Gophers or Moles in my lawn

I seem to remember seeing someone at GS with a truck that advertised Gopher eradication.  I live in the East Bay, in Danville and I have a gopher or mole destroying my landscape.  Is there an NCKA Brother who does this professionally?  I have tried poison, gas from "Gopher Bombs" and traps but have yet to catch a single one.  Help!

Martin

I bought 1 gallon bottle of "Uncle Chen" chilli pepper and poured it in the holes and it helped 

Macabee traps work work well for gophers.  My cat has a much better catch rate, though.  Somewhere I read that gophers are super territorial and there should only be one per 1/8th acre or something like that but that's bullshit because between the cat and myself we have killed or relocated at least a couple dozen on my tiny lot within the last two years.  She just brought another one in two days ago.

Martin

What do the mounds look like? If they have a volcano shape and the dirt is fine in texture then it is probably gophers. If the up kicked dirt is coarse and more irregular in shape and you can see an upraised "track" running a few feet across the lawn then it is probably a mole. Moles are tough to get rid of but you might try locating a tunnel and run a flexible pipe off a gas engine, like a lawnmower, and let the exhaust go into the hole for 15 minutes or so. Gophers can be trapped and a lot of systems are on the net. Good luck.

I have the same problem. Mines are gophers. They eat up my vegetables, roses, make a big mess. Was never able to catch one, they're so fast. Tried castor oil, seemed to help for a short time, but they came back. So I just went out and bought me a air rifle. Been practicing my shots. Can't wait to kill one. Those air rifle seems pretty powerful nowadays!

Hi,
I was the one with the "Mole Whisperer" truck at GS.  I trap Gophers, Moles, and Voles commercially. 
Gophers are pretty easy to trap as are voles.  Moles are a little harder, though I get them all the time.
Can you post or PM me with some photos of the digs you have and I can tell you what you have.  Moles like to run along walkways and edges, and you may feel soft ridges in your lawn if there is no mesh under it. Both moles and gophers push out mounds, but the mole mound is usually higher, rounder, and more symmetrical  than a gopher mound. 
I am going for Abs this weekend and fishing, but will be back Monday and could call you and tell you what to do, or discuss my coming out to do it for you. 
Unfortunately gas does not work most of the time unless you are lucky or have a lot of it.  Successful trapping takes some knowledge and care to get them consistently (or luck).

Go to Walmart and get some dry ice.  Break it up in small chunks and drop several pieces down each hole.
As the dry ice melts, the straight CO2 will look for the lowest points, thus flooding the caverns in the yard replacing any oxygen that the rodent needs to breath with.  They leave, or die and that is their only options. 

For moles, you can clip off some thick mean blackberry vine and shove that down each hole.  Try not to touch any of the vine that will enter the ground, as they can smell you and will avoid that opening.  The openings they don't avoid will rip them up trying to get past the toothy vine.

Air-rifle, IPA and rocking chair....good-times.

Hi,
I was the one with the "Mole Whisperer" truck at GS.  I trap Gophers, Moles, and Voles commercially. 
Gophers are pretty easy to trap as are voles.  Moles are a little harder, though I get them all the time.
Can you post or PM me with some photos of the digs you have and I can tell you what you have.  Moles like to run along walkways and edges, and you may feel soft ridges in your lawn if there is no mesh under it. Both moles and gophers push out mounds, but the mole mound is usually higher, rounder, and more symmetrical  than a gopher mound. 
I am going for Abs this weekend and fishing, but will be back Monday and could call you and tell you what to do, or discuss my coming out to do it for you. 
Unfortunately gas does not work most of the time unless you are lucky or have a lot of it.  Successful trapping takes some knowledge and care to get them consistently (or luck).

It seems that Darwinian principles do hold true in the gopher population on my two acres. I have trapped all the naive and stupid ones leaving the smart, almost intellectually brilliant rodents to live and reproduce. Lately, with both macabee and clincher traps they are back filling tunnels and either plugging the trap or tripping it without getting caught. Moderate control is the most I hope for. The owls get some, gopher snakes get some, the cat gets some and I get a bunch but when each gopher litter averages nine pups they have the edge.

You just need a good gopher recipe.

I have foxes at my place on the river but they don't help I'm thinking of getting a Heron.

You Gotta get these traps

http://www.gophergoner.com/

My father found these for using in his vineyard, bought a couple traps and slayed them in a week or so!!! I used em on my front lawn and work bad ass!!! clean kill

Drop a Chiklets gum pellet in the hole. Gophers love mint. They can't digest latex, clogs their intestines = die!

Totally benign to other domestics like dogs or cats.

I Zod Out

Air-rifle, IPA and rocking chair....good-times.

That's how I get mine too!  Great minds think alike.  Once I saw one and it was moving in it's tunnel along a sidewalk.  I had  pencil in my pocked and I stabbed it!  He put up a fight and I flipped him onto the lawn where my cat came up to it.  Then a big blue jay started to dive bomb the cat, so the cat ran off.  Once the cat was gone, this blue jay swooped down and grabbed the mole and flew off with it!!!  Who knew a jay would get a mole if given the chance!  No more shooting jays.

Here are two other ways I've killed 'em;
put Juicy Fruit gum in the hole.  To do this, start by wearing surgical gloves of some sort to keep your taint off the gum.  Roll the gum like a sleeping bag, into a roll.  Take a stick and poke a hole in the raised raceway the mole made and drop the gum down into the hole. 

I've also had good luck with the poison gummy worms.  Those are available on Amazon.  Very expensive, but I've found that only half a worm is needed and once you got the bastard, you can gather up the other worms for another day. 

But far and away the best way is shooting them with an air rifle.  Yee Haw!!!! 

Charles,
That is a reasonable  theory and I like Darwin in general.  A very few gophers can get trap wise. But a more likely explanation is that you got the adults, and the juveniles are the ones left. This is the right time of year for them.  Small weaned gophers can be the size of a large mouse.  They are notoriously hard to trap and can back-fill a hole or get around the jaws of a trap without getting caught.  Most of the hard to get gophers I have trapped have been small.  Persistence will get them, but going to a mole size trap with smooth working parts can help. 
Plan where you set your traps to enclose their likely paths.  Be very sure to get a perfect trap set with no resistance.  Make sure that the tunnel you are trapping does not split within 6 inches of it's opening, or they can come around the other side sometimes.  You should be able to get them all.  Of course new ones can migrate in from the neighboring lands to fill the void, but I  trapped 45 gophers from a 3 acre customer's ranch and have had no new ones come in for the last 3 months.
Good Luck,
Bob