Monday, June 29, 2009

Live snaring Gophers

People often ask me at lectures about live trapping gophers to relocate them. You can catch a gopher in their main burrows using a special trap called a Sherman tram. This aluminum folding trap is used by many researchers to catch all kinds of small rodents and can be effective but requires constant monitoring as gophers can only live so long in them, usually just a few hours. As gophers do come out of their burrows at night, traps like a small Havahart can also be used baiting them with onions or carrots. Again, if you were to leave this trap out all night chances are that the gopher would probably die of exposure before you got to them in the morning. This not only defeats the purpose of live trapping but also is not humane in the least.
I pondered this a lot in my business as I like to study gophers and then one day my daughter, 12 years old at the time, told me of a f
ellow student who, during morning break and lunchtime, was catching gophers every day, putting them into his lunchbox and then releasing them after school in a nearby meadow and saving them from the trapping program that was in progress by the maintenance staff.
So my daughter told me he just used a piece of string and a couple of pencils. I asked her to investigate and learned the very useful "two pencil" method of snaring gophers. I found it to be a great and effective method and kind of fun as well and much akin to fishing.
The setup is simple. You take a piece of cotton string about ten feet long and tie a small loop in one end, then pass the string back through the loop to make a loos
e snare. Place this loop around one of those open gopher holes that you see usually in the morning or during the day. Often you can tell by dark moist soil marking the spot. Place the two pencils next to each other so that they are by the gopher burrow hopefully opposite the direction the gopher is coming out of. You can tell this by the fan of soil that is pushed out by the gopher. You want to be opposite the fan of dirt. Then take the loop of string and lay it around the burrow with the knot of the small loop against the pencils so that when you pull the string, the pencils will hold the knot in place and allow the larger loop to snare the gopher around the chest. Then play out the string and relax on the ground in a prone position and act like you are part of the scenery.

Soon the gopher will come popping up to check out what is going on. Wait till he is going in and out digging and pushing soil and then just give the string a light tug and you may have got him.
Keep tight tension on the string and lift him into a convenient container like a bucket or lunchbox. Relocate as soon as possible and put some soil and grass in the bucket so the gopher can stay cool. Relocate to a spot where the gopher may not encounter an angry gardener or lawnkeeper - so zen and karma free -aahh. Keep doing this until you are gopher free and then you may want to start visiting neighbors.