Pocket Gopher Tip

[RedEye669]

This spring I finally got enough traps set early enough that I pretty much stopped the pocket gopher onslaught in its tracks, to the point that most of my traps have been sitting idle because there's no new activity to target. The exceptions have been two extremely trap-smart gophers that were driving me nuts. Normally when a gopher buries the traps I get him in round 2 after re-positioning them, but these two gophers were getting the best of me no matter what I did. Not only were they burying the traps, they were burying them so thoroughly they were setting them off and then packing them so tight I had to dig them out with a shovel.

What finally worked was switching to a different kind of trap. Most of my traps are the round "black hole" style, but I have one pair of the square "black box" style as well. I switched the round traps out for the square ones and both problem gophers were caught first try. I can't say for sure that the square traps are more effective, or if it was just that they were less familiar, or even that they smelled a bit different. But switching traps was effective.

 

[oosik]

I got lazy this year and slacked off on my trapping. There's an area in my yard that looks like a war zone. I use the traps with the two wire jaws that clamp down on the little buggers. They work pretty well but there is alway a couple gophers that get smart and learn how to pack them in.

Right now my emphasis is catching the chipmunks that like to build grass nests in my vehicle engine compartments.

I will have to add additional traps of a different style to my gopher arsenal.