I know this thread's a bit old, but I just signed up for the forum and I've got a really great tip for y'all.
This won't work for hornets (the paper nest the OP had) or paper wasps (the smaller, inverted open cell nests under your eaves), but it's an awesome way to wipe out yellowjackets (or whatever they call the extra nasty ground dwelling ones in your area). Yellowjackets are scavengers, while the other two types usually only take live prey, and you can take advantage of that fact.
Go out and buy some cans of cheap cat food and a bottle of Sevin dust. Mix in 1 teaspoon of Sevin dust per can of cat food, and hang the cans off the ground anywhere you'd like to reduce the number of yellowjackets. The workers will eat the poisoned cat food, fly back to their nest, and feed it to the queen and the larvae. They will wipe out their own nests, without you having to step on one to find it. No sprays, no fires, no gasoline, no nothing. They will do the work for you.
Important though: don't add more than 1tsp per can, or they will not eat it. I've experimented with this, though you should hang one near your house so you can keep an eye on it and see if they're taking the bait. If not, make up a new batch and try adding less. That stuff is nasty, it doesn't take much to kill them. And I'm talking about the cans of cat food that are the same size as tuna cans, not the mini ones.
And of course, this won't wipe out any existing workers, so the trick is to get them early. In my area, that means setting these things out in late May. That's because colonies don't overwinter in the US, except along the Gulf coast. The whole colony dies off, excepted for new fertilized queens, who will dig into the ground and wait until spring to start a new nest. So the first yellowjackets (and hornets, and wasps) you see each year are likely new queens, and killing them means one less nest.
Finally, these things don't eat much, so don't waste a whole can of cat food leaving it out in the trap at once. It will dry up or get rained on before they even put a dent in it. I mix up a few cans worth of the stuff at once, put them into a container labeled POISON in the beer fridge, and add a little scoop to each hanging can every few days. Make sure you hang the cans, too, so you don't poison your pets or any other wildlife.
It works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
