Moles and molehills

[Fastball]

Just wondering if anyone has experience with moles and the damage they leave behind.
Our area has been hit with a plague of moles in the past year...and our properties are covered with their hills and holes. Frankly, it looks terrible. We致e done a host of things to try to curtail it, and I知 reduced to dumping rat poison pellets in their tunnel holes beside fresh piles of earth. Now it痴 springtime, and the pasture is full of dirt and holes. What does everyone else do? Back blade the earth to flatten them down? Box blade the ground even?
Cultivate?

 

[cphilip]

My wife can make a mountain out of em...

 

[bigdeano]

I have a 10' spike tooth harrow that I fold the spikes down and drag it around. Does a good job of knocking the hills down if I do it before the grass has grown up thru them. It's all I can do to keep the moles out of the lawn, the rest of the 5 acres of pasture has gotten pretty rough over the years.

 

[flingwing1969]

Totally not efficient but what I used to do was make a nice cup of coffee about sunup, pour it into an insulated go cup, grab my 12ga with #6, and wonder around watching the ground and enjoying the morning. When I'd see the ground heave - I'd put the muzzle 2" from the ground at that point and pull the trigger. Very satisfying but I don't think I made a huge dent in the population.

 

[Wagtail]

Have a look through the "Similar Threads" at the bottom of this page. As K7LN says, it's an annual subject for you in the Nthn Hemisphere.

No moles in Tassie, although we do have a Mole Creek... named because the stream pops up, then goes underground, then pops up again.

 

[marchanna]

Moles are antisocial, and apparently can produce up to a hundred feet of tunnel a day, so depending on the size of property, you might only have a couple to contend with. There’s a special poison you buy for them that actually dissolves into a gas and fils their tunnels with poison gas.

Most of my experience was with groundhogs. Their holes are huge; a serious hazard when you’re mowing long grass at a good clip.

 

[Tx Jim]

When I think of moles I remember the movie Caddy Shack. Try Googling Rodenator

 

[coralhead]

I run the cultipacker around to try and close up the surface tunnels. It does not get rid of them but the ground is rolled back down and it gives me some seat time.

 

[MossRoad]

Search TBN for "moles"...

Here's a link to The Mole Man's website.... TONS of great information!
Mole control, biology and trapping help, 1986, professional, author, tom schmidt | The Mole Man

The only practical way to control them is to trap them out. We live on 1.1 acre. I've killed well over 300 moles in about 6 years. So despite the claims that they are anti-social... I've killed 3 in the same tunnel in the same day. My guess is it was some sort of mole over-population we went through. After year 7, they decreased to only half a dozen per year for the past 8 years, or so.

Anyhow, my preferred trap is the Victor Out O Sight mole trap. You can pick them up for about $10 each. I have 6. They work well in any soil type, at any depth, and kill pretty consistantly.

Here's a tip if you decide to trap them. Don't trap the hills. It's futile. The hills are where they push the excess dirt up and out of their tunnels. The dirt pushing up will set off the traps well before the mole gets there. Use your heel, and press down the tunnels about every 10 feet or so. Check them the next day. The ones where your heel print gets pushed back up are the active tunnels. Place your traps on those tunnels.

Set traps on the preimiter of your area, and in the center. Once you trap out the center, you cant stop them at the perimeter if you are diligent.

Also, I know this sounds stupid, but a lot of people confuse mole hills with crayfish mounds. If the mound looks like a little volcano with a hole in the top, it's a crayfish mound, not a mole hill.

Good luck. Moles are industrious little critters.

 

[oosik]

We have pocket gophers. I've used traps and caught as many as 40 in one season. Does seem to help for a couple years. I have a home-made "drag" that I tow behind my ATV to level out the mounds. I see no permanent solution in my situation - its simply an on-going battle.