Tyler East Texas Gopher Control

FAQ | Gopher Questions

Question:

OK, I caught a gopher, now, what do I do with it?

Answer:

Well, if you use lots of carrots and tomatoes, they make a pretty good stew, and the price of gopher pelts is up these days! NO, No, No! Sorry about that. The real answer is, if it is still alive, you will want to kill it or, let it die. Sorry if you are squeamish, but that is just a fact. Try thinking of them as burrowing yard rats, which is what they are. I am not sure about all local regulations, but they can normally be buried, or disposed of in a waste container. Please make sure that they are indeed dead before doing so. Don’t bury them in the children’s sand box. I know it is easy digging, but trust me on this!

Question:

How do I know if it is a mole problem or a gopher problem?

Answer:

Go to your closet, and get out your divining rod, and hold it over the mound. If it moves to the right it is a gopher, if it moves to the left, it is a mole. I have to tell you that the last couple of sentences are a joke, but no more outrageous than some of the thousands of other ways I have heard! The easiest way to tell, is by the mound. Moles push dirt out and up as they tunnel, producing the tell tale “runs” that rise slightly above normal ground level. When they surface, they push a very small amount of dirt to the surface. Gophers on the other hand, dig dirt and move it out of the tunnel by using the skin around the shoulder areas as a pocket, hence the term pocket gophers. Their mounds are larger, and have a somewhat horse shoe shape.

Question:

Will they just keep coming back?

Answer:

Yes!

I know that is not what you wanted to hear, but it is true to some degree. Let me qualify that a little. Each gopher removed from the vicinity will lower the population significantly over the long haul. Fewer pairs mean much less reproduction, and that has a major impact! As long as there are gophers living nearby, they will forage for food, and probably eventually end up in your lawn again. So if you are living in a wide open area, with lots of mounds in the surrounding pastures, you might want to think about “exclusion”. Exclusion is basically building an underground fence, and yes, it can be expensive, and or time consuming, but by weighing that cost against the cost of continual trapping, you can determine whether it is cost effective in your case.

There are other ways to cut down the population as well. If you have a wide open area, renting a gopher plow and tractor and buying some strychnine laced grain can be pretty effective. Probing and releasing grain into active tunnels sometimes works well, but nothing is as effective as trapping. In a suburban setting, getting the neighbors together on the project can really help. It is to everyones benefit, and you can split the cost. If all of the people on your block have all of the gophers trapped, the population will be severely lowered, and the problem will be manageable.