Overun by gophers

[897tgigvib]

Bob, since they are California Pocket Gophers, they are eating vegetation. Mine eat fruits especially, and even wait for it to ripen taking taste tests.

Gophers you have to hide the plants from their visual scanning for food. They are not blind. It may not be 20 20, but they find their food by sight, and seem good at spotting it. Meantime, the best hunting cats are healthy well fed cats. That is the truth. Unfed feral cats, except the lead cat of the colony, and perhaps her favorite mate, do most of the hunting, and eating. Underfed animals of any kind are poorer hunters. (Try going a few months on a near starvation diet and then go hunting while weighing 110 pounds.) The feral cats you are seeing may be the weakened members of their colony who depend on the leader.

Pocket Gophers are a tough one. A well trained Abyssinian female for lead, and her sister works best. A friend has some part Abyssinians, and zero gophers. 3 sisters and a half brother who is part Maine Coon. They take the dead varmints and drop them at their back door. Bleeyech! Like a gift for the human.

Gophers have been circling my garden. Beans don't seem to be on their diet, and I have the beans at most of the perimeter to hide what the gophers think are the goodies.

Gotta plan the defenses for next year.

Editted to remove the other possible varmints others were considering and to remove my awful tyop, swuirrel.

Gophers as I have experienced require a multi pronged defense.
Here are all the things I am doing, successfully.
They work along with keeping other varmints out.
I have defended my garden against side entrance by surface dwelling 4 footed things like deer and raccons, with chicken wire.
I have defended my garden against flying birds with a black netting top. It works, but the smallest finches can get in, and they are doing no harm. Hummingbirds can get in, and that I consider good, only hoping they don't hurt themselves.
I have carefully planned my planting to hide the things that gophers like with things they don't like. The way the sides are made also helps that.

There is one method I would like to use, but is against forest service's EPA regulations near the lake. They do not want too much iron in the soil from metals. I am not allowed to use GOPHER WIRE, which is similar to chicken wire but with smaller openings.

Gopher wire is laid on the ground entirely covering the base of all soils in the garden. You would still need at leat a 2 foot above ground perimeter fence that is unclimbable <<< ohhhph, how do you spell that??? whatever. Gophers are terrible at climbing. At least mine are.

Short of doing all this, there are exterminators who specialize in gophergitting. Google it. "Gopher Exterminator" or what words work for it. don't try googling gophergitter. that's my own blamed word fer it.

I am pretty sure a gophergitter will tell you they can come back, and may well suggest a beforehand preparation to help them not want to return, some of which I probably already suggested.

There. That's my best shot at helping. I have experience with gophers, and so far so good at keeping them out of my garden.

 

[Nyboy]

Get in touch with a company in your area that does pest removal. Let them know that you weclome any rat snakes they might need to rehome.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i lived across the street from my Dept of public works and my neighbor works for them, so dispatching them with a gun has been fine since they dispatch hurt animals all the time at the DPW. the sound is quite common, if not just a little disturbing after i found out that was what it was. so i got a have-a-heart trap to catch most of the woodchucks in my yard one summer. hubby took care of one, the neighbor took care of the pappa and one of the kids. i got the momma who was dumb enough to get caught in the fence around the garden. took her out with a garden hoe to the head. ouch! and number 5 must have saw his number coming and ran off!

if it's a woodchuck/gopher i would suggest figuring out what it is they are nibbling on and use some of that as bait and place the trap in it's pathway. i would seem to catch them after seeing them when i would get home from work and their paths through the yard were always the same.

 

[bobm]

Guys ... thes are NOT moles, voles, ground hogs, ground swuirrels, or chipmunks, or ninja turtles... these are your everyday ground tunneling, dwelling, mound bulldozing GOPHERS . We baught a former bank owned house within city limits. All grass lawns, shrubs, trees, flowers, etc. that were planted were all DEAD for a long time. Waist high weeds abounded. We killed, mained and destroyed these with machetes, hoes, our hands then rototilled 4 times to work in compost. Watered to sprout seeds, then rototilled again twice. I hand dug with a shovel a 140' long 1" deep x 3- 4' wide meandering like a snake dry creek bed and used the excavated dirt to make about 2 1/2' high various shaped hills. I baught 17 tons of 1-3" rock to line the "creek". I also baught 30 tons of 200- 800 lb ( 1'- 3' diameter) each boulders to go around these hills to form raised landscaping beds to mimick mountains and valley with a stream. I then dug planting holes 1' deep, 2' wide and lined them with 1/2' chicken wire , mixed in compost and planted 10 rhubarb, dwarf and normal sized 20 blueberry bushes, 10 Japanese maple trees, kinnikinick, ceonothus, ornamental Zebra grass, Japanese blood grass, and blue oat grass. Several dozen lavender. Foundation landscaping plants needed to be planted first with ediblee garden plants planned for next spring. NO lawn grass ! I daily hoed out any weed that dared to sprout all spring/ summmer. All progressed well as planned until this invation of GOPHERS.

 

[journey11]

Where do you live, Bob? We don't have gophers here, so I don't know...but maybe your county ag extension could give you some ideas.

 

[897tgigvib]

I e3ditted my post Bob. I hope it is helpful.

These laptop keyboards are so small for a normal man's fingers. That w and q sometimes both get mushed. Some little elves are designing things these days, little tiny designers with little skinny fingers, all worried about making a gadget weigh 4.1 pounds insatead of 12 pounds.

Now to take something for my blood pressure.

 

[bobm]

We just moved to SW Washington 10 mi. N of Vancouver, Wa. which is right accross the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. . Regarding the county Ag. dept... when I called a recording came on ... "due to budgetary cuts... leave a message and we will return your call as soon as we can" . Weeks later , I am still waiting. I asked a State U. of W. extention horticulturalist for best gopher dispatch info. None of his advise has worked. This morning 7 new mounds, 3 of which were in my "creek".

 

[thistlebloom]

I feel your pain Bob. We also lost hundreds of dollars worth of trees to gophers. My preferred method is a Macabee trap. Like you said, two of them placed opposite directions in the tunnel, then a piece of board placed over the top to exclude light. I attach baling twine on the traps and tie those to a stick shoved in the ground so I don't lose them.

Carrots make good bait. Rub a carrot all over the trap ( wear gloves when you handle the traps, gophers have good noses ) then place the carrot you used between the two traps. Check daily, and if you don't get anything, move the trap to a different part of the tunnel. You can find the tunnels with a probe. I use a length of skinny rebar.

I've caught many dozens of gophers this way, but honestly, the best success was two brother cats we got for our boys when they were little. Those cats were hunting machines! They were catching multiple gophers a day, every day for weeks.

I understand that that isn't an option for you, at least I think I recall that cats where you're at have an abbreviated life expectancy.

Forget gassing and flooding, they are just exercises in futility. Planting in gopher wire baskets (trees and shrubs) helps slow them down, but IMO traps are the most definite way to get rid of them.

 

[lesa]

Geez, another reason to love upstate NY! Thanks guys for letting me see how wonderful my area truly is!

 

[thistlebloom]

Geez, another reason to love upstate NY! Thanks guys for letting me see how wonderful my area truly is!

You're welcome Lesa!

Now we expect to hear no more complaints from you!!