Moles, voles, gophers???

7mmMag

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Can anyone tell me what this is from? And how to take care of the situation? We bought an empty lot and I want to maintain the grass while we are working on getting a house built on it but I don't want to be mowing over these mounds. There are a bunch of them so I'm curious what the best method of eradicating the problem vermin would be.
dirt..jpg
dirt.jpg
 


Brian Renville

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Pocket gopher, hate them. Get the poison for them, when you see those find the hole and scoop out a spot so you can get the poison in there. They will fix the hole you made overnight. You'll find one or two dead when you mow later.
 
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riverview

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hate them tried to trap them and just ended up with buried traps.
 

sl1000794

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40 years ago when we lived in Victoria, TX I got rid of gophers by hooking the exhaust pipe from my riding mower up with a length of old radiator hose and putting the hose down a gopher hole and packing dirt around the hose. Started the mower and let it run for 30 minutes, pushed the dirt into all of the other gopher holes and ... no more gopher problems.
 


Davey Crockett

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I see some nice black dirt. I carry a flat shovel and a 5 gallon pail and sometimes harvest the nice dirt from the mounds. I've tried trapping with little luck. Our house cat has dug holes and wait for them a couple of times and has caught one that I know of . If I wanted to go full Rambo on em I'd probably do it with with carbon monoxide .
 

Davey Crockett

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Haha 3 posts with the same timestamp . That has to be an NDA record.

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Tika, I have one like that , I set it and they had it half buried the next day. I've set in the tunnel and then put a sheet of glass (what the old timers said to use) over it and cover with dirt. 9 times out of 10 they bury the trap. I put poison down and the next day they had dug and threw the pellets back outside the tunnel.
 

Yoby

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I have mole/voles, striped gophers and badgers. Not to mention my dog digging to get the moles/voles. Filled in some 10 holes a couple days ago from the dog. My wife has called me a true redneck for mowing the lawn with the shot gun. I have shot striped gophers and mice while mowing the lawn. I have tried hooking up a hose to the push mower and letting it run. Seemed to help for about a month and then nothing. Now I am telling the wife that I need to till all 3 acres to get rid of the bastards. I am about to blow them sky high like the guy in the video.

Needless to say I am following this thread.

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I should add, though not serious, I have threatened the dog (Vizsla) for digging the holes. He has killed everything he comes across in the wild. Mice, cats, pheasants, rabbits, skunks, and raccoons. He has scared everything off in the 3 years we have been here except the mice and moles/voles.
 

Dirty

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You need scissor traps. Use them like you see on YouTube. It’s game over for the gophers. I’ve killed hundreds that way.
 


Davey Crockett

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All in a small area Dirty ?

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From what I see here with the mounds I think there is a big colony .

Yoby , we have all sorts of critters too . I was working in the garage one night and a skunk comes in . I was petrified at first but he sniffed around and went on his merry way. He isn't really bothering me so I'm not sure if I should shoot him for trespassing or not. I keep thinking His tribe was here first.
 

Dirty

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All in and around our food plots (they love weeds like clover) ...so yes, a fairly small area of a few acres. When some move in, I place the traps and in a matter of a day...maybe two, they are all dead. Mostly this is in the spring and the fall.
Some years are worse than others but they are pretty easy to eliminate with these things. The trap shown up the page in post #7 is actually for moles. It will not be effective with pocket gophers. The ones I use are the Victor Pincher trap. I buy mine at TSC but I'm sure they have them in many places. You use two per tunnel and make sure you have them staked down or your trap will disappear with your caught gopher.

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You'd be surprised...one male gopher can run 200 yards of tunnels. You can tell a male from a female by the mound arrangement too. Males run pretty much a straight line of mounds. Females run tunnels with more branches and give the appearance of several runs when in reality it is still one gopher, or one gopher and her young. I've trapped six out of one run before but it was a mamma and all of her babies.

The bad thing is, once you trap them all out it often doesn't take long for another gopher to move it to a set of vacant tunnels that go through a good food source. I've heard that they can decrease the yield on an alfalfa crop by more than 10% because they absolutely love alfalfa. If you are living anywhere near an alfalfa crop you can pretty much always expect a fresh supply of wandering gophers to come your way.
 

Prairie Doggin'

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My in-laws scrape the dirt off to find the hole. Pound in a metal fence post to stake down the trap, then cover the hole w/cardboard and pile the dirt back on. Check the next morning (grab the post and it will tell you if you got one because it's clinking against the pole). Uncover hole and let the dog have breakfast.:)
 

1bigfokker

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The trick with scissor traps is to tie two together with heavy string so they face opposite directions in the tunnel and cover to keep the light out. You don't know which way the pocket gopher is. Use a probe to find tunnel between mounds.
 

1lessdog

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I trapped them when I was 10 yrs old. The neighbor gave me 50 cents for everyone I trapped. Take a screw driver and locate the tunnel, dig the hole out deep enough so the trap is flush with the bottom of tunnel. Set the trap, I used #1 jump traps. I used a shingle for a cover and piled dirt on top of it. The next morning I would have them.
 


RNinND

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I've discovered that in areas I've sprayed with 2-4D/dicamba, these dirt piles stop. Must be a repellent.
 

Up Y'oars

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Yes, you need to get them EARLY on or they will make double and triple amount of mounds later on. I hate it when neighbors don't do crap about them and then they grow and expand, add to the population, and move further onto my own property. These moles (pocket gophers) are a PAIN IN THE ARSE! I had less issues with them last summer but then the vole population exploded.

For the voles, I bought a new contraption that the voles can maneuver into some PVC and eat some poisoned food that dogs/cats cannot get to. I'll see this year if that helps wipe out the vole and striped gopher population in the tree rows.
 

7mmMag

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All in and around our food plots (they love weeds like clover) ...so yes, a fairly small area of a few acres. When some move in, I place the traps and in a matter of a day...maybe two, they are all dead. Mostly this is in the spring and the fall.
Some years are worse than others but they are pretty easy to eliminate with these things. The trap shown up the page in post #7 is actually for moles. It will not be effective with pocket gophers. The ones I use are the Victor Pincher trap. I buy mine at TSC but I'm sure they have them in many places. You use two per tunnel and make sure you have them staked down or your trap will disappear with your caught gopher.

- - - Updated - - -

You'd be surprised...one male gopher can run 200 yards of tunnels. You can tell a male from a female by the mound arrangement too. Males run pretty much a straight line of mounds. Females run tunnels with more branches and give the appearance of several runs when in reality it is still one gopher, or one gopher and her young. I've trapped six out of one run before but it was a mamma and all of her babies.

The bad thing is, once you trap them all out it often doesn't take long for another gopher to move it to a set of vacant tunnels that go through a good food source. I've heard that they can decrease the yield on an alfalfa crop by more than 10% because they absolutely love alfalfa. If you are living anywhere near an alfalfa crop you can pretty much always expect a fresh supply of wandering gophers to come your way.

Oh thats awesome, this lot had alfalfa planted in it last year.

So do you guys dig out the mound and put the trap in the tunnel there or do you find the tunnel between mounds and put it there?
 

Dirty

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Do it like post #14. The only difference with how I do it is I have each Trap separately tied to about two feet of heavy string. I place each trap the opposite way from the other in the tunnel, laid nice and flat and almost ready to spring. I use a little spike or whatever to steak down each string above ground, cover the open area with wood or a shingle or whatever will prevent light from entering. Then check it in a couple hours. You have to set the traps correctly or you won’t catch anything. It isn’t tricky but it can be done wrong.

find the tunnel between the mounds, you want to be trapping the main run, not a little side tunnel.
check YouTube. There are lots of videos that are very precise and accurate.
 
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1lessdog

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Go in between the mounds. I would put traps between ever mound. I never staked a trap down as I always caught them in the body never the legs.

You do want your pan tension to be light as they have no weight to them. To heavy of tension and they cover up your trap so it doesn't go off.
 


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