Gopher mount leveling.

[rangerfredbob]

I laid two identical pallets upside down and used my chain with two slip hooks and hooked the front top board together of both pallets and drag that around with my lawn mower, works great for leveling...

as for taking care of the pocket gophers a 20ga shotgun and persistence worked very well with some Cinch traps to assist, I got like 25 gophers last year and one this year...

 

[WranglerX]

These are pretty effective, but you have to be persistent... It's a Macabee....

 

[jwmorris]

I made this little drag out of 6 catwalk steps, throw the chain over the ball on a 4 wheeler and send the kids out to find them.

It works better than the harrows I have.

 

[MarshSt]

I pull this behind my rider before I mow to knock down all of the mole hills. The cutting edge is just slightly above the wheel contact diameter so it spreads the dirt and rocks out over a small area without tearing up the grass and I rarely catch anything with the mower blades. I built it out of stuff laying around the shop, about 42" wide, the cross tube is filled with steel rems so it's heavy and the cutting edge is welded up from rebar.
I tried a trailing front mount at first so I could do it all in one shot but the geometry was tough and it wanted to dig in and drop anchor, not fun!

 

[UncleW]

I got a 16’ piece of 5’ wide cattle panel and bent the last foot of it around a piece of railroad rail. Added a chain to the front and dragged it behind the tractor 3 point. Found out I didnt need all 16 feet, so I cut it down to 6 feet so I could turn it at the end of the row. Being able to lift it at the end of the row with the 3 point makes it much easier to turn

 

[NoSmoke]

Thanks all for the replies. I ended up with simply a 4 ft length of scrap 3 inch angle iron, with two outside edges pointing down, along with a wood "sled" attached behind to keep the angle from flipping over. Also added about 30 lbs of weight for better scraping force. My small electric quad can pull the thing and it works well (it bounces just enough to allow the accumulated dirt to escape underneath to spread it around). Simple, no cost and it works!

 

[MTGreen]

If a slow death to vermin is too hard to swallow, how about something quick?

Eliminate all of your burrowing pests, vermin and rodent problems | Rodenator

rodenator.eu

I want one

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

First you need to kill them. This time of year they move a lot. I've hunted a few myself. Poison and traps. I prefer traps because I like to have proof of the kill.

 

[rScotty]

I dunno, I've been manually raking the mounds for years and the problem ebbs and flows but hasn't really gotten much worse. I've found if the dug up loam is spread around the grass grows back through it quickly so the overall area with bare ground stays fairly small. The biggest problem is the undisturbed mounts make mowing a rough job and look crappy.


Maybe it depends on climate and specific species of gopher(?). But, I understand the problem - it would be better if there were a more humane way of dealing with it (an animal dying of strychnine poisoning is something I won't deal with).

I feel the same way, hating what the gophers do when they move in, but not enough to kill them for it.
And certainly not enough to poison my land in revenge or whatever.

The problem varies a lot. A few gophers one year sometimes means more the next - but just as often they will just go away for years. There are years we have a lot of foxes and it is always nice to see them doing well. Maybe that's the balance.
rScotty

 

[NoSmoke]

I feel the same way, hating what the gophers do when they move in, but not enough to kill them for it.
And certainly not enough to poison my land in revenge or whatever.

The problem varies a lot. A few gophers one year sometimes means more the next - but just as often they will just go away for years. There are years we have a lot of foxes and it is always nice to see them doing well. Maybe that's the balance.
rScotty

Well said. Declaring war on nature, even if it's just "vermin" is not one of humankind's better attributes.