Got 3 yesterday.
Don’t let the groundhogs get in the red zone; I hear they have one heck of a field goal kicker.
I hope the score never swings in the favor of the groundhogs.
-ellis
ps.
are you doing the Vlad the Impaler bit with their caracasses?
“The Contraception Advisory Group works with captive/zoo animals and not free-ranging wildlife, so we aren’t as well-versed in what might be best in those situations. I believe that Jay Kirkpatrick from Zoo Montana in Billings may have worked with woodchucks…”
His e-mail address is posted to the original reply over at the Contraception Advisory Group website.
Okay I tried to read all the posts but I started to skim towards the end.
Anyway I have 2 suggestions inspired by this thread.
Is there a rodent-ologist out there who can give a quick summary of all of the vermin in question. Cause I kind of got lost exactly what was being talked about by some posters. What we always called groundhogs(alias prarie dogs, ground squirrels and gophers) are obviously not the fascists in question here.
Second, I would give serious consideration to the dog solution. Where I grew up there were a few old ranchers, who would rent out their dogs for badger hunting, so I’d assume there are dogs around trained to kill what ever is in your area, just look for the redneck-est bar around, full of grizzled old guys, and ask.
This thread was the best laugh I’ve had for a while.
The decreased body count in the second engagement seems like a good sign, but be careful. If these are NAZI groundhogs, they may be trying to fix your attention forward and hit your flank. That was a favorite of Rommel’s.
This thread was the best laugh I’ve had for a while.
The decreased body count in the second engagement seems like a good sign, but be careful. If these are NAZI groundhogs, they may be trying to fix your attention forward and hit your flank. That was a favorite of Rommel’s.
Try cold rolled castor beans. The Castor plant is poisonous to moles and gophers. This has been the most entertaining thread that I’ve read in quite some time. Nazi ground hogs… too much
In-laws were in town this weekend. Unable to hunt and kill (not even Groundhogs.)
I must redouble my efforts this weekend before they give birth and “scatter”
THe specific breed of Groundhog here (for he who asked earlier) is the the common North American Groundhog, Marmota Monax
All right, 'fess up…who’s been using some of the, um, more idiotic suggestions here?
(ooooh, hope that link works)
And, Scylla…you’re in PA, right?
All right, 'fess up…who’s been taking some of the more…um…idiotic suggestions seriously?
(hope that link works)
And Scylla…you’re in PA, right?
Yes, PA. I didn’t take any recent trips either.
That propane thing is sounding better.
Okay, so maybe I should be working on a history paper right now, but I just wanted to wish you luck with your gopher/groundhog/whistle pig fiasco. Our family owns a dachshund, and the breed definitely has spunk. However, I seriously doubt if it could take out some of the creatures you’ve described. It might be fun to watch, though. Hmm, maybe I could mail him to you in one of those packing cylinders… ? Nah.
My only advice would be to just stick to your guns… literally. It sounds like you’re doing pretty well with them, and you don’t want to spoil a good thing. Once again, good luck, and nail one of the little devils for me.
P.S. btw great thread, I read the whole thing and just about died laughing at some of the suggestions. thanks
This has to be the SINGLE funniest thing I have ever read in my entire life. I wouldn’t even know where to start in telling you how hard I was laughing.
How about starting a riot? Confuse them in some way. A confused animal is the saddest sight in the entire universe. Once they’re confused, they’ll turn on each other, and kill themselves. I wouldn’t know how a dark creature would end up confused (maybe some kind of sensory hindrance?) and they’ll tear each other to bits. Maybe a scent they don’t like (not predator scent). It seems that the only thing that can hurt a species is its own kind.
I can’t really guarantee that cause the only problem we have in the country/city border is tiny voles, which are swiftly taken care of by the neighbor’s tabby. Bless that cat.
Ol’ Marmota monax has not been overlooked by the scientific community. Turns out that there are a number of little bugs that like to prey upon Nazis.
[ul]
[li]First, a general overview.[/li] [list]
[li]Kwiecinski, Gary G. Marmota monax. Mammalian Species ; Dec. 4 1998; v.0, no.591, p.1-8.[/li] [li]Caire, William; Sloan, Chris L. The woodchuck, Marmota monax (Rodentia: Sciuridae), in central Oklahoma. Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science; 1996; v.76, no.0, p.95.[/li] [/ul]
[li]A little germ warfare.[/li] [ul]
[li]Brent E. Korba, Paul Cote, William Hornbuckle, Bud C. Tennant, and John L. Gerin. Treatment of Chronic Woodchuck Hepatitis Virus Infection in the Eastern Woodchuck (Marmota monax) With Nucleoside Analogues Is Predictive of Therapy for Chronic Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Humans. Hepatology 2000 31: 1165-1175[/li] [li]ZH Jin, GL Zhao, SS Ziong, PY Kou, LL Ma, HT Chen, JY Qi, QJ Ba, and K Mai. An experimental transmission of woodchuck hepatitis virus to young Chinese marmots. Hepatology 1988 8: 371-373.[/li] [/ul]
[li]Some insight into their habits, or, “Know thy enemy, in order that tho might kill them better.”[/li] [ul]
[li]Ferron, Jean. How do woodchucks (Marmota monax) cope with harsh winter conditions? Journal of Mammalogy ; 1996; v.77, no.2, p.412-416.[/li] [li]Daniel, Janice C.; Blumstein, Daniel T. A test of the acoustic adaptation hypothesis in four species of marmots. Animal Behaviour ; Dec. 1998; v.56, no.6, p.1517-1528.[/li] [li]Bonenfant, Marjolaine; Kramer, Donald L. The influence of distance to burrow on flight initiation distance in the woodchuck, Marmota monax. Behavioral Ecology ; 1996; v.7, no.3, p.299-303.[/li] [/ul]
[li]Finally, someone who has done a little Marmota trapping in PA.[/li] [ul]
[li]Brown, Elizabeth; Ropski, Steven J. A survey of the mammals of the Wattsburg Fen Natural Area and the Titus Bog Preserve. Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science ; 1995; v.69, no.3, p.111-114.[/li] [/ul]
[/list]
-ellis
All courtesy of those fine folks at http://biosis.lanl.gov
(I’m not sure if the site is accessible to the public at large, so some of the links might not work).
After spending a day reading through this intriguing/entertaining thread, I couldn’t resist registering and putting in my two pennies worth.
The original smoke method is actually oxide of sulphur, I have tried it on Ground hogs in my back yard. It did not work.
Borrowed a .22 and the Garden Nazu never showed up again until I gave the gun back.
Let it do it’s business (destroy our vegetable garden) whilst giving it a zing with marbles and a slingshot at every sighting. It became a little sling shot shy.
Finally, Mother Nature took over that Winter, the coldest on record around here with hardly any snow cover and it never showed up again. I imagine it’s fertilizing the soil under what used to be my neighbour’s shed.
The dogs to use would be a duo of Fox Terriers, they have no fear, are smaller or the same size as the Ground Hog and absolutely merciless on Nazi rats, tomcats and even raccoons.
I used to have a couple way back and you should see them team up on a 3’ sewer rat that scared the hell out of me. Not pretty for the rat.
Hopefully you’re all done now.
I live in Texas, and we get our fair share of varmints, including 20-pound gophers. The farmers in these parts like to hire the locals to come out and shoot gophers, rabbits, burrowing owls, moles, feral hogs, and just about anything else that is being a nuisance. While you may kill 100 gophers over the course of a day’s shooting, on several acres there may be a thousand more, multiplying day-by-day.
While we do enjoy picking off varmints, it does no good for controlling them. We have been contracted to try whatever means possible to get rid of the nuisance population. It seems that feral hogs and large gophers are the worst in this area. Poisoning killed a few hogs, but these creatures are very smart and learn that if one of their kind dies in a particular area, the whole lot of them moves on to other property.
The best short-term solution we came across was flooding. We would wait until after a heavy rain when there would be several feet of water standing in the bar ditch and use a commercial sump pump with a high output and a long, wide hose to fill the burrows with water. With a good pump, this might take a couple of hours. Just keep pumping the water until there’s no more.
With the water filling the burrows and no gophers coming out, it’s obvious they have high-and-dry pockets in case of flooding. This is where a pneumatic soil packer comes in handy. A pneumatic soil packer is similar to a jack hammer except not so violent and is much heavier with a large steel foot that jumps up and down, compacting the soil and collapsing the gopher’s air pockets at the same time. You use this device around areas where you find covered-up holes and tunneling near the surface. As the air pockets collapse, the gophers will retreat to the nearest exit, which should be covered by a couple of cinder blocks. Unable to escape the water, they will drown, pups and all.
We have cleared many fields of big gophers using this technique. Another option, if the field is fallow, go rent the biggest steamroller you can find and roll over the field. This too will collapse the tunnels and air pockets, crushing them in the process. You can rent steamrollers at heavy-equipment rental stores (at least we can here). For any gophers that escape, have a few buddies with deer rifles and/or assault rifles to finish them off.
Recently, after hearing about a “groundhog vacuum” someone designed, we took several vacuum motors from an old abandoned car wash and built an enclosure on the back of a pickup. We mounted 3 vacuum motors to the top of the enclosure and sealed it up tight. We then attached a very large (12" diameter) heavy-duty hose to the pickup, started the motors, put the end of the hose down a gopher tunnel and waited.
After 10-15 minutes, we began hearing the thuds of gophers hitting the inside of the enclosure. It seems when they get caught in the vacuum, they ball up, hoping the menace will pass, but instead end up being sucked into the enclosure where there is no escape. Though these varmints are skiddish and wary, they are also curious, and when they see one of their comrades go flying by, they come out to look and get caught up in the suction themselves. DOH!
The first time we tried this, we captured 78 gophers in the enclosure, all alive, all scared to death. They ranged in size from 1/2-pound pups to a couple of 18-pound monsters (and a couple of tarantulas to boot). What you do with them at this point is up to you. We donned leather chaps, gloves, facemasks, and aprons and just manhandled them into a large dumpster where we incinerated them. Sounds cruel, but if you have a serious gopher problem, nothing is too cruel. Gophers cause millions of dollars worth of crop damage and cause horses and cattle to break their legs with their burrows.
A friend of mine, who thinks money is fun to spend, bought 2 loads of concrete (you know, 2 cement trucks full) and filled in the burrows as best he could with it. He had some BIG gophers - 22-25-pounders - and to this day has no gopher problems. He figured they suffocated in their air pockets, thinking that it was rain and would soon be absorbed. DUH! I suppose it all boils down to how much money you are willing to spend to get rid of the bastards.
Here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. I was paid $5000 for the vacuum job, and about $1500 for drowning them on 2 different farms. And we still go out and pick them off with deer rifles on the weekends when there’s not anything else better to do. All this may sound funny to you, but like I said, here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. Traditional methods of extermination weren’t working, so we decided to be creative with our methods and were successful. I hope this information can be helpful to you…
spodie
I live in Texas, and we get our fair share of varmints, including 20-pound gophers. The farmers in these parts like to hire the locals to come out and shoot gophers, rabbits, burrowing owls, moles, feral hogs, and just about anything else that is being a nuisance. While you may kill 100 gophers over the course of a day’s shooting, on several acres there may be a thousand more, multiplying day-by-day.
While we do enjoy picking off varmints, it does no good for controlling them. We have been contracted to try whatever means possible to get rid of the nuisance population. It seems that feral hogs and large gophers are the worst in this area. Poisoning killed a few hogs, but these creatures are very smart and learn that if one of their kind dies in a particular area, the whole lot of them moves on to other property.
The best short-term solution we came across was flooding. We would wait until after a heavy rain when there would be several feet of water standing in the bar ditch and use a commercial sump pump with a high output and a long, wide hose to fill the burrows with water. With a good pump, this might take a couple of hours. Just keep pumping the water until there’s no more.
With the water filling the burrows and no gophers coming out, it’s obvious they have high-and-dry pockets in case of flooding. This is where a pneumatic soil packer comes in handy. A pneumatic soil packer is similar to a jack hammer except not so violent and is much heavier with a large steel foot that jumps up and down, compacting the soil and collapsing the gopher’s air pockets at the same time. You use this device around areas where you find covered-up holes and tunneling near the surface. As the air pockets collapse, the gophers will retreat to the nearest exit, which should be covered by a couple of cinder blocks. Unable to escape the water, they will drown, pups and all.
We have cleared many fields of big gophers using this technique. Another option, if the field is fallow, go rent the biggest steamroller you can find and roll over the field. This too will collapse the tunnels and air pockets, crushing them in the process. You can rent steamrollers at heavy-equipment rental stores (at least we can here). For any gophers that escape, have a few buddies with deer rifles and/or assault rifles to finish them off.
Recently, after hearing about a “groundhog vacuum” someone designed, we took several vacuum motors from an old abandoned car wash and built an enclosure on the back of a pickup. We mounted 3 vacuum motors to the top of the enclosure and sealed it up tight. We then attached a very large (12" diameter) heavy-duty hose to the pickup, started the motors, put the end of the hose down a gopher tunnel and waited.
After 10-15 minutes, we began hearing the thuds of gophers hitting the inside of the enclosure. It seems when they get caught in the vacuum, they ball up, hoping the menace will pass, but instead end up being sucked into the enclosure where there is no escape. Though these varmints are skiddish and wary, they are also curious, and when they see one of their comrades go flying by, they come out to look and get caught up in the suction themselves. DOH!
The first time we tried this, we captured 78 gophers in the enclosure, all alive, all scared to death. They ranged in size from 1/2-pound pups to a couple of 18-pound monsters (and a couple of tarantulas to boot). What you do with them at this point is up to you. We donned leather chaps, gloves, facemasks, and aprons and just manhandled them into a large dumpster where we incinerated them. Sounds cruel, but if you have a serious gopher problem, nothing is too cruel. Gophers cause millions of dollars worth of crop damage and cause horses and cattle to break their legs with their burrows.
A friend of mine, who thinks money is fun to spend, bought 2 loads of concrete (you know, 2 cement trucks full) and filled in the burrows as best he could with it. He had some BIG gophers - 22-25-pounders - and to this day has no gopher problems. He figured they suffocated in their air pockets, thinking that it was rain and would soon be absorbed. DUH! I suppose it all boils down to how much money you are willing to spend to get rid of the bastards.
Here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. I was paid $5000 for the vacuum job, and about $1500 for drowning them on 2 different farms. And we still go out and pick them off with deer rifles on the weekends when there’s not anything else better to do. All this may sound funny to you, but like I said, here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. Traditional methods of extermination weren’t working, so we decided to be creative with our methods and were successful. I hope this information can be helpful to you…
spodie
I live in Texas, and we get our fair share of varmints, including 20-pound gophers. The farmers in these parts like to hire the locals to come out and shoot gophers, rabbits, burrowing owls, moles, feral hogs, and just about anything else that is being a nuisance. While you may kill 100 gophers over the course of a day’s shooting, on several acres there may be a thousand more, multiplying day-by-day.
While we do enjoy picking off varmints, it does no good for controlling them. We have been contracted to try whatever means possible to get rid of the nuisance population. It seems that feral hogs and large gophers are the worst in this area. Poisoning killed a few hogs, but these creatures are very smart and learn that if one of their kind dies in a particular area, the whole lot of them moves on to other property.
The best short-term solution we came across was flooding. We would wait until after a heavy rain when there would be several feet of water standing in the bar ditch and use a commercial sump pump with a high output and a long, wide hose to fill the burrows with water. With a good pump, this might take a couple of hours. Just keep pumping the water until there’s no more.
With the water filling the burrows and no gophers coming out, it’s obvious they have high-and-dry pockets in case of flooding. This is where a pneumatic soil packer comes in handy. A pneumatic soil packer is similar to a jack hammer except not so violent and is much heavier with a large steel foot that jumps up and down, compacting the soil and collapsing the gopher’s air pockets at the same time. You use this device around areas where you find covered-up holes and tunneling near the surface. As the air pockets collapse, the gophers will retreat to the nearest exit, which should be covered by a couple of cinder blocks. Unable to escape the water, they will drown, pups and all.
We have cleared many fields of big gophers using this technique. Another option, if the field is fallow, go rent the biggest steamroller you can find and roll over the field. This too will collapse the tunnels and air pockets, crushing them in the process. You can rent steamrollers at heavy-equipment rental stores (at least we can here). For any gophers that escape, have a few buddies with deer rifles and/or assault rifles to finish them off.
Recently, after hearing about a “groundhog vacuum” someone designed, we took several vacuum motors from an old abandoned car wash and built an enclosure on the back of a pickup. We mounted 3 vacuum motors to the top of the enclosure and sealed it up tight. We then attached a very large (12" diameter) heavy-duty hose to the pickup, started the motors, put the end of the hose down a gopher tunnel and waited.
After 10-15 minutes, we began hearing the thuds of gophers hitting the inside of the enclosure. It seems when they get caught in the vacuum, they ball up, hoping the menace will pass, but instead end up being sucked into the enclosure where there is no escape. Though these varmints are skiddish and wary, they are also curious, and when they see one of their comrades go flying by, they come out to look and get caught up in the suction themselves. DOH!
The first time we tried this, we captured 78 gophers in the enclosure, all alive, all scared to death. They ranged in size from 1/2-pound pups to a couple of 18-pound monsters (and a couple of tarantulas to boot). What you do with them at this point is up to you. We donned leather chaps, gloves, facemasks, and aprons and just manhandled them into a large dumpster where we incinerated them. Sounds cruel, but if you have a serious gopher problem, nothing is too cruel. Gophers cause millions of dollars worth of crop damage and cause horses and cattle to break their legs with their burrows.
A friend of mine, who thinks money is fun to spend, bought 2 loads of concrete (you know, 2 cement trucks full) and filled in the burrows as best he could with it. He had some BIG gophers - 22-25-pounders - and to this day has no gopher problems. He figured they suffocated in their air pockets, thinking that it was rain and would soon be absorbed. DUH! I suppose it all boils down to how much money you are willing to spend to get rid of the bastards.
Here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. I was paid $5000 for the vacuum job, and about $1500 for drowning them on 2 different farms. And we still go out and pick them off with deer rifles on the weekends when there’s not anything else better to do. All this may sound funny to you, but like I said, here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. Traditional methods of extermination weren’t working, so we decided to be creative with our methods and were successful. I hope this information can be helpful to you…
spodie
I live in Texas, and we get our fair share of varmints, including 20-pound gophers. The farmers in these parts like to hire the locals to come out and shoot gophers, rabbits, burrowing owls, moles, feral hogs, and just about anything else that is being a nuisance. While you may kill 100 gophers over the course of a day’s shooting, on several acres there may be a thousand more, multiplying day-by-day.
While we do enjoy picking off varmints, it does no good for controlling them. We have been contracted to try whatever means possible to get rid of the nuisance population. It seems that feral hogs and large gophers are the worst in this area. Poisoning killed a few hogs, but these creatures are very smart and learn that if one of their kind dies in a particular area, the whole lot of them moves on to other property.
The best short-term solution we came across was flooding. We would wait until after a heavy rain when there would be several feet of water standing in the bar ditch and use a commercial sump pump with a high output and a long, wide hose to fill the burrows with water. With a good pump, this might take a couple of hours. Just keep pumping the water until there’s no more.
With the water filling the burrows and no gophers coming out, it’s obvious they have high-and-dry pockets in case of flooding. This is where a pneumatic soil packer comes in handy. A pneumatic soil packer is similar to a jack hammer except not so violent and is much heavier with a large steel foot that jumps up and down, compacting the soil and collapsing the gopher’s air pockets at the same time. You use this device around areas where you find covered-up holes and tunneling near the surface. As the air pockets collapse, the gophers will retreat to the nearest exit, which should be covered by a couple of cinder blocks. Unable to escape the water, they will drown, pups and all.
We have cleared many fields of big gophers using this technique. Another option, if the field is fallow, go rent the biggest steamroller you can find and roll over the field. This too will collapse the tunnels and air pockets, crushing them in the process. You can rent steamrollers at heavy-equipment rental stores (at least we can here). For any gophers that escape, have a few buddies with deer rifles and/or assault rifles to finish them off.
Recently, after hearing about a “groundhog vacuum” someone designed, we took several vacuum motors from an old abandoned car wash and built an enclosure on the back of a pickup. We mounted 3 vacuum motors to the top of the enclosure and sealed it up tight. We then attached a very large (12" diameter) heavy-duty hose to the pickup, started the motors, put the end of the hose down a gopher tunnel and waited.
After 10-15 minutes, we began hearing the thuds of gophers hitting the inside of the enclosure. It seems when they get caught in the vacuum, they ball up, hoping the menace will pass, but instead end up being sucked into the enclosure where there is no escape. Though these varmints are skiddish and wary, they are also curious, and when they see one of their comrades go flying by, they come out to look and get caught up in the suction themselves. DOH!
The first time we tried this, we captured 78 gophers in the enclosure, all alive, all scared to death. They ranged in size from 1/2-pound pups to a couple of 18-pound monsters (and a couple of tarantulas to boot). What you do with them at this point is up to you. We donned leather chaps, gloves, facemasks, and aprons and just manhandled them into a large dumpster where we incinerated them. Sounds cruel, but if you have a serious gopher problem, nothing is too cruel. Gophers cause millions of dollars worth of crop damage and cause horses and cattle to break their legs with their burrows.
A friend of mine, who thinks money is fun to spend, bought 2 loads of concrete (you know, 2 cement trucks full) and filled in the burrows as best he could with it. He had some BIG gophers - 22-25-pounders - and to this day has no gopher problems. He figured they suffocated in their air pockets, thinking that it was rain and would soon be absorbed. DUH! I suppose it all boils down to how much money you are willing to spend to get rid of the bastards.
Here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. I was paid $5000 for the vacuum job, and about $1500 for drowning them on 2 different farms. And we still go out and pick them off with deer rifles on the weekends when there’s not anything else better to do. All this may sound funny to you, but like I said, here in Texas, people go to great lengths and expense to do things. Traditional methods of extermination weren’t working, so we decided to be creative with our methods and were successful. I hope this information can be helpful to you…
spodie