Anyone have any solutions to a mole or gopher problem.....The darn things are all over town....this being a small community in Oklahoma...I have tried poison grain and that doesn't help....not much of a trapper either. It is really getting to be a problem....My son has a beautiful house and yard....Works in it every evening when he gets off work during the spring and summer....The moles destroyed it late in the summer......He tried several things to eliminate the problem as well....no results.....Help on this issue if you can..........Thanks, Nomadic

 

c4 shaped like a bunny will take care of the vermin

 

I battled moles in my yard for several years. The best advice I can give you is to first eliminate their source of food. The moles aren't on vacation in your yard, they are in your yard for food. In PA, grubs are commonly found in yards and they are a favorite of moles. Use "GrubEx" or similar to get rid of them. Then you can also start trapping the moles. The best traps I found were made by Victor. They are available in hardware stores or on the internet. It is an inverted U-shaped device athat you place over an active mole tunnel (more on that later). You **** it and when a mole travels underneath it, a spring loaded spear shoots down into the tunnel killing the mole. I found it best to work the spear into and out of the ground a few times before actually setting the trap to ensure the spear could travel freely into the tunnel to kill the mole.

The real trick to trapping is to determine active tunnels. I used little survey flags to identify tunnels in the yard then tamped the raised tunnels flush with the ground. The next day, if I found a raised tunnel where a flag had been set, I knew it was a travel tunnel. A raised tunnel where there was not a flag is a feeding tunnel and likely is only used once by the mole. Travel tunnels are used repeatedly, so that is where you want to set the trap.
If you want rid of them fastest, trap them and kill the grubs. If you want them to more or less go away on their own, just kill the grubs and eventually the moles will leave, but not until they have really dug up the yard to make sure there isn't any food left.
Poison, although sold widely, is pretty ineffective according to my research and experience.

Good luck!

 

Carl: "Don't be alarmed Mr. Gopher. It is only me, Mr. Rabbit" What a great movie!

Seriously though, I have seen some whacky ideas for killing them. In Farm Show magazine, which highlight home-made inventions primarily by farmers and rural folk, I saw a trap consisting of and inverted 12 ga. shotgun! Looked like it worked great, but the editors did add a disclaimer that it shouldn't be tried in a household with pets or children!

 

I have tried/used many style of traps, and will only recommend the one pictured below.



The mistake most people make with setting a trap, is that they place it at a mound, which is incorrect. Mounds are only 'clean-out' passages for their tunnels. You need to find a major 'trunk' tunnel, typically found between mounds. I do this by use of a long screw driver, poking it into the grass (again, between mounds) until I come across a void (the tunnel). Carefully excavate a small hole just large enough for the trap. Follow the rest of the trap directions to sure success.

Good luck.

 

a cat and an inground swimming pool with a smooth metal round coping. The Cat will bring you most of the moles that venture above ground. The swimming pool will drown all the rest. The moles chase worms and bugs around at night, and fall right into the pool. I am pulling drowned moles out of my pool skimmer all summer long. I have a tunnel here and there but my grounds are still very smooth.

 

I was considering digging a trench aroung the edges of my gardens, filling them part way with broken glass at a depth that the tunnels run, and filling over them.

I figure they'll get cut up or just go away.

 

When I was younger, I remember my dad stick moth ***** in there runs. I was to young to remember if it worked but only seems like a temporary solution.

 

I once ran a galvanised pipe from a lawnmower to the opening of a burrow, and packed dirt around it.

The pipe thread exactly matched the lawnmower exhaust threads.

I ran it full bore, adding oil to the intake by taking the filter off and dripping it in to see where the smoke came up. The last hole was fifty feet away.

They never came back...

It was an ugly way of doing it, but it worked.

I wonder what a two cycle powered leaf blower might do?

 

I used both the spear type trap and the jaw traps. Both work but need a little different technique.

The spear trap is tall and you will need to coer it with something like a bucket and seal up any openings so that no sun light gets in.

The jaws are much smaller and can fit right down in the tunnel. You just need a sheet of plywood or something to cover the hole and put dirt over any light openings.

I have been successful with both and cannot say which works better. The jaws are easier to setup since they are small.

Keep your hands clean and try NOT to get any of your human scent on the traps. I like to kind of drag the trap in the fresh dirt to help get rid of my smell.

You might try the two different traps at different times since I suspect moles become trap shy when they have a close call with one type.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson.

 

Greywolf...that is one of the neatest tricks I have read on this site. I don't care if it works or not, if I see one mole, rat, or groundhog tunnel I am going to try it.

 

This would be the most fun.

http://www.rodenator.com/

Though I wouldn't use it in OK now with the fire danger.

Check out the Videos.

http://www.rodenator.com/videos.html

 

My brother in law (the gardner) buries 2 liter pop bottle in the ground with about 2" of spout sticking up.... just like blowing on the bottle the wind makes a whoooooooot noise like a tug boat and they don't seem to like it. he has the about 2 foot apart all the way around his garden and 4 feet around the yard.

 

Both traps listed work well. I have also found that gassing them works well also. They look like small flares and work about the same. Open up a tunnel strike the gas stick put in hole and cover. It will kill or chase all of the critters out. You will be amazed how many tunnels are probably in your yard. I bought the poisin gas at a local farm store. I don't recall the name, victor, maybe. Similar to Greywolf's idea, I am just not inventive enough to come up with it on my own.

T. Roberts
UFD Local 1147

 

lol feed them a really salty cracker lol one summer we saw a little one that kept comin out of the hole so we laided out a couple crackers to watch him eat he just laid their half way in the hole..it was realy hot that day too..so then we felt bad...anyways i dont know if that'll get rid of em..but a macho male cat will...cant count how many times i got a surprise on the steps...birds too...he'll catch em mid flight..