Pocket Gopher Management


Pocket gophers have been attempting to take over our property since before we even owned it; they're a constant source of frustration and, in any season where the ground is thawed, a constant battle. When we moved in, we'd never thought about gophers or how to get rid of them. Initially we tried traps, but never caught anything. One got into our front landscaping and tore everything up, which ended up losing it's life to a gun, but we can't stake out mounds and do it all that way. Enter, the "Lawn Butler" or similar poison applicator. 

I try to be a nice person and kind to animals in all areas of my life, but gophers... I don't think you can be kind to them. They don't go away, they don't stop, and they just... destroy. So here's how I destroy them. First, fill your handy dandy bait applicator with bait. I like to test the crank over the bait container to ensure it's coming out, as doing so in the field, where my dogs also play and my horses get their hay from isn't safe. Make sure you don't spill any bait, either. 

The "hardest" part of using the lawn butler so far is finding the tunnel; you have to kind of play around pushing the spike into the ground until you have that start where you hit "open air" into the tunnel. Sometimes it's very shallow, other times it's pretty deep: 



Then... you crank. I tend to crank 4-8 times for my applicator and the type of bait we have currently. When you go to crank, try to lift up the applicator a little bit, if you've hit the bottom of the tunnel; you want the bait to land on the floor but not be buried. For order's sake, I then kick over the mound with my shoe, or, if I am fancy, bring a metal rake and level it all out. This both keeps the mounds from becoming permanent fixtures and keeps my hay field flatter, and makes it easy to identify new mounds after initial application. 


Wash, rinse, repeat. I treat nearly daily at first, and then taper off as mounds disappear, but try to keep an eye on the field as they seem to recover and re-mount the assault. 

Happy battling! I hope this helps anyone who, like me, has no idea what to do with gophers. 



 

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