What is the best way to get gophers to pack up and move away? I've tried so many things and nothing is working. Our front yard looks like a war zone! I can't hardly plant anything (so long tulips!) any tips? No poision, we are in the country and I don't want to kill anything besides gophers! Thanks for taking time out to read and answer my question!
Jilly

Assuming gophers are similar to moles, the only luck we have had (in 40 years) is to trap them. And the best luck with that was to hire a trapper who set about 25 traps at once over about a 2 week period. That worked for about 6 months, then new ones moved in. We vacillate between co-existing with them (knocking down the hills and reseeding) and all-out war. Good luck.

I agree with Bonehead, gophers, voles or moles are very hard to get rid of, if not impossible. They breed like crazy and if you do not want to use poison or some other aggressive approach, you are going to have a very difficult time.
If they like your property, you have to discourage them to the point where they realize that they can't stay there.

One thing we've never tried, which may actually work, would be to dig in a physical underground barrier fence (small mesh galvanized wire) around the yard. You'd have to research how deep to go, whatever their normal tunneling habit is I suppose. Our yard is too large and meandering to be practical (and I'm not that bothered by the mole hills) but I could see doing so for a smaller yard, or even just to protect the lawn area. Some cats or dogs also make good hunters, but then instead of hills you get holes. Shrug.

I plant all my roses and bulbs in gopher cages and use these Cinch traps quite successfully but you have to be consistent. I catch several every year, it's an onging battle.

@Bonehead is correct that galvanized mesh can be used where practical. It needs to be at least 18" high and 18" deep and should be bent so there is a significant lip on the gopher side of the mesh. I use the 1/4" mesh around my vegetable garden.

I've used traps with success. After trying a few types of trap I ended up using the Victor Black Box Gopher Trap but other people like other types of traps. Trapping is an art, you'll have to trap for a while before you get good at it. Luckily there is a lot of information on the 'net about how to trap gophers. With a trap my success rate is usually 1 out of 3, which means that if you have a lot of gophers you either need a lot of traps or be prepared to trap for a while to bring the population down. One advantage of traps is you know when you have killed the gopher.

I eventually settled on using poison as my main control method. That was a hard decision to make, since I don't like chemicals and I keep an organic, heirloom, non-gmo garden. But my success rate is much better and its the best way to keep the little beasties off my plants. Gopher Bait (poison) is applied down in the gopher tunnel and the gopher goes deep in the ground to his/her den to die, so there is little chance of a dog or cat or wild animal coming in contact with the bait.

Unfortunately you have to kill gophers to control them. The humane products that claim to make the gophers move away either don't work or only work for a short period of time. Even when they work they only move the gophers a short distance away, like into your neighbor's yard ("Thanks pal") and then they have babies who move back into your property.

However you handle them you are going to be faced with the issue of controlling the population in your general area. It's not enough to just get rid of the ones in your yard since there are gophers breeding like crazy just outside of your yard. Once you start to get your yard under control your little neighbors will move in. So you have to expand your efforts to include the gophers adjacent to your property. Think of it as creating a DMZ.

Good news: you probably have fewer gophers than you think. Gophers are solitary creatures, but they are very busy. A single gopher can have a 1/4 or 1/2 acre or larger territory but they can tear it up in no time. That usually means killing one gopher takes care of a large area or your property but you can't be sure until you get your control efforts underway.

You should also be aware that you have a mature tunnel system in your yard. All those nicely developed main tunnels and laterals are irresistible to a young gopher looking for a new home. So you are going to have to be extra vigilant for a few years until most of the tunnels collapse and its not as attractive.

Good luck and welcome to garden.org

We have lots of gophers here and the only solution seems to be the use of gopher cages, as described, around the specific plants they like to eat. The kind I use is basically a cylinder with a bottom, just bigger than the root ball of a plant I'm about to install. The material is like chicken wire but with a smaller mesh, and I leave a couple of inches (minimum) above ground around the edges. That works to save the plants most of the time, but it obviously doesn't remove the rodent from the situation. Ask at your local nursery for gopher baskets or gopher cages.

It is probably impossible to eradicate these animals from your garden if they are present outside it in the general area, so protection is probably a more feasible approach than control.

Also be aware that ground squirrels also do plenty of digging and they may be responsible for some of the damage you are observing. You will see the squirrels out and about during the day as they forage but gophers not so much. The squirrels tend not to hide the entrances to their holes, whereas the gophers do.

Predators may help. Consider an owl house (basically a box in a tree or atop a tall pole)... you would have to figure out what kind to use, but a friend of ours has one and is pleased to note the appearance of a steady stream of little rodent bones in a pile underneath it. Our dog is a digger and she'll go for gophers but rarely catches them (2 successes thus far) so leaves nothing to show for her effort but a big hole. Cats may be more successful, I wouldn't know.

I don't know if this is true, or not, but the guy that used to do the trapping for us stuck the body back in the tunnel. The theory being that the rotting carcass would discourage others form moving in.

Human hair !
Stick a wad of hair down into there dirt mound, then tamp mound down.
They will ingest some hair when come to open there air vent. They can't digest human hair and will die.
Get hair from your barber.
😎😎😎

Thanks guys! Have any of you tried the Crown Imperial Fritillaira? Was reading that the smell keeps away the gophers in tulip fields, any info on those guys?
Thanks for the help! I'm going to have a ton of questions lol

I know daffodil bulbs will deter them, but if they are in your lawn, it would take a lot of daffs to surround the problem area.

They just go under and around the Daffodils. Their tunnels can be 2' down. Around here, there are people you can hire to set, and maintain traps. Like Suzanne, I use the cinch traps, and try to monitor regularly. If you can put a healthy dent in them in the Spring, you can get them before they've had babies, and keep the population somewhat under control.. but that's the best you can ever do is to just keep it under control.

My 4 cats get most of my voles and gophers but I'm pretty much resigned to living with a few.
About the only plant I grow that they bother are hostas so I've started planting most of them in pots and putting the pots in the ground. I have a big Blue Angel that has responded well to this method.
The only other problem they cause me is tunneling. It can undermine recently planted small plants so I keep an eye on those spots until the plants are well-established. Sometimes I will sprinkle some Tomkat repellent down the hole and let water trickle down the hole washing it into the hole for a few hours.
At least I don't have near as many as I used to.

Great info quercus! Just fantastic! I have to try some of those ideas.

Really appreciate it.

Have any of you tried ultrasonic gopher repellent spikes? They worked for me and I've suggested them to 4 clients that all had similar results. When I first put them in, they dug right next to the spike so I was worried because I had already tried smoke bombs and castor oil pellets but those just made them dig in other areas. After a couple weeks of leaving the spikes on, gopher activity stopped. I left them on for a couple more weeks before turning them off, but a week later there was a new mound so I turned them back on. I got solar powered ones off Amazon so they require zero maintenance, just need sunlight during the day.
They make noise every 60 seconds or so, and gophers/moles/voles don't like the noise and eventually leave. The noise is audible to the human ear, but it's not bad. I found one from Zebedee with an on/off switch because one was being installed outside our bedroom window and my wife didn't want to hear it at night. It also allows us to turn them off if we're hanging out in the back yard, which is cool because most of them have to be disassembled to stop the sound. It changes sounds every few days, which is supposed to keep them from getting used to the sound.
The directions mention that the type of soil has something to do with how effective they are so I'd be interested to see if anyone has had similar results.

I'm going to try these things out. My husband said if they don't work, he's going the bait/poison route. We spotted a red fox on our property a month ago and the gophers (and their mounds) seemed to disappear for awhile. But the fox must have moved on, as the gophers are visibly present again.

@handiesthandyman Jeremy, how large an area can be controlled by each devise and what sort of soil do you have?

I have 10 acres of tree farm. I have 12 victor box traps. I have them tied to portable electric fence stakes. This helps me find the traps again, and keeps coyotes from stealing the traps. (They think I've made them box lunches...)

I have to go an a campaign about twice a year. During that time, I set a traps and check them once a day.

Since a 1 day mound looks like a 5 day mound unless there's been rain, when I have a cluster, I will pick one, set my trap, and spread the others with a rake. This helps me focus on recent activity.

I average about a 30% success rate -- Set 12 traps, get 3-4 gophers.

Gophers are solitary, meeting only to mate. Mom has 4 kits in early spring. If you trap mom before the kits are independent, the kits die.

They are also active all winter, turning your lawn into a battle zone.

They are territorial, but if you kill one, others will take over their tunnels. Once you get them under control, patrol the edge on a frequent basis. Tunnels will collapse over the years, and you will need to fill in.

Gophers can't live on fine grass roots. Too much energy expended per calorie. The fat roots of crab/brome grass will sustain them. They like dandeliion, thistle and alfalfa roots. And of course bulbs.

If you poison them, protect your pets. Warfarin based poisons are toxic enough to kill a small dog or a cat who eats the dead animal. Gophers aren't as bad as mice, since they live and die underground. I've not found an effective poison for them however.

I lost one dog from a mouse caching warfarin bait, dying, then my dog found the remaining bait. Zinc sulfide baits are much safer, as the bait loses it's toxicity shortly after the animal dies. Cached bait is still a problem.

There are liquid dispenser traps, where the rodent has to consume the liquid bait there. They are designed so that the enclosure keeps the bait out of pets reach. You still have the toxic corpse, but a single poisoned gopher is unlikely to kill a medium size dog. Train your pets not to eat found dead.

My rat terrier in my avatar is approaching 16 years now. She's completely deaf, doesn't smell too well anymore, we doubt her eyesight a bait now, too. So she's likely trip over something dead before she realized what it was. LOL. Also, because of the copperhead snakes on the property (one we see with some regularity), she isn't allowed to roam off-leash at the cabin anymore. So our eyes are on her all the time when she is outside the cabin. My pet won't be a problem with these, in other words. LOL