My old cat (RIP now) use to catch them, eat the body & leave the heads by the patio door for me, probably to show her daddy she was earning her keep.

Gophers would sneak in my back yard under the gate & if not caught by Gretchen would end up in the vegetable garden scarfing the vegetable roots. They killed all 3 of the zacunni one summer.

After the cat died I started using gopher traps, which worked very well, I would bait it w/ a turnip piece & they would come-a-running for that while I was at work.

shreader wrote:

My old cat (RIP now) use to catch them, eat the body & leave the heads by the patio door for me, probably to show her daddy she was earning her keep.

Must have been young ones JD as these were at least 5 lbs. if not more. I had a cat that brought dead mice though he wouldn't eat them. He probably thought that I cooked them for him!

yep a gopher is pretty big for a cat to kill, well a normal size cat anyway. Most cats won't even mess with a rat. Maybe thinking about moles which aren't much bigger than a mouse.

The only gophers I ever saw were the college interns who would gopher coffee during meetings.

Gophers, groundhogs, woodchucks......
I recently had to relocate one myself.
About the size of a nice fat housecat.
Ate a hole in my fence, made a boro under my deck and kept eating my Dahlias.
HE had bawlz to go with it. Most of them will scurry right off if you interupt them. Not this critter. My wife was in the kitchen making coffee and looked out onto the deck. He was operched in my flower box and had already destroyed the dahlias in that one having eaten the leaves all the way back to the roots. Wife banged on the window and he looked but went right back to what he was doing. She went out on the deck and thats where I came in. I hear a scream and look out the window from the second floor and he chased her back inside and went back to the flower box. I wnet out with a broom handle and had to whack him a couple of times to get him out of the flowers. He ate all of my bulb plants before they had a chance to bloom. Went and got a trap and relocated him to a non populated area about 10 miles away. Next up on the chopping block are the squirrels, They constantly dig holes in my lawn and flower beds. Fortunately the rabbits didnt show up this year, last year they were destroying my lawn. It wouldnt be so bad if they grazed but they would pick a spot and eat the grass all the way to the roots so I eneded up with a dead patch about 8 inches in diameter, after a few days patches like this were scattered all over the back lawn.

Don't even get me started on the squirrels. Those d*mn things are constantly digging in my beds and uprooting my cuttings. Seems like if you trap or shoot them, twice as many replace them.

This year I'm also fighting the Japanese beetles like crazy. Darn things are eating my bananas and cannas to pieces. I've got one of the traps, but I'm scared to use it after hearing the nightmare stories online how how they attract new bugs for miles. For now I just keep spraying them - at least that kills the ones in my yard.

kanaloa wrote:

Don't even get me started on the squirrels. Those d*mn things are constantly digging in my beds and uprooting my cuttings. Seems like if you trap or shoot them, twice as many replace them. This year I'm also fighting the Japanese beetles like crazy. Darn things are eating my bananas and cannas to pieces. I've got one of the traps, but I'm scared to use it after hearing the nightmare stories online how how they attract new bugs for miles. For now I just keep spraying them - at least that kills the ones in my yard.

Spread some cayenne pepper around, squirrels will leave it alone and whatever it is near, or on.

Is a gopher the same as a groundhog?

phileysmiley wrote:

Is a gopher the same as a groundhog?

They are two different critters, the groundhog is much larger than a gopher

Ok here is the skinny on moles, gopher, and groundhog, (-:

moles are about the size of a mouse maybe a little bigger at 4" or so

gophers are a little more than twice the size of a mole at around 12"

and the groundhog can get to be the size of a small dog, Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog