<font size=6>Listen, goofs. FLOOD THEM OUT!
Pump LOTS of water down their holes, and shoot any that don’t drown.
Simple.</font>
“Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you.”----Jung
Tbone2:
Thank you for the excellent advice and sharing your experience I will try to put it to good use.
Aha:
Your idea might work except for the fact that the groundhogs already know me as their sworn enemy. Hmmm. How to spread the information without it seeming to come from me?
I think what I need is a MOLE in their organization. Heh. Heh. Heh.
seperately:
I like Barry Manilow so watch it Bub! 
I am tickled to death that some people have seen fit to compliment this thread. Thank you.
Bosda D’ichi of Whatever:
May I humbly suggest that before you use capitol letters and big fonts, that you at least make the effort to read the thread where you will find more than one excellent discussion on flooding. That helps avoid the embarassment you should now be feeling.
As for calling me a “Goof.” Well now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings. Should I try to be big about this, or retaliate, embrace the Dark side, give in to my fury and risk being sent to the BBQ Pit for a flame war?
Better yet, I shall leave you to the swift and unerring justice of our Moderators. “Goofs,” Man that’s just pushing the envelope you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.
al, I’ll join the others in complimenting you on a very entertaining thread, while sympathizing with your plight, I have found this to be a delight to read.
To aid your quest, though, may I suggest you try a diplomatic solution. I’m not talking like aha’s suggestion, “hey, come on guy’s, let’s go to the movies.” I’m talking about a real truce. But, before you suggest it, you must prepare the area so that it is a reasonable solution.
First, totally devastate the area. Dynomite, poison, smoke, flood, or anything else you can think of. Then offer the truce, but the most important thing is to offer to rebuild their lost homes. You may be able to infiltrate some dogs and cats into their ranks but I wouldn’t count on that. The reconstruction is the key. Offer to build them luxurious condos, and for god’s sake build them above ground. Since there are always pockets of resistance, keep your options open to deal with them harshly. Once you have moved all the homeless groundhogs into the above ground condos, a few accidental bombing strikes against the resistance should wipe out the civilian population in “Woodchuck Manor”.
Anyway, good luck.
“I like Barry Manilow so watch it Bub!”
Well ya see, there’s your problem right there.
You’ve offended the RocK gods. This groundhog plague is just their wrath.
All you have to do, is to appease them, and the critters will leave.
Try this:
Draw a mustache on Donny Osmond’s picture.
Put it inside a copy of Spin magazine.
Roll it up really tight.
Smack Keith Richards in the head with it.
Smoke half of it.
Then bury the other half in Rob ZomBie’s front yard.
… that should do it …
(and if you get ahold of any records by the Monkeys, you might want to burn those … just to be safe)
OK, I talked to a couple of friends of mine and got one more suggestion. I have never tried this and just offer it as something a desperate person might try.
I was you should get an iron bar about 4 feet long or so and bend it so that you have a 3 foot shaft and a one foot handle, and you should solder wires to it so that the neutral is closest to the bend, the hot wire is closest to the short end. Then, after a rain or thorough watering, you should stick the long end of the bar into the ground and then plug the wire into standard household current. Supposedly, this sends a current through the wet earth that ground hogs find uncomfortable and they will vacate. It also will cause earthworms to come to the surface, so if you are a fisherman you can collect them. I would wear insulated boots though. Actually I wouldn’t do this on a bet, but if you are desperate it might be worth a try.
We had something when I was a kid that caused groundhogs to be alarmed and earthworms (nightcrawlers) to appear.
We called it ‘rain.’
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
T
I was just re-reading this thread. Damn funny stuff! I am of the opinion that the exhaust gases will probably be your best bet. Will that have any negative effects on the soil? Carbon monoxide isn’t good for animals, how good can it be for plants?
Ok just forget that last post I sent…I was just kidding after all we know that groundhogs don’t go to the movies. Here is the real solution to your problem:
Give me your address and I will send my mother-in-law for an extended visit. She can bring her “Nazi” uniform. (I am sieg heiling even as I think about it now.)She can move in (temporarly) of course with the groundhogs. They will at first think it pleasant as she will buy a few cheap gifts for the groundhog babies and make a weak offer to pay for lunch and they will think she is one of them. After about three days however she will begin to get on the groundhog’s nerves because they will have to endure the sight of her shuffling around the burrows in her bathrobe ( the one she has had since 66’) and basically making a nusiance of herself in the groundhogs kitchen and constantly complaining about the heat or air in the burrows and fiddling with the burrow thermostat…and then GHs will begin to hint around asking stuff like…“are you driving back tonight?” and “when do you have to be back in tulsa?”( her hometown) But she will reply with vague terms like “umm what day is this?” and will remain undaunted. After about a week the groundhogs will be able to endure no more and go insane running screaming into the night like lemmings to the sea.
“Ward, You’re upsetting the beaver.”
Barbara Billingsley
Acquire you some huge speakers, stick then into the ground, and then blast a continuous noise that resonates with teh natural frequency of the groundhogs. This will cause them extreme distress in the least, and at best they with shake apart into a gelatinous goo that will be quite beneficial to the soil!
Ok seriously tho… what about those ultrasonic frequencies that certain rodents are said to hate? The ground is an excellent conductor of sound so maybe blasting some undesired noise into the ground will have some effect?
-MrSCOTT
Well I’ve seen those outdoor spikes that use electronic means for moles. They don’t seem to cover a huge distance though and we’re talking acres here not a back yard. These might work on a mound to mound basis though.
I’m thinking decoys though. Lifelike female woodchuck decoys. Maybe some lipstick and a nice bushy tail. Get those Whistle Pigs whistling. When they come far enough out of their hole you give them the blow job they want, aim for the woody and chuck the remains.
Here’s my partly serious suggestion:
You’ve mentioned that the hogs tend to melt into the ground after you’ve shot a few with your .223. Have you considered a subsonic round? The .300 Whisper cartridge is touted as being a nice, heavy round with very little noise. If you wanted to go whole hog, you could even get yourself a suppressed weapon - registration is not all that hard, but there’s a Federal transfer tax (I think it’s $200) plus whatever your state charges.
Of course, it’s not going to be as flat-shooting as .223, which might be a prohibitive concern. On the other hand, it will make all the rifle freaks in your area really envious.
I actually don’t know if it would work. I mean, the groundhogs might be alerted by something other than noise, or they might have really good hearing. But it’s a pretty neat idea. http://www.hessearms.com/hacal.htm
That which does not kill me just makes me really irritable
I’m not sure I quite understand what creature you’re dealing with hear. Is it the one featured in this link?
http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/Groundhogs.htm#Are Woodchucks Dangerous? http://www.geocities.com…/SiliconValley/3694/grndhog.html
Those links refer to groundhogs/woodchucks, but from the pictures they look quite a bit smaller than grizzly bears, and seem like they would be less than a match for a mastiff, cougar, or human in hand-to-hand combat. I don’t know, though, a friend of mine claims she was attacked by nutrias at one point, and another friend says he surprised that I had not been seriously injured when I drove a raccoon out of my yard by waving an axe and howling. Go figure.
http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/Groundhogs.htm
That link should work
You are all going to think I’m crazy, but I recall seeing a news article about a guy who had converted some kind of tank truck (septic tank truck?) with a vacuum cleaner to suck up groundhogs/prarie dogs. Apparently after slamming into a padded wall at close to 80 mph the little suckers were OK and could be released in a remote location or sold for food/pets/experiments.
The guy apparently had success in eradicating entire colonies.
I have looked high and low and can’t find any reference to this on the web, so it’s as good as a fairy tale at this point.
Spent an hour writing a post, computer got weird, tried to save it, rebooted, now it’s all garbled. I suspect the sabotage of Marmota Monax who must have somehow figured we are getting close to an answer here. I will save it as possible evidence against them. Too bummed out over this to try and fix it right now, but will post it as si if anybody cares.
Douglips may be a genius. Has anybody else heard anything about this mythical Hog-sucker?
Whoda thunk that this topic would be the one to make me laugh out loud?
Pterodactls, shootin’ woodies and hog suckers, oh my!
BTW…I share your loathing for varmints (see my “Ooooh I really, really hate squirrels!” thread).
Maybe a hog roundup is in order? Invite the Dopers over, arm them, then promise X amount of free beer for each ground hog dispatched. Judging by Guy Stuff, you’d probably get a hell of a response, and you might even get an FA-18 to drop high explosive ordnance.
“Sharpen your cutlasses. There may be skullduggery ahead.” The Penguin
I’ve heard about the groundhog sucking guy! IIRC his vehicle is, indeed, a converted septic truck. God only knows what the groundhogs think as they get sucked into a metal tank that probably still smells like crap :D. Sorry, I have no idea where one might find this guy, but you can rest assured that you didn’t imagine him.
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
The truck mentioned is not a typical septic pumping truck but an unusually powerfull vaccuume truck known as a Vactor.
Back when I was in hazardous waste abatement, we used to use it too suck up contaminated soils and other heavy stuff that resisted cleanup by other methods. (read shovel and bucket)
The thing can indeed pull a fierce vaccuume (i don’t recall how many inches of mercury)almost living up to the “suck a golfball through a gardenhose” test. Not sure how it would do over such a large area.
Check the local listing for vaccuume trucks and see if anyone will give you a quote. That is, if they stop laughing long enough after your query.
OK, wat I’ve got to say may be impractical, but not everything that has been said so far is paractical, so here goes.
When we were farming, one of the most effective means of groundhog disposal was oening the valve of the liquid manure spreader into a hole, and waiting at the other hole with a gun. (.22 definitely works at a range of 2-3 feet) Sometimes, the splash can be a problem, though.
I have, personally:
-
Stomped a woodchuck to death. (He was kicking my brother’s ass)
-
Killed one with a rock.
We also owned a basset/beagle mix dog that would spend an entire day digging out a woodchuck, then kill it, and take it to the pond, to stand on it and hold it under the water. I’ve seen that dog climb a pussywillow tree after a woodchuck. Believe it. The dog must have had skeletons in his closet of some kind. He hated woodchucks desperately. And he wasn’t really all that big, either, probably 40 lbs.
But this has been a very enjoyable thread.
Now that I don’t farm, I kind of like woodchucks. 
What about predator urine? You can buy stuff like Coyote urine.
How about a giant lightning rod? Put mother nature to work for you.