Hey redpepper,

I've been thinking about your crafty menace all day, but your message shows that you've been thinking about him a lot longer. It sounds as though you have already studied the online literature, and actually, your progress with these beasties is the best I've read about.

After coming up empty with one of the newly trapped tunnels, do you block it or cave it in, so that your gopher can't later use it as an alternate escape? At some point he has to tire of digging new trails and exits. I guess it becomes a contest of Who will weary Whom, first.

Have you tried the Juicy Fruit trick? I figure that it is not so much that the smell chases them away, but that it warns them that you have "been" in the tunnel (remember, people say one must always chew the gum before putting it
in each tunnel).

One other thought--sort of a long shot, depending on how you feel about a second critter: If you could get your hands on a harmless (to you) snake or two (a nice king snake), you might be able to coax it to go hunting down the gopher hole. Of course, you would have to remove the traps, until the snake comes out again....

Perhaps others will kindly add their thoughts and ideas. I surely hope you can get rid of your pest before he holes up for the winter--or she goes off to dig a nursery!

Sweetcicely

Thanks for your posting Sweetcicely!

I do close the hole on the tunnels after I remove an empty trap. I set traps 2 days ago and it has been raining here for the past 2 days and I have not yet checked them do to the muddy yard. I have not done a complete inspection of my yard to see if there are any new mounds.

I read that gophers prefer alfalfa, so I think what I will do the next time I set traps is to place some alfalfa hay behind the traps in an attempt to entice them to run through the tunnels where the traps are.

I guess I should look on the bright side in that I trapped so many gophers this past summer, but it is hard to do after seeing all these new mounds form.

It just occurred to me that maybe you might have two different types of animals. Moles usually dig two kinds of tunnels, deep ones for traveling, and shallow (the ones you see) just for searching out worms, grubs and insects; they don't usually use these tunnels twice.

You may have elminated the gophers and all you have left are moles.

But one other thing to try is to put some cat poop and/or clumped urine down the holes. This should be a definite predator warning. My friend chased all her moles into the neighbor's pasture.

Sue

I periodically wage long term wars with the gophers. I also find that there are a few that take longer to trap, often because there are so many tunnels in some areas that they don't return to the ones I have put traps in. Persistence has paid off in the long term, however. Besides traps, I occasionally use gopher gassers in some areas with a particularly persistant critter. The advantage of the gassers is that they can kill the gopher, or at least help point out other tunnels without mounds near by that I missed. (The gassers put out a lot of smoke in the tunnels; I look for where the smoke is coming out of the ground.) Keep up the trapping. I find that in New Mexico, the gopher is the bigest garden pest we have.
Renais

Like moles gophers are one of those wee animals that occupy an inordintate amount of time and energy, as well as money, of many gardeners. Gums are not effective as a control of either one, the smell has no afffect on them and ingesting the gum, if they even will, will not clog their digestive system anymore than it would yours. Gasing might be effective of done just right, but the gases that need to be used are so hazardous that it is not something you should do without a lot of special training in the products and their use. The use of repellants containing Naphthalene, a class 1 carcinogen, are not effective and should not be considered since that use is prohibited, for very good reason by federal law.
The single most effective, and most expensive, control measure is a tight mesh fence fabric buried at least 18 inches deep and placed in a reverse L in the ground around where you want to keep the wee buggers out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gophers