Got rid of the Gopher.
 

I had had gophers in the past and have not had a lot of success.
This guy showed up in my front yard about a month ago.

What I did was ... a trip to the auto parts store and bought a hand full of road side
emergency flares.

The critter came up with a new mound and hole. I stuffed two flares in the hole. Covered it up and then I saw smoke coming out of another hole. I stuffed another flare in that hole, covered it up and watched.
The gopher tried to come up for air and I watched the dirt starting to bubble up about
15 feet from the flared insertion. My round nose shovel flinged the gopher up and I got the vermin with my shovel.

Not saying it is the solution but it worked for me.

When we were young we used to snare tons of them. String with hangman’s knot wrapped just a few inches in the whole and lay down and wait. They eventually pop up, and a quick pull and you have it, simple, but not as much fun as C4.

When I was a teenager we would go to my friends grandfathers farm. His grandfather had ground hogs eating the strawberries.
What my friend and cousin would do was fill one of the groundhog holes with water. Then one of them would be at the other hole waiting for the varmint to surface. When it did it would get harpooned with a pitchfork, then finished off with a shovel to the head. Burial would be back in it's hole.
If they got lazy they'd use a shotgun instead of the pitchfork/shovel.
Fun times in 1977

Had the opportunity to smoke them out and use .22 rifles one time, colored smoke bombs, had a military number on them, don't know where he got them. Purple groundhog majesty. It was some farmer friend of my uncle, cleared some fields, drank some iced tea. Dad asked me how much the farmer paid us, never occurred to us to ask.

My rottie was trenching the yard for them daily so as a survival technique, I trained her to hunt them with me like a game. I would run a hose and force all of the recently dug mound back into the hole to raise the water level as high as possible. This would force the gopher to dig a breather hole at the surface. Rottie girl would point when the gopher surfaced, I would hose the gopher in the face and out they would come. "Get Him!"... two quick death bites and it was done. Afterwards I told her what a good dog she was and always gave her a treat.

Several afternoons per week in the summer I would come home from work and she would be pointing at a fresh mound. She knew not to trench for them but was always excited for me to get the hose and start the gopher hunt. Over 10 years on that mini-ranch she must have gotten over 200 of them, along with several rabbits, squirrels, and maybe a curious cat or two that wandered over to get in on the gopher action. She was an over-achiever.

As kids, we used to sit on my Uncle Ralph's porch on his farm in PA, watching him pop woodchucks in one of his fields up the hill from his house, He had a old 30-40 Krag, it made a heck of noise! He could tell if he missed by the dust cloud that puffed up around the target critter.

I am currently dealing with this. The critter is loving my garden, but jersey law won't let me pop him. I haven't found the holes yet but the real point of my post is....I've started feeling bad about killing these buggers. Am I turning into a wuss?:confused::(

I think I'm at 10 on the year now at my dad's farm. I think last year between two farms my friend and I shot about 30. My wife hates this time of year.
BTW Tobra, I get $10 per. Funny how I'll sit watching for them for 20 minutes just to make $10 where if someone offered to pay me $10 for 20 minutes of my time I'd laugh at them.

I use old traps that my dad bought 40 years ago.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1564147892.JPG

If you can shoot from concealment, get a powerful air rifle and no one will be the wiser. I'd love to shoot pigeons in my yard with something more than an Airsoft pistol. But my backyard is surrounded by two story houses and neighbors can easily see in.

Why don't you cage them and make them pets? Oh, he died of exposure. Shame.

For 'gophers' nothing works better than a plastic gal milk jug filled with water.
Upon seeing one going into a hole...tip the full jug into the hole and let it empty.
Gophers always swim/climb toward the water flow to escape...which brings them right into the jug.
When you see and hear the scratching of his claws in the jug, tip it upright and cap it.

Jolly's pic is not a gopher...at least not like what we call a gopher.

I guess the full name of what we have is Pocket Gopher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher

I'm dealing with Moles now.. ugh..

This was long enough ago that my teenaged ass could buy the .22 LR myself.

I typically use my 22/250 with custom loads. If you figure my time in building test loads, then loading 100 of what my gun likes, then driving around and waiting on one to pop up, $10 doesn't really go that far. But man is it fun! My friend popped one at 375 steps (he had to pace it off because it was a good shot). I typically try to stay 250 yards or closer.

I just call Bill Murray and he sets some C4 in the holes. Then the gopher comes out of his hole to dance and I hit him with a golf club

I bought a product called "Gopher Gasser" that was supposed to kill them. You light the fuse, shove it down the hole and quickly fill in the hole. Smoke started coming out other holes so I tamped the dirt around those till the smoke stopped. A few minutes later I see the red cardboard tube coming up out of the ground followed by a very pissed off gopher. Did not work as advertised.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1564186691.jpg

I got moles. Help.

See a dermatologist.

For moles..a step-in trap is easy to set and very effective.
https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Set-Mole-Eliminator-Trap/dp/B0031TRZVY/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=step-in+mole+trap&qid=1564247357&s=gateway&sr=8-5

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1564246642.jpg

Black Hole traps. Plug the air hope with baby carrot.

Flares, gassing sticks, milk jugs, traps, carrots ...

where are the car guys here ?

RCO Mole and Gopher Patrol is the easiest and works fantastic.

Make sure there is no human contact to the mound, pellets and hole. Clear the dirt of the mounds and wait till you see the fresh ones. Attack the fresh ones. I use a long screw driver and punch a hole in the mound or run (don't touch the metal shaft), shake in 5-10 pellets and recover the hole. I had hundreds, now I'll get and occasional and wipe them out immediately.

c'mon folks....you know what he needs:

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or if you prefer the Bill Murry special edition:

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I've got one of these, use it mainly on ground squirrels in the orchard. I have to be very selective when I use it so the neighbors don't complain. Seems to work, at least it collapses the burrows.

Our beagle likes to kill the moles. Makes a mess of the yard. Gophers/ground squirrels we just shoot with a .22 or air rifle or the 1911, whatever is close. Sometimes we get the hose if we see them go in a hole, then the beagle gets them too.

In CA we put a hose on the truck and let it idle a while. Kept them away for about 4 months.