Marmot Infestation

[MossRoad]

It has been a year since my last post about our marmot infestation. I was optimistic things were going to be better after trapping 155 of the critters last year; 37 out of a single barn door. It was a cold wet spring and I didn’t see many of the critters until a week or so ago. Then they were everywhere.

I got out my traps and went to work 5 days ago: in that time I have trapped an additional 12 marmots, 10 of them out of the same barn door. That makes 167 total in a little under two years, with 47 from a single barn door. It really is a bit mind-boggling.

I don’t know if this post is an update for those of you who are interested, or a statement of hopelessness. It looks like the only option is to keep doing what I am doing. Reminds me of the saying I heard somewhere: Only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expects a different outcome.

As I mentioned before, it reminds me of our mole infestation. Over 50 per year on 1 acre for 6-7 years, then they finally stopped. Now just a few.

But perhaps, as others have mentioned, if you trap out your marmots in a small area, there are going to be more waiting to move in.

 

[M59]

I moved onto a few acres in eastern Washington two years ago (moved from western WA—those who know will understand). We are located on a rocky shelf with a columnar basalt cliff rising maybe 50 feet in my front, and another basalt cliff 400 feet to my back, dropping off maybe 100 feet. There is a very thin layer of cultivatable soil, supplemented with trucked in dirt to actually grow things. To give you an idea of the thin soil, I have to pile rocks around the t-posts to hold up the chicken yard fence. There is a small orchard with cherry, apple, and plum trees, a berry patch with 120 feet of thornless raspberries, and a fairly large garden. I’ve got a few chickens for eggs, and am thinking about adding a few more animals eventually.

The foregoing is a lead into the actual problem. Yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris) are an absolute infestation in the area. Also known as woodchucks, groundhogs, and whistle pigs in other parts of the country, these critters occupy nearly every cavity, crack and hole in the rocky landscape, and they relish my cultivated vegetation. The neighbors up the road, down the road, and up the cliff have all given up and signed a formal surrender.

I started out shooting the offenders, but quickly saw that my thin soil will not support a mass marmot graveyard, so I began live-trapping them, and hauling the catch off a few miles to a nature preserve. In the past year we have relocated 72. I have three traps in operation all the time, but haven’t seen a decline in the visible population. We have tried different baits, from green beans to cantaloupes, but find apple cores to be the perfect lure.

I thought about eating them, after all they are just big ground squirrels, and I grew up eating squirrels. 72 varmints at 10 lbs average comes out to 720 lbs, or a dressed weight of half that. But I can’t bring myself to put them on a plate. Marmots can be a source of several diseases, including bubonic plague, and are a banned meat in some locales.

So what else shall I do with this bountiful harvest? I don’t expect to surrender my little plot of ground to them, but I don’t know what I will do with an annual crop of 6 dozen. Fortunately, the nature preserve is several hundred acres of rocky basalt, so should be able to support additional residents, but I am just moving my problem elsewhere.

Does anybody have any suggestions, short of skinning them and selling the pelts, or eating them? Right now, the only thing I can see to do is make transporting marmots my retirement hobby.

I know, I know, this is a tractor forum. One day I can talk tractors, but right now this tops the list. Thanks for your help.

RockWrangler,

I am laughing too hard to type a response to your infestation. Having spent considerable time in Bellevue and the surrounding mountains I know exactly what you are faced with. They seem to infest every nook and cranny and their damn fast when they want to be.

I suggest a poured concrete pad over your entire property and fake grass on top.

 

[jyoutz]

Build a fence around your garden and place wire mesh about 18” into the ground around the base of the fence. Be happy that the fenced in area is your territory.

 

[M59]

RockRangler,

Now that I have stopped laughing at your description of marmots running rampant in your garden, I took the time to read some more entries.

If your still interested in a pellet gun, I use the following on my chipmunk & squirrel population. Very effective at 800+ fps with 22 caliber pellet and much lower noise than 22 LR at a reasonable price. I have had this for more than 10 years and thousands of pellets with no reliability issues.

Benjamin Trail NP .22 XL Air Rifle Review : Break Barrel

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I recently became aware of the following for rodent control. Contrapest doc attached.
Contrapest recently arrived on market and is aimed at mice and rats but might work on marmots. It is birth control for both male and female rodents. Might give you some breathing room by controlling how rapidly they repopulate while you trap and remove. I presume any marmots on neighboring properties who decided to spend a randy night at a lady marmot's den on your property can have all the fun they want but no new little ones to contend with.

Hope this helps

 

[MossRoad]

Looks like you don’t have many options other than make the place less attractive to marmots. Yikes.

Population threats​

There are currently no significant threats to Yellow-bellied marmots. Some people consider them a pest, but human hunting does not affect the stability of populations. However, habitat destruction and pollution are always a threat.

 

[MossRoad]

Might want to look into a Cairn Terrier (Like Toto). They were bred for that job. Go into the cairns (rocks) and flush out badgers and foxes for the big dogs to kill. If they’re fierce enough to flush badgers, marmot teeth and claws would not be as big of a concern.

We had one back in the 80s-90s. Tenacious little dog. Smart as heck. Easily trained. Good in the house. Great with kids and cats. Loved to chase small animals like rabbits, possums, raccoons, etc. Typical terrier. Neat coat of double fur takes a little special grooming. Protects them from rain.

Maybe a Cairn or two harassing the marmots all day would make the area undesirable for them and they’d move along.

Also, they are great car/truck dogs, and small enough to take when you travel, as you mentioned.

 

[Rockbadchild]

my suggestion is to get two dogs … and problems solve.

as a kid we had groundhog everywhere and my dad got a black Lab, she got bit pretty bad on the first encounter then she went on a mission to exterminate them and she succeeded then moved on to the muskrats she had trouble with them but then we got a other black lab and they started to work together to get the muskrats again with great success.

 

[RockWrangler]

I guess I get my entertainment in unusual ways. I happened to look out the front window this morning and saw a FedEx truck parked up at the road and the driver walking down my driveway with a package in his arms. He suddenly stopped and turned toward my side yard. When I opened the front door, he looked over at me and said, “It sounds like a couple geese fighting over there.”

He didn’t look like he was going to continue walking to me, so I walked to him, explaining that we don’t get many, if any, geese up on this rocky shelf. I went to the fence to see what the ruckus was about, and he followed.

There, under the plum tree, a couple of the biggest boar marmots I have ever seen were growling out the strangest sounds I have yet heard from the creatures. It wasn’t exactly a roar, but it wasn’t a squeak or whistle like you usually hear. They reminded me of a couple of sumo wrestlers, as they bashed belly-to-belly and tooth-to-tooth, in a bare knuckle contest over my orchard or some hidden female.

I told the driver it was marmots, not geese, making all that noise. I pointed to the basalt cliff 100 feet away across the road, and said they come down to my little oasis to recreate and procreate. He replied, “I didn’t know they had beavers up here.”

By this time the marmots noticed us a few feet away and one of them took off while the other fatso turned toward us in a position of challenge. I repeated to the driver that these are marmots, not beavers. From his quizzical look, I could see he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I said: groundhogs, whistle pigs. He nodded and said, “I’m from Bakersfield, CA. We don’t have those there.”

We reminisced a bit about my time in the High Desert in CA, and he went on his way. Now I am wondering whether CA would like some of my marmots. Anyway …

 

[Powereng]

Hunting woodchucks has to be one of my favorite hunting activities. My neighbors are large cabbage and pepper farmers. They start the plants in their greenhouses, then transfer the young plants to their field. Woodchucks will will go right down the rows and gorge themselves on the newly planted plants. I have a 1 acre yard, but have free rein over their hundreds of acres to shoot woodchucks. They love me for it. There is a large dump about 5 miles away that has attracted turkey vultures over the years. Any woodchuck I shoot I just leave and the vultures will have it cleaned up by the next day.

 

[the old grind]

Powereng, please share some nomenclature on your 'harvesting' device, model, caliber, optic, etc. Asking for a friend.

 

[Powereng]

Powereng, please share some nomenclature on your 'harvesting' device, model, caliber, optic, etc. Asking for a friend.

CZ-527 in HS precision stock, Par-Nor heavy profile barrel in 223, shooting hand loaded 55gr V-max's around 2900 fps. Glass is Bushnell Elite-Tactical, suppressor is SilencerCo. It's a heavy pig to stalk with, but a complete freaking laser.

 

[RockWrangler]

I am hoping this will be my last post about trapping marmots, although by this time I have a strange fascination with the whole process. I started trapping the varmints about a month into my second year on this property in eastern Washington State. By the end of the season last year (they hibernate from around October to May) I had trapped 155 marmots, 37 from the same barn door.

I didn’t see as many this May as usual and thought maybe I had stemmed the tide. Then suddenly there were marmots everywhere. I began trapping in earnest again and within three weeks caught another 20, 15 from the same barn door. That makes 175 marmots to date, 52 from the same barn door. But I haven’t caught a single critter in the past week; in fact, when I see a marmot it is usually on neighboring property.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic thinking I may be getting ahead of the tide. It is a rare event when I see a marmot munching in my yard or garden or berry patch. I know they will continue to move onto my green bit of paradise from the rocky cliffs and hollows all around me, but for now my traps are empty and the birds are having a field day raiding the apple peels and cores without triggering the traps. Life is good.

 

[MossRoad]

Congrats! That’s similar to my mole infestation. Went on for 6-7 years, then POOF! Nothing. I now trap the perimeter at first sign. No problems for about 10 years.

However, tonight I trapped a groundhog under my front porch (Marmot). Cute little bugger that ate my potted flowers off of my front porch steps. I hazed him/her for about 10 minutes by chasing him around in the cage while yelling at it. I’m sure the neighbors were concerned for my mental well being. Then I took it to the back of the property and let it go. It promptly ran into a ground hog hole that I did not know was there!

Good luck and best wishes.

 

[RockWrangler]

Congrats! That’s similar to my mole infestation. Went on for 6-7 years, then POOF! Nothing. I now trap the perimeter at first sign. No problems for about 10 years.

However, tonight I trapped a groundhog under my front porch (Marmot). Cute little bugger that ate my potted flowers off of my front porch steps. I hazed him/her for about 10 minutes by chasing him around in the cage while yelling at it. I’m sure the neighbors were concerned for my mental well being. Then I took it to the back of the property and let it go. It promptly ran into a ground hog hole that I did not know was there!

Good luck and best wishes.

Thanks. I haven't tried yelling at the critters, but it is probably satisfying. I am enjoying the break from daily dumping trips, and just refreshing the trap bait each day. A neighbor across the road remarked that he hasn't seen as many marmots this year. I like to think it is because of my efforts. On the other hand, the neighbor up the cliff is complaining they are everywhere, chewing car wiring, tunneling under the garage. Not only does he have a basalt cliff in front, but another basalt rise immediately in back, plenty of den locations. No doubt his tribe will one day come looking for new territory.

 

[ponytug]

So there is hope for the rest of us? Yay!

I was checking/emptying the ground squirrel traps this evening and found one had tripped with nothing in it which is a rare event. After I picked up the trap, and was resetting it a few feet away, I noticed the rattler that had probably tripped the trap as it was slowly slipping into a ground squirrel hole. A Mohave/Mojave green rattlesnake. Not my favorite.

I have mixed feelings on that one. On the one hand I am glad to see underground predation of the ground squirrels, but on the other hand we have young calves around at the moment. Mohave green rattlesnake have a particularly deadly nerve toxin in addition to the usual haemotoxins. I think the adult human lethal dose is said to be in the 10-15mg range. I had to let this one go. I am not quick enough to get rattlesnakes by hand.

I knew a guy who was an ace at being able to grab a rattlesnake from the tail and snap it in a way that broke its neck. He had the slowest hand eye reflexes; I never understood how he learned the trick without being badly bitten. I need a tool.

All the best,

Peter

 

[RockWrangler]

So there is hope for the rest of us? Yay!

I was checking/emptying the ground squirrel traps this evening and found one had tripped with nothing in it which is a rare event. After I picked up the trap, and was resetting it a few feet away, I noticed the rattler that had probably tripped the trap as it was slowly slipping into a ground squirrel hole. A Mohave/Mojave green rattlesnake. Not my favorite.

I have mixed feelings on that one. On the one hand I am glad to see underground predation of the ground squirrels, but on the other hand we have young calves around at the moment. Mohave green rattlesnake have a particularly deadly nerve toxin in addition to the usual haemotoxins. I think the adult human lethal dose is said to be in the 10-15mg range. I had to let this one go. I am not quick enough to get rattlesnakes by hand.

I knew a guy who was an ace at being able to grab a rattlesnake from the tail and snap it in a way that broke its neck. He had the slowest hand eye reflexes; I never understood how he learned the trick without being badly bitten. I need a tool.

All the best,

Peter

Rattlesnakes! No thanks, I’ll just leave them to their business. No grabbing them by the tail for me. We do have them in this area, the western rattler, but I haven’t encountered any yet. When my wife and I first visited WA State in 1974 we were camping our way across country from Illinois, living out of my ’66 VW Westphalia. We drove I-90 through Spokane during the World’s Fair and finally stopped after dark at a rest stop near Sprague, WA. We woke up early the next morning, and as we stepped out of the van, the morning sunlight was shining on a white sign with bold black letters: BEWARE OF RATTLESNAKES. Did we beware? Yup.

I grew up in northern Illinois and was always in the woods, fields and river bottoms, but never saw a rattler, even though there are timber rattlers in the area. When we moved to western Washington, we discovered there are no venomous snakes on that side of the State. I was a scout leader for many years and always had a bunch of boys in the woods or on the lakes and rivers, but never gave a thought to snakes, or problem-insects for that matter. Now that I live on the snake side of the State, particularly considering my rocky terrain, I’ll have to start paying attention. Snakes and ticks: something else to watch out for.

 

[Torvy]

When we moved to western Washington, we discovered there are no venomous snakes on that side of the State.

South Dakota has a similar phenomenon. East River SD has no venomous snakes. West River SD has prairie rattlers. It makes the news when a rattler hitches a ride east.

 

[RockWrangler]

South Dakota has a similar phenomenon. East River SD has no venomous snakes. West River SD has prairie rattlers. It makes the news when a rattler hitches a ride east.

South Dakota is one of my favorite states, been through there north to south and east to west many times, but never heard of the east vs. west side rattlesnake difference. I suppose that is not something folks talk about with visitors. I just Googled it and discovered the Missouri river is the dividing line. Just plain interesting.

In WA State’s case, the Cascade Mountains are the dividing line between venomous and non-venomous snakes. I guess they can’t climb mountains. Western WA does have a lot of garter snakes, and in my attempts to show the scouts they are safe, I have been chomped on repeatedly. It feels like being poked by a bunch of little needles.

 

[Torvy]

South Dakota is one of my favorite states, been through there north to south and east to west many times, but never heard of the east vs. west side rattlesnake difference. I suppose that is not something folks talk about with visitors. I just Googled it and discovered the Missouri river is the dividing line. Just plain interesting.

In WA State’s case, the Cascade Mountains are the dividing line between venomous and non-venomous snakes. I guess they can’t climb mountains. Western WA does have a lot of garter snakes, and in my attempts to show the scouts they are safe, I have been chomped on repeatedly. It feels like being poked by a bunch of little needles.

Locals don't say Eastern or Western much. Usually just East River and West River. The Dakotas would have made more sense split East and West. East is farmland and fairly flat. West is hills and mountains and filled with ranches.

I've had family in Everett for my whole life. Nieces and Nephews in Seattle area. 4 went to school in Spokane. We will be up in Cle Elum in October for a wedding.

 

[RockWrangler]

Locals don't say Eastern or Western much. Usually just East River and West River. The Dakotas would have made more sense split East and West. East is farmland and fairly flat. West is hills and mountains and filled with ranches.

I've had family in Everett for my whole life. Nieces and Nephews in Seattle area. 4 went to school in Spokane. We will be up in Cle Elum in October for a wedding.

WA State is another state that should have been divided north to south, along the Cascade Mountains. It is mostly dry on the east side. Columbia River irrigation makes for productive ranches, orchards and vineyards. The west side is wet and cooler, even a temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. Seattle and the greater Puget Sound area have the population and run the state, pretty much making any political opinions on the east side unimportant and unconsidered. Wasn't that way when I moved to the state in 1974. Part of the political shift along the entire west coast.