Some may believe that the groundhog foretells the coming of spring, but here it’s the pocket gopher that does so—and his arrival’s not nearly as celebrated.

Before the ground has fully thawed and dried sufficiently for the tractor or hoe, the gopher has already begun nesting with young, pushing to the surface the detritus accumulated in its winter tunnels. Finding a patch of lily bulbs or other valuable roots, a single gopher can do hundreds of dollars in damage in a few days. If it finds a row of potatoes, you’ll see that the cartoon Chip and Dale are not exaggerations on reality – the gopher pulls down one plant after another into its tunnel, as many as 10 or 20 a day.

As a consequence, farmers curse the rodents, try to poison them with strychnine or phostoxin (not registered for such use, but nonetheless used), gas them with carbon monoxide, blow them up with propane, suck them out of the soil with tractor generated super-vacuums, but the method that seems to work best is the old-fashioned one of trapping. As Idaho’s unofficial record-holder in gopher trapping (I once caught 4,500 in an 80-acre field over a month long period), I can assure you it’s a simple task—simple if done correctly in the right conditions.

Late spring, when the young gophers are just emerging, is the best time to trap. Before that the parents are wary of predators—this includes you—and are more likely to sense danger. Though it might seem better to trap earlier, when the gophers first begin working, the success rate of early trapping is far lower—and every failure is often permanent: once a gopher has evaded a trap, the likelihood of ever catching it drops dramatically.

Watch the gophers work for a few days. They work in the late evening and early morning, sometimes all day if the weather’s humid and cloudy. Look at the gopher mounds, the texture and color of the soil—here, in the white alkaline soil, a new mound will be darker, while on the morning after a rain, the new mound will be lighter in color. Trapping in new mounds is far more successful than trapping in old ones and far more easy.

Look closely at the usually circular mound and you’ll see a smaller circle inside it, generally at one edge. This “dimple” signals the tunnel entrance. Dig on the outside edge of the dimple, opposite the mounded earth, and if you’ve found a fresh mound, a single shovelful of earth should reveal the gopher hole. If not, poke around where you’ve dug, looking for softened earth where the gopher has tunneled, then refilled.

While there are many styles of traps, the wooden box trap seems most humane and is most successful for me. Jaw traps can maim without killing, and many metal traps require a great deal of preparation when setting them. The box trap has a hole at one end that allows light and air into the tunnel, bringing the curious gopher to the surface where it triggers a guillotine-style device designed to break its neck – this is not, I suppose, a task for the squeamish.

To prepare the hole for the trap, clean dirt from the tunnel, shave the outside face flat and level the entrance where you will set the gopher trap, so the trap will sit evenly and tight against the hole. This is crucial! Imagine you’re building a porch – any seams or irregularity, any difference, tells the gopher something’s wrong, making it wary.

Set the trap as hair-trigger as possible, then sprinkle enough dirt to cover the interfaces of earth and trap – at the entrance, at the floor, over the triggering mechanism. The only light that the gopher should see is the light the trapper intends it to – that coming in from the trap’s end.
All this should be undertaken in the morning, in calm weather, when it’s not too cold. Too much wind, too much light, too much cold and a gopher is less likely to make a fatal mistake – it knows, somehow, that something is up.

There are other pitfalls: the competing predator. Coyotes, skunks, weasels, foxes, house cats, and dogs may find your traps before you do, and if there is a gopher inside they will steal the gopher without leaving you the trap for future use. Occasionally, a predator accustomed to such easy feed will itself be trapped – I twice caught skunks which must have been suicidal, so tightly were their heads wedged inside the traps. Stake your traps or pull them up in the evening, before the predators are working, or you’ll lose them. And make sure to mark their location with a flag – your memory isn’t as good as you think.

When you fail to get your gopher, when it sets the trap off without getting caught, when it fills the trap with earth, the best thing to do is wait a few days before trying to catch it again. The gopher has earned its “degree” by evading the trap, and doesn’t forget quickly, if ever. Each time you miss, its intelligence rises tenfold, making your task more difficult with each failure. If possible, time your second attempt with another alteration in the gopher’s routine – after a sudden and heavy storm, following a disturbing tillage, or some similar event that will take the gopher’s attention from the difference you are making in its tunnel. While animals may not have a human’s style of intelligence, they recognize danger and change in an identical manner and so respond accordingly.
Those who don’t want to kill gophers can live-trap them, but let them be warned to take the gophers to the next county. It’s not unusual for a gopher to travel a quarter-mile overnight to a new home base. Despite having short legs, they are surprisingly fast and agile.

If you find yourself to be a good trapper and you live in an area of high infestations, you might try trapping for others. I ran a trap line for a number of years, catching as many as 250 gophers a day in problem areas – not bad for a part-time job. Charge a bounty to the landowner of at least two dollars per gopher and you can turn other people’s problems into your benefit.¶

Ralph Thurston, who trapped gophers for a living while in graduate school, is now a flower farmer at Bindweed Farm in Blackfoot, Idaho.