I like rodents. I'm cool with the roof rats, even when they build nests in my wall and cause me to have to tear part of my roof off. But I lost my tolerance for gophers when the woman down the street lost her horse because of a leg broken in a gopher hole. I used enough poison to kill every owl, hawk, and pet cat in Ventura County and STILL didn't get a single gopher. I used anticoagulants, strychnine laced grain, poison gas bombs. I thought about buying a Rodentinator, which uses propane to blow the dang things sky-high. What finally worked for me is plain old metal traps. I buy the good ones with the green coating, because they can be set, whereas the cheap galvanized ones at Home Depot are not well made and you have to re-bend the wires. You have to move fast when you see the mounds, as Hoovb said, and be persistent. You have to dig BIG DEEP holes right in the middle of your garden. It is tedious and time consuming and frustrating and new gophers move in and you have to trap them too. Otherwise, you are just feeding a booming population of gophers, unless everything you grow is in cages. You can eradicate them, though, in suburban contexts if you don't have open fields or slopes nearby. We were gopher-free for years when Mr. Brock lived next door because he was a master trapper. Now that he's gone, I have shouldered the heavy responsibility of keeping the neighborhood gophers at bay. Sigh. Here is a photo of what Hoovb described. The main tunnel is below the side tunnels, usually quite deep. Two metal traps are set, one for each side of the tunnel. Wire attaches them to the trowel so the rodents don't bury the traps. The traps will be pushed down the hole as far as my arm can go when I am laying face flat on the ground. It will take six or seven attempts before I push them far enough without setting them off. By that time I am ready to dig up the whole garden by hand and strangle each gopher personally. My collection of traps. The big one is not for gophers: Renee

I use copper and lime (once) while dormant, mainly because of the awful canker we get showing up in the spring, and I get anthracnose on other things in the garden/orchard. I still use Bordeaux (thus the lime), because my local Feed N Seed has the premix powdered and quite convenient. I think that helps for canker. Probably. I've done it so long, it's hard to say. I still get some canker, so it's not foolproof. Maybe I need to do more than one round, like for orchards. Hmmm :) Blackspot is still a definite problem in the spring, later, in my yard, yeah. I switch to Bayer once it gets bad enough, even though it's usually still cool enough for the heavy-hitting organic chemicals at that point. The Bayer takes the fewest sprays of anything I've tried (here), so I like that all around.

Personally I have had the most success with this sort of trap: The key is knowing how to properly use the traps. If I can find a good hole I get them 1st try about 90% of the time. This is a good informative video on how to do it properly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epe4DXA1yow We have such sandy soil here that I dont put the plug back on top of the hole, I use a small piece of plywood that is about 18" square and toss it on top and put dirt around the edges so that no light gets in. When I check the next day, normally the trail of ants is a dead give away that I got my gopher. I lay 2 traps 1 facing in each direction in the hole, have never used the peanut butter but it may be worth a shot. To be proactive against the gophers, I take the casualties and toss them on top of a 6' tall post that has a platform on top and usually that day, or sometime in the evening a hawk or owl will come by and eat them. I figure by feeding the prey animals they will be more likely to be in my area and they can do the job for me! Another technique I used to do is to take the dead gopher and push him into the hole I just caught him in and then fill the rest of the hole in. That way when he decomposes the stink passes through the rest of the passages hopefully sending a message to fellow gophers that this is not a safe area. My uncle has 300 acres and the gophers squirrels and moles get in and undermine graded banks etc, he ended up resorting to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeywW7r4LA4 Must say its one of the funnest gopher traps I have ever used!

Thanks- just the answer I was hoping for- Macabees are on the way- thanks for that tip earlier. There is not a gopher in sight out there now (all closer to the house where we regularly irrigate) but once the drips get set up and the soil moistens out there, they will follow.... Christy