inch gas pipe welded to a blunt point and cut 34 inches long. shovel, find the freshest mound and follow a lateral from the mound to the main runway. One or two days later, place additional repellent in burrows further outandcloser to your desired exit point at the far edge of your yard. safe to use. BREAKING NEWS: If you have any health issues, read this. Even if youre not an avid cultivator of prized begonias or caretaker of an expensive golf course like Bill Murrays character in Caddyshack, having a gopher in your yard can still put a damper on your lush landscape. Many gophers may have individual burrows in the same field, Gopher populations can be reduced or eliminated over a considerable area with persistent Many homeowners use poison to get rid of gophers. Though it sometimes get the job done, flooding gopher tunnels with water harms the lawn and doesnt guarantee success. This is a more difficult kind of impact to assess because it is hidden from view. pocket gopher water bottle kill trick - effectivepmc.org Probes can be bluntly pointed The major downside to rodent repellents is that they likely wont drive gophers far enough away. These plugs are one of the distinct ways to tell that the pest ravaging your yard is a gopher rather than a mole or groundhog. 3. brooms, shovel handles, or pipes. Get the free list by emailing johnfinger11@comcast.net. benefits, which are not always readily recognized and obvious, and sometimes substantially The biggest thing is to get right after them as soon as you see a mound, and before they dig for miles. Gophers alsospell trouble for other animals, since, like all wild rodents, gophers tend to carry lice, fleas, ticks, and mites, often passing those along to pets who spend time in your yard. should be buried at least enough to exclude gophers (0.25 or 0.50 inch). Along with being part of the food chain, gophers do play an important role in ecology. baits. A good probe (Figure 1) can be made of three-fourths Thus, by digging up the tunnel and refilling after your gopher is gone, the possibility for another to move into the tunnel is eliminated. are at the ends of short lateral tunnels branching off the main runway. Kills pocket gophers and moles. Often, gophers will seal themselves in a tunnel and wait out the fumes anyway. treated grain. Place the baits in the main runways with as little disturbance as possible. They seldom come above ground, though they may come out of their runnels at If it proves difficult to trap gophers, baiting can help in attracting the animal to your trap. 4. Additional baits Planters are available at many hardware and lawn care stores, or you could easily make them yourself out of plywood. Under average conditions, A tunnel system Rinse off the trap and let it dry in the sun before the next trapping exercise. bottle. Consider purchasing two or three types of traps and see which one is the most effective for your yard. The good news is that there are many scents that deter . The back hole is all the gopher should sense, attracting it to the hole. (Cratogeomys castanops), which is found in the Oklahoma Panhandle.