Take a look on the comptuer to see if you have any "varmint removable" folks in your area. That's the "nice " way to do it.

Option #2; Do you have a rifle or hand gun bigger then a .22? Learn his movements then surprise him.

We usually trap and remove them.

Ken all we have is an air rifle. Husband says it would stun but not kill . he also suggested calling someone. I guess I should just do that

grapefruit where do you take them? I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that . My aunt got bit by one and had to be checked for rabies

An air rifle will just piss him off. Call a trapper. They'll take him out in the woods a long way from humans. You don't want to get bit by one. It will hurt. Think about that idiot that picked up a stunned beaver on the side of the road. Holding it high by the tail and him without a shirt on, waiting for his buddy to take a picture. The beaver woke up and bit him HARD on his breast. He now it missing part of his body. You REALLY don't want to get bit by a large rodent.

Oh ken thanks ! I'll just call . Yikes !!

Yes, we are very fearful of getting bitten. We do it a not very nice way ( but better than shooting them). We leave them in the trap for several days until they are weak, and then drive them out to the mountains. We can then easily open the trap, and they will then just leave. We do not own any guns.

My dogs hunt and eat them. Not kidding. Super gross, but very helpful. Called the vet and they said it’s ok... so I kind of encourage it. Although I let my hubby clean it up if needed. Too much nature.

If I didn’t have dogs I would call a varmint control person just like you are doing.

Think cheap, Lilyfinch. Hiring someone will cost $! You will have to get them back for the next groundhog, on and on. You can control the situation very well yourself.

Your best bet is to live trap. You will probably have an ongoing groundhog problem. A Havahart live trap sized for a hog will be a good investment. Home Depot, Lowe's, etc., have them.

Set the trap near it's hole. If you have nosy neighbors be discreet. Tell no one what you're up to. You may want go put your trap where prying eyes cannot see....animal rights people, you know. You may have to conceal your trap. Don't worry, the hog will find it with the scent of the bait drawing it to the trap.

The best bait is ripe cantelope, a couple chunks with the rinds on. No groundhog on earth can resist ripe cantalope. Buy one, cut it into chunks rind and all. Freeze what you don't use now for next time. If it is mushy, all the better for the scent to draw the hog. You're not serving it a meal, just luring it by scent into the trap. Apple chunks work, but not as good.

If you can get a single door trap they're better, but a double door works, too.

Place the bait on the trap's bottom wire as far away from the open door (lock the opposite door closed on a double door trap), not on the bait tray, but beyond it right at the closed, locked door.

Place the bait on the tray, and the hog will reach in, and steal the bait and not set off the trap. Or it will set off the trap, but since its butt is still outside the trap, when the door slams down it hits the hog's back, and it scoots back to safety. You want it to go all the way into the trap for a successful catch.

Take your trapped hog to be released to a place at least 5 miles away, preferably across a river it cannot swim over to return. Never attempt to remove the hog from the trap. Take it inside the trap, and all.

Put a large plastic piece under the trap in your car. They will often urinate and deficate. Carry the trap by its handle. Never put your hand on the trap wire. You can get a very serious bite. Hogs are quick to bite.

The average mature groundhog weighs about 10 lbs., but they can get up to 30 lbs., but not at this time of year. The trapped hog will be heavy. Carrying the trap by its handle with the hog in it in it is very awkward, because you get thrown off balance as it scurries around, trying to get out. Be very careful. You can work the trap onto a piece of tarp, then drag it to your car. Two people can lift the trap by those cross rods at the opposite ends of the trap's top.

You can do this, with hubby's help. God speed.

Moses

Cori Ann,

A farm Rottweiler I know of had a special talent for keeping the farm clear of groundhogs. He would sit at a holed groundhog's hole for as long as it took for the hog to peek out, lunge at it, drag it out, and eat it. Good doggie!

Moses

How many burrow entrances are there? If there's only 2, you could try pouring water down one entrance and have a trap waiting at the other one.

It's sad, but even though I an totally against guns, I think that the bottom line is that just shooting the poor creep in the head is actually the kindest and most humane way to get rid of it. I had terrible, terrible problems with badgers;I worked hard on fencing them out, but the situation was so bad that, out of desperation, I spent about 160$ on the extra-large Havahart trap. I did set it and put it out, but was taken aback by just how heavy the thing was, even empty! If I DID catch a badger, how in tarnation would I carry the huge thing out to my car? It would've been necessary to ask my DH for help,etc...I wound up removing the trap without ever having caught a badger. Finally I finished my fencing; now ,once in a while one will manage to get into my garden but the a situation is sustainable.

But worse yet was the info I gleaned from Internet on trapping wild animals. It is far from humane; in reality, it's condemning them to a slow and painful death in most cases; it is very unusual for re-located animals to survive. The experience of being caught in the trap is deeply traumatic for a wild creature, and tends to weaken their cardiovascular systems. Once re-located, they don't know where to find water and food, and the pre-existing natives do not welcome them. So if they are lucky they'll be killed in a fight before they can starve to death.

There is no easy, comfortable solution, I fear. I myself gave the trap away to a man who did some work for me; he's the sort of person who will trap the animals in order to eat them, so he won't end up "torturing them out of soft-heartedness" as I would have wound up doing. I think if I were you I'd just pay someone to get rid of it. I'm sorry if I sound cruel.

Lilyfinch,

If my Uncle Johnny was still alive, and he lived across the road from you, he would be your favorite neighbor. He would take care of your groundhog problem, then bring you a plate of breaded, deep fried groundhog....some of the best eating there is. Tastes better than rabbit, meatier, especially a big hog.

Groundhogs are not scavengers. They are very picky vegetarians, eating only the tenderest, choicest matter. They especially love clover.

I don't think there is any worse destroyer of vegetable gardens than a groundhog, far worse than rabbits, simply because of their much larger size, and the fact they are true hibernators. They will dig under or easily climb a 4' fence to get to their food. Groundhogs will climb trees to get fruit. They must eat double time to put on enough fat to survive their winter sleep.

Surprisingly, where groundhogs are local around here (fortunately not for me, my city garden is rabbit, groundhog, and deer free...a raccoon or 'opossum, occasionally), I have never heard of them touching a rose! Probably it's the same for you, Lilyfinch, but perennials and veggies, they decimate them.

One way or another you will get a handle on your groundhog(s).

Moses

I had one ravaging my garden as well and like Moses said, it sure had weird picky choices of meals that evolved during the season.

It started with the parsley, than the salvias, only the pink ones, then it decided to eat one lilly at a time, after 2 months it discovered a passion for lovage and finally the white salvias were tender enough for him by mid-summer. Fortunately, they never touched the roses.

We bought a live trap online and captured it. It took us a good month to catch Billy (that was its name) and we caught tree skunks in the process which we released because they don't really bother me other then digging small holes in the grass from time to time. We tried apples, cantaloups, peanut butter, lettuce and it would most likely catch skunks, so we just narrowed its usual path and caught it without anything in the cage.

We live on an island so we cross the river to release it in a big park. If you really want to do it the "humane" way, they say it's better to do it early spring because otherwise they do not have time to establish themselves and they die during winter here. If I could use my gun in the city, as Bart says, I would opt for this least worst solution...

But the squirrels ! Ohh these are the worst ! Now I use a very effective tube trap to kill them. They are so numerous that they eat absolutely everything and randomly, from rhodos to hibiscus and even my indoor plants that are outside in the summer (Draceanas for God's sake!). And to be fair I don't feel bad at all when they die since one defecated on me while I was eating lunch in the yard.

I don't think there really is a great option with groundhogs. Under some circumstances, perhaps you can tolerate them. But in most cases, they will burrow under structures such as your house, and they can do significant damage to the foundation (they dig out pretty big burrows, really whole networks of burrows, and if that's under your house, thats a problem as it will cause structural instability). Fencing can help, but they are very good diggers, and I have yet to be able to fence an area sufficiently deep to keep them out (it doesn't help that they are also very good climbers, so if they can't dig under, they'll climb over if they want to badly enough). You can try repellants; you never know, you might be lucky. The only thing that ever worked for me is used kitty litter, applied liberally all over the place. But that only worked with one chuck - I have tried it many other times, and it didn't scare them off.

Of course, you could kill them, and the best way would be with a gun. I am very anti-gun, and would never advocate that anybody get one (particularly not if they have little kids). Not to mention you'd have to learn how to use it, and many of us (like me for instance) would probably be incapable of handling one. Finally, most of us live and garden in urban, suburban or only semi-rural areas. In such places, it is probably not legal to go shooting off guns in your yard - I think most areas prohibit firing guns within a certain proximity to an occupied building, such as your house or your neighbor's. So that'll be an issue unless you have a really big place.

There are lethal traps but in many places they are illegal and I think they are a terrible idea, as its too easy to accidentally catch a non-target animal, including possibly somebody's pet. Ditto with poison, with the added risk that, depending on what your area is like, you could also possibly endanger neighborhood kids. You can fumigate burrows with poison, but you sure don't want to do that if the burrow is under your house, and again, I think the risk to yourself and your neighbors of setting off poison gas in your yard is not one you want to take. You could trap the animal and take a hammer to it, if you could figure out how to manage the logistics of that while the animal is in the trap; or you could submerge the trap in water til it drowns, but these options could hardly be called humane. In all of these lethal scenarios, you will also have to figure out how to dispose of the ex-chuck.

You can hire a "professional" who will trap and presumably kill the groundhog. But if you have one woodchuck, the odds are very great that you are going to have many more, and this will quickly become completely unaffordable. I have had as many as 13 chucks in a single season.

So then there's trapping and relocating. I think a lot depends on when you are doing the trapping. In my experience, most woodchuck problems happen in July. Mother woodchucks kick their kids out around then, so you have a whole bunch of young chucks wandering around looking for new territory, and then they often choose your yard. If you catch and relocate them immediately, well, its not as if you are uprooting them from their established territory - they haven't settled in anywhere yet, so your yard is no more a known quantity to them than is the place you relocate them to. I don't trap woodchucks in the early spring, since unless you get really up close and personal with them you can't tell the difference between a boy and a girl chuck, and if its a girl, you don't want to take the chance that she has babies hidden somewhere. Since you are having trouble now (when here they are all still hibernating) I guess their life cycle where you are is very different, so it might be a good idea to do a little research on how this works in your area. As far as giving them time to settle in to a new location before winter, I have read that you can relocate through the end of August and even into early September (here) without worrying about this. Again, you'd want to research your local conditions.

Anyway, I wish you luck with whatever you decide to do - I don't think there's a great option here. So since there is not an easy answer, I think people should not be judgmental of others - we all make the best (and I assume kindest) decisions that we can given our circumstances. In any event, if you search online about groundhog relocation, you'll find a variety of different perspectives on how bad/inhumane it is - its not by any means a cut and dried thing.

Frances in NJ,

You have given Lilyfinch very good, practical advice, and from a person with experience.

Lilyfinch,

Having a working trap or two, stored in the garage, brought out and used when the occasion arises is the most logical, humane approach.

A groundhog problem never ends. The 'Groundhog Shuffle,' will become a way of life, routine after a while.....no big deal, but you have to keep after them.

It's a part of gardening in your paradise there in Tennessee.

Garden damage, damage to your house's foundation, rabies and lime disease a hog can have are all motivating factors to embolden you to take aggressive action.

One last word...the burrow entrances should be filled up with a couple generous shovel fulls of soil to see if they are still active. Active burrows will have their entrances reopened over night. Remember where they are, mark them. Watch for new burrow entrances opening up. If after the hogs are well controlled with no more getting trapped, and you leave the burrow entrances open, rats will move in. Go around sealing your burrows entrances on a regular basis. This way you can see if you still have hogs you don't know about yet when you see a reopened entrance.

P.S. I bet you never expected so many responses to your groundhog dilemma, or I should say, past dilemma! A dilemma addressed is one on the way to a resolution.

Moses

Thank you everyone for your experience and info. My neighbor has a trap to lend us so I'll be using that he said he'll take care of the gross part of getting rid of the groundhog. He hunts so I'll leave that to him . Moses thanks for the idea to recover the hole, I didn't think if that. I'll do that today and see . I'm not sure when they come out of hibernation but I'm guessing soon .

I suppose there are worse problems to have . Fingers crossed we take care of the problem! :)

Lilyfinch,

Good! Neighbor to the rescue!

Just look at the groundhogs as big Japanese Beetles, another garden pest!

Moses

Hahaha Moses !

May be I should give it a try. Here in Québec it seems that it's a tradition that has been lost to eat animals like groundhog, racoons or even squirrels. I remember that in a traditional cooking book of my mom there was a recipe of «ragoût d'écureuil au vin blanc» (white wine squirrel ragout). Though, I would never use my grey squirrels fattened by garbage nibbling.

They used to eat badgers here in Italy! I hope that the man to whom I gave my trap catches then and eats them; he's an old-style sort of guy...

Hi Lilyfinch, My DH often live traps unwanted critters here. We live on a farm in a very rural area, so he relocates them to a "holler" several miles away. I would only add to Moses' instructions that DH wears very heavy, long work gloves while handling the trap once it is inhabited...but if your neighbor is going to take care of that part, all the better. In my experience, shoveling fresh dog poo in the holes before filling them often works without having to trap, but some critters seem immune to that...namely armadillos...not sure about groundhogs, though.