ponytug
Super Member
Smoke sticks, Gopher gassers... basically short, smokey flare like items that you light, push down a burrow and seal up behind it, having first sealed any other openings. Very effective on pocket gophers, voles, and moles due to their behavior of not having open burrows.What are "smoke sticks"?
I am suddenly (not by choice!) interested in this marmot/pest thread. Voles just showed up in my wife's garden in NV, and we had an explosion of gopher activity in CA this spring.
Sorry to see the OP trapped 100+ marmots but only saw a slight decline in activity. Yikes!
However, lighting them is very Hollywood-esque as you light a short short fuse that sparks and smokes, and then the main body lights spewing black, sulfur smoke, and more little sparks. Rather like what a villain would be holding in a movie. Not something you want lit around dry grass.
This year the ground squirrels are just going crazy. One burrowed under the barn for the first time in seventy years. I don't know what set them off. Drought? Local fires?
Good luck!
All the best,
Peter