At our last house I had a nice lawn and spent a lot of time battling those critters. I learned they can move very fast in tunnels, so if you see activity, by the time you react they may be 10' away. But occasionally I'd catch them in the act of digging a new tunnel, when they move slower and you know what direction they are going, and would come up behind them with a shovel and pop them out of the ground into a bucket. Other times, I'd stick a water hose down into the tunnel and they would tunnel up and out of the ground where I could catch them. They will stop moving with any bit of sound from above, so you have to be quiet for several minutes before you can spot activity.
At our new place, they are tunneling through parts of our yard, but I am not real concerned about it here. Although, it does tick me off when they tear up an area that wants to wash out -- I am sort of counting on the grass there to hold everything together. If that continues to be a problem I will have do do something. I don't want a prize lawn but I do need to keep it from washing out.
BTW, I had poor success with various traps at our old place -- they would trip them but never get caught or killed.
Honestly, that sounds pretty much the way I was. Nice lawn, but not a show lawn. The little critters weren't causing me and real problems, or so I thought, so I just let them go.... until they undermined our above ground swimming pool, the liner popped, and 12,500 gallons of water went rushing through our garage and out the other side in about 4 minutes!
Upon much refelection and actually looking around, they'd undermined not only my pool, but my sidewalks, shed foundation, and pretty much all the cracks across my asphalt driveway had mole tunnels under them. They have tunnels right next to and under every foundation of every structure on our place. House, shed, garages, pool, sidewalks, driveway, fence lines (I think they like fence lines because the tractor doesn't compact the soil under the fence), bird bath, etc...
So I started reading and started trapping. And got pretty darn good at it. I'm not happy that I've killed 300+ of these things. But something was out of whack, and significant, costly property damage is where I draw the line.
Here's what I've found....
Some traps are inhumane. They don't kill fast, may not kill at all, wound and injure and allow animals to escape wounded to go off and suffer, maybe never dying at all.
Nash Choker Loop Traps
I tried these and on many occasions I'd find live moles in the trap and would have to dispatch them with a shovel. Several times, the moles dug the traps out of the ground and dragged them across the yard while stuck in the trap. That's awful. The trap should be banned.
Spiked Plunger-type Traps
I tried these and I'd find them tripped, but never ever found a mole under them. I had to start wondering if the moles were getting speared, not dying, then digging themselves out and off the spikes and crawled off to suffer. I won't use these types of traps for that reason, and I'm kind of saddened that Victor and other companies continue to sell them.
Victor Out O Sight Mole Traps
These have been the most effective for me. They rarely miss, and I've only found maybe 2-3 moles in the trap that weren't dead out of the hundreds that were dead.
I won't use poisons. Most of them aren't effective at all, because moles eat meat. Worm meat, bug meat, etc... and poison isn't meat. The few poisons that get positive reviews are put in things that are supposed to mimic meat, like fake worms, and are based on anti-coagulants, and that means the blood won't clot, and the animal goes off to suffer a horrible death over a several hour to several day period.
I challenge anyone to feed an animal poison and sit there and watch it suffer in a glass box for several days. That's pretty sad. Poisons have their place for sure. Mole control isn't one of them.
Mole Chasers
Those electronic devices that you put in your lawn that emit a "sonic signal" that chases moles away.....
HAHAHAHAA!!!! I got three of them from my father-in-law who swore by them. A mole actually tunneled up to it, dug around it and if fell over! HAHAHAaaa!!!
My father-in-law had no moles not because of the sonic mole chasers, but because his soil was a sterile browning medium for grass. He's used so many weed, pest and insect controls on it, the soil is basically sterile and the only reason the grass grows is because he waters it and over-feeds it with fertilizers. To prove the point, I took a bulb planer and took core samples from his soil. I'd be lucky to find one or two small bugs in a sample. No worms. No grubs. No bugs. None. And no moles.
So there you go. That's what I've found.
- Trap out the moles near your structures.
- Trap them back to your personal perimiter, the place where you feel they won't cause you great monetary loss.
- Once they are gone, walk your perimiters once a week and trap any active tunnels you find as soon as you find them and you'll keep them under control.
- Choose a method of control that is effective and not cruel.
