Gopher Control Strategies You Might Want to Try

Don’t let a gopher’s cute exterior fool and disarm you. A gopher may look adorable but it can cause serious damage on your property. As it tunnels beneath your yard, it can leave a trail of debris while destroying crops and other plants on your landscape. In fact, this small mammal has been a bane to many gardeners.

In order to fine-tune your gopher control efforts, it is worthwhile to understand a few of its habits. For one, this small animal needs to dig and burrow as a means of traveling from one location to another while searching for food. This simply means that whatever method you choose to eliminate this animal from your yard, you have to pay attention to the areas where it burrows.

Gopher Repellents

If you are planning to use a gopher repellent, know that you will find little success with most of the products that you can currently find in the market, including predator urine. Rather than wasting your hard-earned money on a solution that rarely works, you might want to make your own gopher repellent concoction composed of garlic, castor bean and other items. The best place to put the repellent is just inside the openings of a burrow.

Gopher Traps

If you want to find greater success in eliminating gophers from your property, you might want to consider using traps, including live, snap and pincer-style traps. You can either simply trap the gophers on your property and relocate these or kill these animals. Whatever trap you intend to use, it is a good idea to use two of the kind of trap you choose. This will ensure that you have a higher chance of catching the gophers. Place the traps by the opening of an active burrow, with one trap facing inwards and the other facing outwards.

Poisons – Is It Safe?

The use of poisons is another popular way to eliminate gophers from a property. However, there are several variables that affect their efficacy. You have to make sure that the poison you use targets gophers and not other animals. You also have to be careful when handling and storing chemicals.

You can prevent poisoning birds and other animals by placing the poisoned bait deep into an active burrow, deep enough to make it inaccessible to other creatures.
If you have found little success from using any of these trapping and elimination methods, consider outsourcing this crucial task to the pest control professionals.