If you've got pocket gophers....

[thistlemagnate]

> Mace Canute
> Anybody try using dry ice to asphyxiate them in their borrows?

Undoubtedly, though I hear more about using vehicle exhaust. People try just about everything you can imagine. Pushing various liquids and gasses into gopher runs is a fairly popular pastime, but those crafty critters are quite capable of quickly closing the tunnel with dirt and going on about their lives. Some people put in chewed up wads of bubble gum to choke up their little digestive system, and claim it works. Traps can work well if you know more about it than the gophers, but you have to make a career of it. Blowing up the tunnel network means newly arriving gophers have some work to do before they can settle in.

> California
> These mounds around the trees aren't from discing, the mounds are pushed up later by gophers....
> When I backhoe out a dead tree, much of the region that should be roots is gopher burrows instead....
> Something new last year was coyotes digging up gophers....

Wow. That's a beautiful orchard. I can understand why so many gophers want to hang out there. We have some newly planted fruit trees, I have dug around into the tunnels under some of them where the root ball was half chewed up. But didn't realize they could take out a mature tree.

>jlsmith
>Have any of you guys tried using a gophers machine. It runs threw the ground and puts ot poison. Thats what i use on my place.

It's hard to make a living as a farmer, and it would be hard to control gophers economically enough on a large scale without resorting to poison. But poison can also kill any predators to the gophers, such as owls, hawks, badgers, coyotes, puppy dogs, and rattlesnakes. We've got them all on the property and would like to keep it that way. Widespread commercial use of the various poisons is a big part of why we have a garden to grow our vegetables. There are handheld devices to inject a few bits of gopher bait into each tunnel, might take more time than a tractor but use far less.

>charlz
> At least one of the commercial units I looked at had triple flashback arrestors... no doubt much safer but also adds to the cost of the units.

I see flashback arrestors out there at about $50 for a set of two, I might consider investing next time I resort to propane. Propane is less volatile than acetylene, and I find it hard to imagine flashback pushing material back through 25' of rubber hose plus regulators. In normal operation those hoses and tanks have either pure oxygen or pure propane, and neither is flamable by itself. But this is not something I know much about, and an exploding tank would be absolutely catastrophic.

Here's a great little nugget from the dim past of this thread, followed by my rather geeky response:

>charlz 04-30-2007, 07:40 PM
> It is actually all about the oxygen, the mix you are shooting for is about 93% oxygen and the rest is propane.
> I got about 12 shots to a 40cuft bottle of oxygen. I did not do any kind of calculations, mainly just tried different amounts of each.

I'm not sure about that 93% figure, is that by volume? The wikipedia page on stochiometry says we want an air:fuel ratio of 24:1 by volume for propane. Since air is 21% oxygen by volume, the ratio becomes (24*.21):1 or 5.04:1 by volume for oxygenropane. That's 100*5.04/(5.04+1) = 83.4% oxygen by volume. It would be interesting to set the torch up to what I found to work well, then measure how long it takes to fill a toy balloon with oxygen. Then do it again for propane.

With oxygen being by far the biggest cost here, I wonder if an oxygen concentrator could be used instead of bottled oxygen?

 

[California]

With oxygen being by far the biggest cost here, I wonder if an oxygen concentrator could be used instead of bottled oxygen?

That got me thinking. :confused2:

I wonder if there is some other fuel available that would combust combined with the low-oxygen atmosphere already in the gopher tunnels. Maybe cut out the high cost of oxygen and spend the money on a different fuel? I'm thinking along the line of pouring gasoline or gas/diesel/nitrogen fertilizer in then igniting that. With a loong detonator cable!

Is there any such suitable fuel?

 

[thistlemagnate]

That got me thinking. :confused2:

I wonder if there is some other fuel available that would combust combined with the low-oxygen atmosphere already in the gopher tunnels. Maybe cut out the high cost of oxygen and spend the money on a different fuel? I'm thinking along the line of pouring gasoline or gas/diesel/nitrogen fertilizer in then igniting that. With a loong detonator cable!

Is there any such suitable fuel?

Pouring fuel in, I'd expect it to mostly soak into the dirt. And none of those things would get back into the tunnel system like propane+oxygen. With just propane+air you tend to get a whoosh rather than a BOOM. If you find something better let us know. But I think you're way past the point at which traps would be a workable solution.

 

[fbson395]

From year of killing those little @$#%^. I was shown by a pest control friend how to use poison. You have to put the poison in small paper bags. I used very thin paper and made like a tea bag size bags of poison. Then when you find the entrance push a metal rod about one foot away from the hole to find where the run is at. That is where you put your pouch of poison. They will chew it open and eat well. If you just put in the grain without being in the paper pouch they seldom find it. This system has worked very well. Happy Hunting!!

 

[charlz]

It's hard to make a living as a farmer, and it would be hard to control gophers economically enough on a large scale without resorting to poison. But poison can also kill any predators to the gophers, such as owls, hawks, badgers, coyotes, puppy dogs, and rattlesnakes. We've got them all on the property and would like to keep it that way. Widespread commercial use of the various poisons is a big part of why we have a garden to grow our vegetables. There are handheld devices to inject a few bits of gopher bait into each tunnel, might take more time than a tractor but use far less.

Here is such a device:

Bait Applicator -- Mole and Gopher - GEMPLER'S - Outdoor Work Supplies

This is what the county used the one time I had them come out. I am not sure if the poisoned gophers make it to the surface to spread the poison to other animals. I have on two occasions found dead gophers on the surface. It was before I had the county come out and they were in areas that made it look like they were in the process of moving in from a neighbors place but died en-route That may have been the result of poison, I don't know.

I see flashback arrestors out there at about $50 for a set of two, I might consider investing next time I resort to propane. Propane is less volatile than acetylene, and I find it hard to imagine flashback pushing material back through 25' of rubber hose plus regulators. In normal operation those hoses and tanks have either pure oxygen or pure propane, and neither is flamable by itself. But this is not something I know much about, and an exploding tank would be absolutely catastrophic.

Yeah my safety is disconnecting the torch before firing and only the short rubber hose has mixed gasses in it (and the burrow of course). I am sure the triple flashbacks are on the advice of a lawyer but safety is always a good thing.

I'm not sure about that 93% figure, is that by volume? The wikipedia page on stochiometry says we want an air:fuel ratio of 24:1 by volume for propane. Since air is 21% oxygen by volume, the ratio becomes (24*.21):1 or 5.04:1 by volume for oxygenropane. That's 100*5.04/(5.04+1) = 83.4% oxygen by volume. It would be interesting to set the torch up to what I found to work well, then measure how long it takes to fill a toy balloon with oxygen. Then do it again for propane.

I don't remember how I calculated it... I looked at gas rations for a good torch flame or something... but maybe my math was off? I have found the best results through experimentation. I have made marks on my torch knobs and I set the pressures the same every time.

 

[thistlemagnate]

Here is such a device:

Bait Applicator -- Mole and Gopher - GEMPLER'S - Outdoor Work Supplies

This is what the county used the one time I had them come out. I am not sure if the poisoned gophers make it to the surface to spread the poison to other animals. I have on two occasions found dead gophers on the surface. It was before I had the county come out and they were in areas that made it look like they were in the process of moving in from a neighbors place but died en-route That may have been the result of poison, I don't know.

Here's something on gopher control, not sure how accurate it is:
Guide To Using Gopher Poisons

They say the most common gopher poison is strychnine on grain, and that it is "not recommended for use in the vicinity of your vegetable garden or near fruit trees." Also, predators eating gophers poisoned by strychnine is an issue, zinc phosphide may be a better alternative.

I'm not totally opposed to the judicious use of poisons, say in a shipping container used for storage. But I'm not keen on pushing truckloads of strychnine into the dirt. And propane's a whole lot more fun.

 

[thistlemagnate]

A few more points. I check out connections to the igniter with an ohm-meter from the far end of the extension cord before wasting oxygen and propane. Best to work when the ground is wet, not only for fire danger but also seals the dirt up to where the explosions are noticeably more forceful. Would be cool to pressure test the hole first with a puff of air, pressure should go up indicating a seal, but pressurize rising too fast would indicate a blank run. Blows can range widely and inexplicably, from a quick pop to window shattering booms with a subsequent rain of dirt clods. Prepare for the worst.

 

[California]

... to window shattering booms with a subsequent rain of dirt clods.

A certain problem here (orchard) is coming into focus.

Whenever a tree dies and I backhoe out the stump, I always find beneath it a 'gopher palace' - a cubic foot or more cavity, probably a birthing nest, filled with soft straw and with deep gopher tunnels radiating out in multiple directions. I assume they survive there because discing can't disturb a nest beneath a tree. They also may have killed the tree by continually eating its fine roots.

At any rate - it occurred to me that with these cavities, using the propane explosion method might cause blowing my orchard trees clear out of the ground.

 

[daveshoot]

I think the rodenator looks like a lot of fun, but I doubt it's really effective in eliminating mass infestations. Aside from collateral damage to irrigation and wiring, there is usually only about 1 gopher per tunnel, not counting nests. They can swim through unpacked dirt and collapsing a tunnel is of no real value in preventing new tenants.

Sorry but if anyone thinks flares, exhaust, or gas is effective, watch how quickly a pocket gopher can backfill the tunnel at the first hint of trouble.

The absolute hands-down best is a weasel (see avatar). In about 3 months that guy massacred the gopher population down in the pasture, but sadly moved on, when the buffet thinned out. That was last year and I still have hardly any gophers down there to shoot. Once weasels run out of food they just migrate to the next infestation. I wish I knew how to attract them and they are utterly cool to watch. I do have some gopher snakes, but they didn't do a fraction of what that weasel accomplished one spring.

For me, the next best has been direct fire with very accurate airguns. I have killed a couple hundred this way. I could build a website around gopher shooting, and maybe I will, someday.

Trapping is my third and least effective method, but still does the job around the house. The Victor Black Box traps work very well. They are arguably less humane than a round through the head, and require some digging and practice to set correctly, but they work when I can't be around. Now and then you get a wary and educated one up close to the house that you just can't seem to lay crosshairs on (often ones that I've missed previously), and the trap does work 24/7.

Poisons done right at the right time of year might work well, but we have critters. Simply not an option here. Anyway, poison seems like such a coward's weapon, not unlike trapping; I like to look the enemy in the eye.

The satisfaction of blowing them up can't be discounted, but I don't think it's a good option for my situation. Now I look forward to hunting them, although they can sure make a mess of the lawn until their luck runs out.

 

[jhasafety1]

Couldn't go on till I took a shot, my question is how do you handle having the roadrunner making fun of you. Second are you using the same brand products as the coyote, wasn't it Acme? Just joking sounds like a blast, no pun intended/