#3 7/1
Here's a tutorial I wrote:
I always hear people lamenting how bad the gophers are and how they are ruining their yards. Well, do something about it! It's not hard at all, and you don't have to pay some pest guy $100 to come out and kill one gopher. The guy across the street is a landscaper and he catches gophers for his regular clients. Someone told him that they paid $1700 for a 3 month contract to eradicate gophers on some properties he owns. So, after 3 months, he'll have to start all over again because new gophers will show up again anyway. For $25, you can get a couple of traps, spend a little bit of time setting them properly, and get rid of them quickly yourself. Here's how:
First, find out where the gophers are. They are most active in the morning, so grab your cup of coffee and head out to look for fresh mounds.
You can see where a couple of the holes are still open; if you come up on the mounds while they are working, they'll ditch back in the tunnel and wait until you leave, then they'll plug up the hole. You don't want to set the trap in one of those holes; the mounds are where they push out the dirt from their burrows. The burrows are where they actually live, and the tunnels for the mounds are side branches to the main burrow. You need to find the main burrow.
Using a metal rod, you poke around to the sides of the mound until you feel an area where the rod goes in a several inches, then suddenly drops down a couple of inches. You can see here where I have marked off a straight length of burrow between a stick and the metal spike I use to probe:
So, you will open up that area:
I've circled the areas where the burrow heads off in each direction; you want to set the traps so that no matter which direction the gopher comes from, there's a trap waiting.
Here are some better angles on the tunnel openings on each end of the hole I dug:
You want to make sure the tunnels are nice and clear and the bottom of the hole is level with the bottom of the tunnels, so the traps will sit level with the bottom of the tunnels.
OK Here's the trap (The hole in the back plays an important role later):
These are the Victor BlackBox
TM traps. This is the inside:
Here's the trap set, with a little bit of peanut butter at the back (smooth or crunchy, it's your choice):
Now, you set the traps so that they are right up against the tunnels, making sure that the bottom of the trap is level with the bottom of the tunnel; one facing in each direction:
Fill in around the top and side of the trap, blocking out all the light around the sides of the trap. Now is where the hole in the back of the trap comes into play; you want that hole to remain open; that little bit of light is going to draw the gopher in because they want to keep the burrow sealed up. The little bit of peanut butter is an added attractant. The instinct to seal up the burrow, combined with the scent of the peanut butter, overrides any instinct they have to avoid danger - they just can't resist both urges.
Traps are set.
Grab your coffee and head out the next morning to check. Oh, what's this? The trap has been sprung!
Let's take a look:
Uh oh, this little bugger is having a bad day:
After opening the trap and dumping out the gopher, you can see that it has a nice slimming effect on the waistline:
This will make a nice snack for one of the neighborhood cats or a passing coyote.
There you have it. How to quickly and easily trap gophers, without paying a fortune to some guy to come out and drop some poison pellets into the burrow, which may or may not work. By trapping them, you know you are getting results.
