I caught a groundhog! Now what? (Need answer fast)

[Scylla]

Groundhogs are incredibly durable, most attempts to kill them merely end up being torture. Shooting is best. However, I too moved into suburbia and no longer feel comfortable shooting guns near neighbors.

I have tried gassing them with car exhaust to no effect. Drowning works, but it takes an incredibly long time, and you need a container large enough to immerse the entire trap completely, and you need to hold it down as they can swim the whole trap to the surface. If you go this route, be prepared to have the animal struggle for five minutes or more in the most heartbraking fashion. Do it right, and fully immerse the trap in a full garbage can, or what have you and keep it immersed. Incompetance and letting them get a lungful of air, lengthening the suffering is inexcusable. Drowning is a pretty horrible way to die, even for a groundhog, and I wouldn’t do it again. I felt pretty lousy about it.

I know of two ways that work:

1. They don’t take heat well. If it’s a hot summer day, and you put the cage on blacktop, they will expire peacefully in a few hours from the heat. It looks peaceful, but I’m not sure, so I don’t feel to good about this, plus it invites spectators.

2. I have an old golf club that the head fell off. I sharpened the end on a grinder. Put the cage on grass. Stand astride the cage holding the club in both hands. Get the sharp end between the wires from above. Move slowly, until the point is directly above center mass/between the shoulders. The animal will not cooperate, but if you keep moving slowly, or distract it with a third person or by nudging your shoes against the side of the trap, you can get the shank in position. It’s best if you’ve got the groundhog with his face in a corner, rather than backed into a corner of the trap. Don’t hurry, just stay there for a 30 seconds or so and wait for the groundhog to relax a little and take its attention off the stick. Drive down suddenly as hard as you can, and all at once with your full body weight. Do it right, and it’ll be over in about ten seconds, as you impale them to the ground. The trick is not to hold back, but to give it your all. There is a squirmy, nasty second there before you’re all the way through as the groundhog tries to escape. Don’t let up.

My neighbor (we live next to a farming field and have lots of groundhogs) dumps the groundhog from the trap into a big plastic garbage can and then beats them to death by stabbing down with a baseball bat. He’s pretty good at it, but I haven’t tried it, because I’m afraid of the animal coming after me as I’m trying to release the trap, or tipping over the can, so I just shank them through the trap in the manner described. It’s the must humane way I know of.

[Antigen]

I think it’s very funny that the OP is using a “hav-a-hart” trap and is asking how to best kill the critter.

The irony burns.

[Reelie]

Just wait a few days and he’ll be dead.In my experience those hav-a-hart traps are just about the only to get them. You need to have the biggest trap (which cost about 70 bucks) and bait it with an ear of corn or an apple. You can’t stand waiting with a gun all day like Elmer Fudd, shoot in a neighborhood, poison the critter, or set a trap that might hurt a neighbor’s cat or dog. If you relocate, it’s kind of scary and dirty to transport it in the trunk of your car, and scary as hell when they jump out of the trap. And they might come back and just drive someone else crazy. Just shoot or let die and dump or bury. The bastards will drive you crazy. But if you want to eat it or make a hat…I hope that was a joke.

[Magiver]

@carnivorousplant

I would take him to some woods far, far away and let him go.

I don’t know anything about groundhogs but squirrel rules require 10 miles of separation.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Wile_E

I’ve never actually had that problem.

Ah.

Viagra, then?

[batsto]

@JerseyFrank

I’m not that far from Batsto. I assume your username is a clue as to your location. Want me to drop him off?

As long as you don’t drop him off in my yard

I actually live about an hour from Batsto. My username comes from the fact that I used to work there, and I fell in love with the place. No groundhog is making it all the way to my house from Batsto though.

[CandidGamera]

@Spavined_Gelding

Chopper, the easy answer is that in a populated area (meaning almost anyplace) there is too much of a chance that you will catch some animal that you don’t want to hurt – the neighbor’s cat, your own dog – or some critter that you want to stick around. Once you get an animal with a leg-hold or a skull crusher trap there is really no way to take it back. In a humane cage trap you have the option of shooting the little bugger (which is surely more humane that having it eat its leg off) or turning it lose.

Yes. The reason I bought a Havaheart trap was for a Groundhog - the groundhog never took the bait, but stopped coming around. I assume the neighbor’s dog got him.

Then there was the rabbit. I did finally catch the rabbit, but the first thing the trap caught was a local neighborhood outdoor cat.

[JerseyFrank]

@carnivorousplant

I would take him to some woods far, far away and let him go.

With no callback for guidance from Animal Control, this is what I wound up doing. 5 miles away, across a highway.

@Spavined_Gelding

too much of a chance that you will catch some animal that you don’t want to hurt

I’m not interested in killing the opposums or the neighbor’s cats, but the most important reason is that I didn’t want my (almost) 3 year old to step in the trap during a game of hide and seek. She has to good sense to flee from a snarling groundhog. Supervision isn’t a problem, but her fondness for hide & seek and the nature of the game might make a snap trap cause some collateral damage to her.

@Scylla

Groundhogs are incredibly durable, most attempts to kill them merely end up being torture.

Considering your infamous experience with them, I take your advice seriously. However, if my decision had been to kill it (and if they keep coming back, it will be), I’d call the local vet and see if I could get a groundhog-family discount on euthanasia.

@Antigen

I think it’s very funny that the OP is using a “hav-a-hart” trap and is asking how to best kill the critter.

The irony burns.

Killing isn’t a humane option? I wasn’t specifically looking for only ways to kill. I was asking what the right balance of humane treatment and personal need was. I’m concerned that my relocation strategy may have resigned my groundhog to a fate worse than a quick kill.

@Reelie

But if you want to eat it or make a hat…I hope that was a joke.

If I killed it, I felt obligated to use the animal instead of just burying it.

@batsto

As long as you don’t drop him off in my yard

I actually live about an hour from Batsto.

I hope you don’t live in Williamstown. You might have an unwelcome guest.

[Chopper9760]

Oh that would be horrible, I can’t imagine trapping someone’s pet on accident. I’m glad I can just shoot stuff, living in town sounds hard.

Skunks are the worst, we’ve never dealt with one well. Clutch traps, livetraps, shooting them in or out of the trap, it always ends in a stinky mess. The best luck we ever had was shooting one out of the yard with a .223. I think his scent glands were destroyed so the smell dissipated fairly rapidly. The hitch came when my father failed to take it far enough from the house. The dog found and rolled in it some weeks later. Decomposing skunk is by far the worst thing I have ever smelled. Next time we have a skunk, I’ll definitely try the garden hose trick.

[Jackmannii]

@Reelie

Just wait a few days and he’ll be dead.

@Scylla

They don’t take heat well. If it’s a hot summer day, and you put the cage on blacktop, they will expire peacefully in a few hours from the heat.

I hope these were both jokes.

Scylla’s method also works well on infants, I hear. Just leave 'em in your car with the windows up on a hot summer day. :rolleyes:

I have relocated groundhogs from my property before. They thrive all over the place. Probably not so much in wooded areas, but they love suburbia and all its gardens. Usually you can find a proper home for them, like a nice upscale subdivision.

[Contrapuntal]

@Spavined_Gelding

If you don’t have a gun try calling your local police department. Any good officer has a small caliber pistol as a back up gun or just for plunking to stay in training. Any off duty officer would be happy to come over and pop your varmint just for the entertainment.

I doubt it, considering that it’s generally illegal to discharge a firearm inside city limits.

[muldoonthief]

@Contrapuntal

I doubt it, considering that it’s generally illegal to discharge a firearm inside city limits.

Pretty much every law like that will have an exception for police in the performance of their duty. When we had a rabid racoon walking around our back yard some years ago, a town cop was kind enough to shoot it with a 20 gauge shotgun for us, whereas I’d probably be posting from prison if I tried the same trick.

[carnivorousplant]

@Jackmannii

I hope these were both jokes.

I subscribe to a CP list, and am continually amazed at how some folks enjoy killing troublesome little fuzzy things in rather gruesome manners.

[Sailboat]

@JerseyFrank

FTR, I’m not in favor of executing him. I’d like to live and let live… but he’s jeopardizing the safety of my kids and the structure of my porch. He’s gotta go in a way that ensures he’s not coming back to my yard.

I understand that they can damage structures…I don’t get how they pose a threat to kids. If the kid is inclined to approach a wild animal and too young to understand your warnings, he or she is too young or too stupid to be outside unsupervised anyway. Aside from trying to approach a groundhog and put him in a doll dress for a tea party, what’s the danger? These things eat grass, and are substantially less dangerous than a lawn mower.

@Reelie

If you relocate, it’s kind of scary and dirty to transport it in the trunk of your car, and scary as hell when they jump out of the trap.

Scary? I relocated a groundhog in a Hav-a-hart trap a few years ago and it wasn’t the least bit scary. It never occurred to me to be scared of the fat, grass-eating rodent. I did know enough not to put him in a doll dress for a tea party (or otherwise handle him).

@JerseyFrank

With no callback for guidance from Animal Control, this is what I wound up doing. 5 miles away, across a highway.

Good job! Simple, direct, humane, manly (unless it was scary).

@carnivorousplant

I subscribe to a CP list

What’s that, may I ask?

[carnivorousplant]

@Sailboat

What’s that, may I ask?

Why, carnivorous plants.

[MacTech]

Before you read this thread, note the following warning;

<Warning>, a couple pictures in the linked thread show the results of shooting a large rodent with a .22LR bullet, they’re not gory pics, but the last group of pics do show a small amount of blood from the bullet wounds, the wounds are small holes with a trickle of blood from them, you see far worse in the typical horror/slasher movie, but if you are squeamish, or a hardcore member of PETA*, please, do not click the link

http: // rimfirecentral.com /forums/showthread.php?t=283729: Here’s my experience with a small family of groundhogs this summer
they’re tough, nasty, hateful little critters, yes they’re cute… from a distance, but up close, man they’re nasty and short tempered, they also do a number on gardens, and seeing as my garden was quite small, i was taking no prisoners

the groundhog family consisted of three animals, a male, a small juvenile, and a large female, the carcasses were “recycled” by our resident wild turkey-vulture

the hay barn they were living under has been severely structurally compromised thanks to their burrowing, and will require expensive repairs to make it safe again, I almost lost an entire crop of veggies to these hateful critters, before they met with a severe case of high-speed-lead-poisoning

I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy, up until they started damaging the barn and devastating my garden, then the gloves came off

• No, not “People Eating Tasty Animals”, the other PETA…

[carnivorousplant]

@MacTech

hateful little critters,

They’re not hateful, like you and me, mosquitoes and snakes, they are just trying to make a living. I’ve killed water snakes that shouldn’t be in my water garden, but I don’t post pictures of the bodies.

[MacTech]

Hence my warning, I know some people may not want to see pictures of the kills, so I felt that a warning was appropriate, I wouldn’t want anyone to have an unpleasant surprise in reading the thread

[Cardinal]

@Chopper9760

If you can’t shoot it, I’d go with bludgeoning. Grab a claw hammer and whop him in the head several times.

One old roommate clipped a cat on his motorcycle, and used the campus security baton to finish it off in the bushes. Another stepped on an escaped hamster and had no real tools, so held it under water for a couple minutes to put it out of its misery.

[lindsaybluth]

Should have found a nice neighbor’s dog and let him loose on the groundhog.

lindsaybluth, whose parents’ dog adores people and other dogs, but has killed 6 groundhogs in 3 months.