Pocket Gopher Poison Question

[RedEye669]

Hey all, I have a question about Satan's Hellrat aka the Norther Pocket Gopher. I've been overrun with them in the last few weeks and they're pretty much undoing hundreds of hours of work I've put in trying to establish a wildlife planting (9 rows of trees around a slough). Not to mention some pretty spectacular damage to the more intensively landscaped areas near my house.

I got a pail of Rozol from the RM office and I've started clearing away mounds and finding exit tunnels. According to the internet the feeding tunnels are 4-18 inches below the surface, and for best results the bait has to be placed in the main run and not the exit tunnel. The articles I've found show two methods, either digging down to expose the tunnel, placing the bait, and then plugging the hole, or using a bait probe. The problem is I'm in Saskatchewan where it gets **** cold and I'm finding the main tunnels are at least 18 inches deep. This is a problem because I don't have a probe, the ground is rock hard, and most of these burrows are in amongst young trees that aren't going to survive the winter if I do major excavating around the roots this time of year.

So: Assuming I can clear out the exit tunnel all the way down, snake a flexible hose in there, and pour the bait in, would this not get the bait into the main tunnel where I need it, without a lot of time-consuming excavation? I'm not really that lazy, it's just that I'm under some serious time constraint. I just got the Rozol yesterday and tomorrow winter is supposed to be here for real. I don't want to waste my time if delivering the bait through a tube down the exit tunnel isn't going to work, but neither do I want to leave the little bastards to wreak havoc unmolested all winter long either. I've got a lot of ground to cover today and I can find and clear out the lateral runs pretty quickly, whereas digging directly to the main runs will mean I can only get a few baits placed. So, long story short (too late!) if anyone has had any success with the method I've described please let me know.

Thanks!

 

[Jim Nelson]

I'm in an entirely different part of the world but we have plenty of gophers with whom I do constant battle. I tried trapping them for several years with some success but this year couldn't stay ahead so I broke down and bought a poison probe from Amazon and am really impressed with how well it works.I put the poison in the tunnel going to the mounds they leave and it works.I've never heard anything about a difference in main and exit tunnels but just place it where I can find a tunnel.

 

[RedEye669]

That's encouraging. The Rozol website is kind of sending mixed messages, first it says putting bait down the exit tunnel with a spoon is ok, then lower down it says putting the probe in the exit tunnel is wrong.

I got about half a dozen burrow systems baited today. Quite a variety of conditions, in mulched landscaped areas they seem to burrow a lot shallower, so the main run is easy to find. Then there were a few places in the "lawn" (basically, mowed pasture close to the house) where the ground is really hard and sandy where I snaked a hose 3 feet down the exit tunnel and just poured it in. Areas that are tilled but not mulched are the worst, like along the shelter belts. The exit tunnels are really hard to find because the ground is soft everywhere so I can't just poke around until I find the soil plug, it all feels the same. And of course when I'm probing for the main run it feels the same everywhere, next to no resistance in the tilled soil and then hard as rock once I get below tiller depth.

But anyway, hopefully I gave them something to think about until next spring. Supposed to rain and then snow tomorrow and by the looks of the forecast it'll probably stick

 

[byronlj]

x2 on Jim's method.
Dave

 

[flusher]

I'm in an entirely different part of the world but we have plenty of gophers with whom I do constant battle. I tried trapping them for several years with some success but this year couldn't stay ahead so I broke down and bought a poison probe from Amazon and am really impressed with how well it works.I put the poison in the tunnel going to the mounds they leave and it works.I've never heard anything about a difference in main and exit tunnels but just place it where I can find a tunnel.

Me too. I use the stuff from Home Depot and a probe dispenser. It takes a little practice to learn how to eyeball the shape of the mound and then quickly find the tunnels. Kills them dead.

 

[KretZ]

I cleared away the dirt, found the soft spot in my lawn that the dirt came up through, then started dumping the contents of the cats little box down the hole. Soon after that, the moles moved on to somewhere else.

 

[flyerdan]

One of the best ways of dealing with them is lye. Make small bundles of it in thin plastic like sandwich bags or cling wrap, bury them in their tunnels anywhere. They'll come along and rip them open with their claws and get the lye all over themselves and eventually dissolve. Any unbreached packets will lie in wait for the next rodent to move into the vacant tunnels.