course have only survived the gophers by putting everything into gopher baskets. It won't be long before there isn't even any space between the baskets covering my 1/2 acre.

On the other hand, there is still a large area of the back part of the property where the gophers still roam and chew, where roses were planted that have not yet been dug and replanted, and now.....I am going to have it all trenched for a new leach line, and the only upside of that is that I can't wait to grind up as many gophers as will do me the favor of getting in the way of the back hoe !!!! I'm spending the next few days red-tagging roses that will have to be dug up to avoid the trencher, cutting them back to nubs, figuring out how to avoid some of them, etc. It's not fun and it's not cheap, and sometimes being a landowner makes me grind my teeth....but then again at least maybe I'll get a windfall of dead gophers....

When talking to my sister yesterday she reminded me of a ditty we used to sing -- maybe on the camp bus? -- that went something like "Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, greasy grimy gopher guts, greasy grimy gopher guts...."

Bring 'em on !!!!

"...greasy grimy gopher guts floated in mulligan stew." Sung to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare". Sorry folks. My older cousin taught me those resounding words that I still remember 55 years later. Our badger, or his/her descendents, is still at work, and there is no sign of a gopher out here in the desert hills. I'm knocking furiously on wood right now. Diane

I used to live with my sisters in Connecticut next to a cop. We saw a gopher digging a tunnel in our garden, so we asked the cop for help. The macho man came over with his load of July firecrackers. He kept throwing them into the hole blowing up dirt with loud explosions. The cop was having a blast, but the gopher was scared to death.

We never saw a gopher after that.

In case anyone else is getting snips and snippets of the song stuck in their head, relief is just a click away

Here is a link that might be useful: Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts at Wikipedia

And I forgot my spoon!

Gopher Goo!! No kidding, this stuff is great . . . it fills in the tunnels and burrows by using expanding starch material that actually feeds and repairs the plants while it fills up the left over holes and evicts the nasty gopher. If he gets bold and moves it around he gets sticky and then REALLY unhappy . . . when he does come out, and I have seen this myself, he is so freaked out he just runs off (usually with a dog or cat in hot pursuit at our house). Its natural and easy and nothing can move into the burrow because its now full. The gopher guru that you speak of from Gophers Limited likes it and sells it or you can get it at their website. Got a gopher? Go for Goo!! : )

Here is a link that might be useful: Gopher Goo

Gopher Goo sounds interesting, and I'll keep it mind, just in case our resident badger, or one of his descendants, takes leave of the gully in back of our house. So far, no gopher problems in years. Diane

"Great green Gobs of . . . "

I just told DH about Gopher Goo. He's excited!

Jeri

I wonder what it would do for voles? Kim

Sounds like it would work for most any burrowing rodent, Kim. Now if they could just find something for squirrels and rabbits I'd be all set!

Hand grenades? I WANT to try them! Think of it, "self fertilizing"! Kim

That was funny, Kim! Grenades work better than the firecrackers that the cop dropped on the gopher.

I would love to use grenades on the rodents but it would blow up the roses too!

Easier than shovel pruning and you're left with all those gorgeous, new planting holes, already fertilized! Kim

If you want to get all "Terminator" on the little buggers, there is an outfit in Idaho that makes the "Rodenator!". I'm not kidding. Leave it to rural America ingenuity. This is the nuclear option.

http://www.rodenator.com/

That's "way cool", but I'm still much more attracted to either grenades or dynamite. I'm not that attracted to the stink of KFC. hehehe Kim

I've seen the video of the Rodenator.
No t'anks!

BUT DH just ordered some Gopher Goo, and we're gonna give it a try.
What I'm thinking is -- You know, you kill a gopher, and a NEW gopher will move right in to those lovely digs. :-(

But if the deserted manse is unavailabe, thanks to Gopher Goo, you're WAY ahead.

It's bad enough that the deserted orchard down the road is growing prickly cucumber, Russian Thistle, Brazilian Pepper Trees, Crown Vetch, et al ...

I really resent this. :-(
So, anything that will slow down the d*mned gophers has MY vote!

Jeri

oh dear, because the ice-age sort of nixed much of our native flora and fauna, I used to feel a bit miffed when other people had such diverse life around them - here in Cambridge, the only animal life tends to be feral cats and insects. Yep, moles get a few gardeners going - not me though as I have zero lawns but it seems that there is something to be thankful for. As for badgers, our govt. is about to embark on yet another useless culling (bovine TB) despite all the results stating what a dismal failure this method has been in the past. It is hard, as I have been brought up to treasure living things but I have to say, the treasuring part fails very badly when another lily-beetle is unceremoniously squashed. Chopping gophers with loppers sounds a tad too grisly for me - they remind me too much of hamsters, the pets most beloved of my youth. Still, i guess i could harden my heart quicksmart if the chomping was so extreme.

Once you've lost a few roses to them, Campanula, you don't find them cute.
However, the biggest problem with them is that in large numbers, they actually destabilize the ground, increasing flooding/soil-collapse problems.
Nope. Not cute.

(That said, I don't think I could lopper one.)

Jeri

I found a humane way to deter gopher: stuff Irish Spring Soap down the hole. It's not as exciting as blowing up the critter into bits, but it's less blood and gore. Here's the info:

Posted by debbysunshine san diego (My Page) on Mon, Jun 9, 08 at 15:58

I did this when we first moved into this house with a true Ca. cutting garden and all the rabbits and raccoons gathered everyday to eat my plants all the way to the ground...Had some old small clay pots laying around, turned them over and placed a bar of Irish Spring Soap on each. The next morning I had lost bars, some had teeth marks, one was in little pieces around the garden but I've since located all the missing bars. But in over a month have had no animals in my gardens... Try the soap which is supposed to be the stongest odor so animals think people are present. The soap smell really good. I get a multi pack pretty cheap at Big Lots.. "

I may try that soap thing for my rabbit problem, Strawberry. The dang things chew up everything around here! Roses, bulbs (escept for daffs), perennials, anything green gets mowed to the ground through winter and early spring. Once it's warm enough and there's a lot of green stuff around I have much less of a problem but it's getting anything to make it that long that's the hard part. I've used that critter spray before with some success, but come on now! It rains all spring and you have to be out there like 24/7 with the stuff for it to do any good. And it stinks to high heaven!

I am convinced that there are only three effective ways to keep gophers from eating your plants. Those three are barriers, poison, and trapping. A good gopher dog would be a fourth, but my dog manages only one gopher every two or three years. She's a herder, not a hunter. I'm not willing to use poison, because if you do, you risk killing on up the food chain. My gopher problem would be far worse if a predator caught a sick gopher and ended up dying from the poison. I do have partners out there -- gopher snakes, owls, even perhaps a coyote or bobcat now and then. I'm not willing to risk my partners.

So I plant valued plants in wire cages (or occasionally nursery pots). Ephemerals take their chances and often live out their full life expectancy before they catch the attention of a gopher. And today with a sigh I got out my traps and set back to work. Winter is gophers' busy season, and also their season of reproduction, so I expect to be working on this project for the next couple of months.

The entire line of hills here is over-run with gophers. Eradicating them from our property is not possible.

If I go down to the untended orchard remnant down the Lane, the land is so pockmarked with gopher holes that it's difficult to walk on. (That's not the ONLY problem with that property, but Invasive Plants are another issue.)

Like Folly, we will not use poison. Traps have only been marginally effective. Our dogs ARE mad to hunt them, and they DO catch a few a year, but their efforts leave the ground looking like the aftemath of a WWI foxhole battlefield.

So, barriers are the only reasonable choice, and we use both nursery squats and wire, depending upon the area, and the rose.

SOMEONE in the area is using poison. I've now found, down by the old orchard, two dead ringnecked doves, one rat, and one gopher. My neighbor found another gopher. We need to find and speak with the poisoner, before they kill hawks or owls, or the neighborhood cats.

Jeri

One gopher down. Returned to the soil from which he (or she) came.

Perhaps someone else suggested this and I didn't spot it in this long thread, but in order to control moles and voles, you can increase the predator population by adding owl boxes to trees. You can find plans on the internet for making them, and you can also adapt a jumbo-sized cat litter box for the purpose. Use the kind with a snap-on cover and drill holes in the bottom.

apparently, there is some little bulb from Sweden supposedly used to deter borrowing beasties. Dunno myself. Am thoroughly in agreement with not using poisons though as even here, in our very urban environment, thrushes and other songbirds have been adversely affected by rampant use of slug pellets. A rock and a hard place, indeed.

Spider Lily, we bought a barn owl box and put it up. Gophers are probably the favorite prey of barn owls, and they feed heavily on them. A nest of barn owls can quickly reduce gopher population and keep it low.

No barn owl ever came to live in it. After a few months I realized why. That haunting owl call I frequently hear at night is a great horned owl, and great horned owls eat barn owls. Now a great horned owl will eat a gopher now and then (and they probably do), but they much prefer to eat barn owls.

Natural solutions are often complicated. If they were easy, everyone would use them.

Rosefolly

We have many hawks out back, and I have witnessed a lot of dramatic hunts in my back yard--you have never seen songbirds and quail take off so fast as when a hawk is about to dive bomb them. Little birds fly straight into rose bushes at lightening speed to take cover, and hawks will dive into huge spruce trees, as I watch, only to shoot out a few feet from my face as I move closer to witness the commotion. The coyotes, the osprey, and the hawks, I'm sure, take out lots of gophers, but it was our badger that pretty much ended the gophers' fun time in Diane's garden. Bless his mean little face. Diane

I just caught my second gopher of this trapping season, two in one week. Hurray! I suspect that there are about three more. Each gopher claims a large hunting ground, and they hate each other almost as much as we hate them. My garden is about an acre fenced, with another acre and a half of field beyond the fence. I let the gophers have at it out there. Too much to manage.

I've been out smoothing down old mounds so that I will be able to tell the new ones as they are created. The hard parts will be beds that are heavy mulched. I'm pretty sure there is a gopher active in my Front Garden. At first I blamed my dog, who likes to bury stolen socks in the garden, but then I found the entrance tunnel under the fence. Sigh.

Rosefolly

Hmmm...maybe if they made gopher birth control instead of poison it would work better?

We do have some hawks in the area. I've had them in my back yard and they're amazing to watch. But I don't think they take rabbits, drat!

We just had another coyote sighting (yes, in the burbs of Detroit we have coyotes!) last week. It got someone's pet and there was a big uproar. Personally, while I don't want to see anyone's pet get hurt, I'm rooting for the coyotes. Maybe they'll take care of the wrascally wabbits!

We just filled up a burrow with Gopher Goo and flushed out a great big Granddaddy gopher in about 15 minutes time. It was so easy! We just got out our bucket of Gopher Goo, mixed it up with water until it was about like applesauce and poured it into the hole. We let it sit to plug the exits and then used the hose for a few minutes to get it down deep and make him come out or drown in the hole. In just a few minutes he came out all sticky and pissed off. Finally we get to be the ones laughing! We also gave some to our neighbor so they could use it too since our gophers are coming from them and they use it with the traps to push them toward them . . . Gotta love the Gopher Goo!

Here is a link that might be useful: Gopher Goo

I use a very effective gas called "Giant Destroyer" and it is a god-send. They look like sticks of dynamite, come in 4 packs and can be found in any box store garden section. You light the fuse, stick it in the hole, and quickly cover it up - ensuring no gas is coming out of the ground anywhere and vwalah - the end. I've been using them for years to keep the horse pastures free of deadly holes. I just started using them in the garden this year as it became overrun with gophers. Had 5 different areas with gopher tunnels underneath rose/flower beds. One Giant Destroyer in a fresh hole leading to each tunnel and ... right now, all is quiet.

I love animals and it doesn't make me feel good to kill these guys. But - I also love my flowers and horses...

Hawks don't kill many gophers, because hawks hunt in the day and gophers rarely come to the surface during daylight (though I have seen them up briefly once or twice). That is why owls are the main predator for gophers. They hunt when gophers are most likely to be above ground. Of course gopher snakes will happily go after them underground, but a gopher snake doesn't eat very frequently.

I have often thought what a pity it is that gophers don't eat exclusively poison oak and poison ivy, just as pandas eat exclusively certain kinds of bamboo. It that were the case, we would welcome them with happy hearts.

Rosefolly