j_martin

I gotta kill these durned things. So far I've lost 3 prized apple trees, and now have figured out what's wrong with one of the maples in the yard as it's dying trying to put on leaves.

I've used TomCat bait. One shot seems to make that hill go inactive, so I thought I was getting them. Turns out the tunnels are still there, and they are still active, they just don't push the dirt up where I can see it. Last attempt the bait was pushed out of the hill and discarded, along with an asbestos note.

I'm thinking home made gopher blaster. Gas bar mixes propane and oxygen at 1:5 ratio and injects it. Remote controlled igniter already in place is then triggered from a safe distance, eliminating the helmet and mask, shrug of the fragging routine.

Varmintgetter had a radio controlled igniter, but junked the design in favor of a more rugged wired one.

Any red necks here have experience with this sort of pyrotechnics.

6.7L MegaCab

Flood them out and start plinking them...kind of like the gopher game at a pizza joint...except more violent...or pack a steel tube with gun powder and sugar (not giving exact details ) and place one in each hole with a fuse running to a main fuse, light it and kick back and watch the fireworks...and craters.

Another idea, go with what you said, but put a cork in some or all holes but one, inject propane and as you said light it from a distance - not sure how well that would work though with plugging some holes

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jstone44720

Drive your truck into the yard, and put a hose on the exhaust down the gopher hole. Let the truck idle. Drink a beer. Put the truck back in the driveway. That was recommended to me as an effective solution by a local exterminator for areas that don't like firearms.

patdaly

LOL, Just make sure it isn't your diesel........... Might give them blacklung, but not enough CO to do the trick.

Gassers work well though.

chaikwa

Just set a Hav-A-Hart trap. They'll go in it. They're stoopid. No bait needed, just place it at the edge of one of their holes. Occasionally you'll get a smarter one that will go around it. In that case just make a 'spill-way' using cinder blocks or old pieces of lumber so they HAVE to go into the trap to get into or out of the hole.

I just got one this morning that way. Dang thing moved into my log pile that hasn't even been there 2 weeks yet. His next move would have been under a barn, I'm sure. And that's why our barns all sag. When I first moved here, I must've trapped 40 of the stoopid things that were burrowing under the barns. Today's is the first I've seen in about 8 years. We played 'Titanic' for a few minutes and now he's coyote food.

jstone44720

Since my truck gets stuck in the flat bits of my yard, I was planning on using some larger heater hose and the mower, but the idea of fogging the little gremlins with a few raps of the throttle sounds so much better.

Lary Ellis (Top)

Be careful with the exploding gas idea...the tunnels can travel in all directions and at further intervals than one might imagine.

I have a cousin that was tired of the ground hog burrowing in his field so he poured some gas down the hole and tossed in a match....the resulting fire popped up all over the field in places he never imagined and it was a real hoot watching him trying to contain it for about 30 minutes

I know that Gophers are not quite as rambunctious as whistle pigs but the basics are the same and you don't want to ignite a gas mixture only to find out one of the escape tunnels is under the wife's brand new lounge chair

j_martin

The idea of the explosive mixture if gasses is to accomplish 2 things.
1. Kill the critter with concussion.
2. Collapse the tunnel so any newcomers have to rebuild.

The problem I have is the whole place seems to be like a big gopher condo, and newcomers just have to redecorate and move in.

The water idea would work except this place has way too much long grass, brush, windbreaks, and other assorted cover for that to work. I have a 30 GPM garden irrigation pump that might flood them out quick enough to prevent escape. What ya think?

One problem is that they may have burrowed under the wood shed. Fire there could be a big problem.

Flash bang under missus occupied lawn chair?......hmmmmm..

chaikwa

So NOW the truth comes out as to how your mountain is shorter now than when you moved there.

Sooooo... the trap idea is too simple? Or not excitin' enough?

j_martin

See item #2.
If the tunnels are not destroyed, Others move in soon. You don't see them because they don't have to do any excavating, thus no mounds. That's how I've lost so many trees. Thought I had em under control.

Lary Ellis (Top)

Trust me....it is no where near as much fun as it sounds......

If you knew my wife you would understand how that could be considered one of the top 10 dangerous things in the world

Lary Ellis (Top)

What you could consider is hiring a few of these .....

LongBlackRam

I tried this technique along with closing off the other holes and it works. I ran it considerably longer than a beer tho..

6cylinders

I use these for moles, works great, usually I drop 2 down a hole, cover
it with a brick or something heavy, have a couple extra bricks for when
smoke starts coming out of other holes. I only have to do it once
per hole, no more Mr. Mole, only drawback is you don't get to see the body I'm curious what it would do to a gopher, maybe flush
him out,,keep the gun handy

http://www.doityourselfpest.com/inde...pack-of-4.html

trksrfun

We used to use the flood them then plink them trick... Its how I learned to shoot when I was younger. Another thing we used to do requires smoke bombs, plug all the holes but the 2 farthest apart you can find. Toss a smoke bomb in 1 then cover it and wait at the other one with a baseball bat.. Not a fast solution but entertaining to say the least.