Some Options For Gopher Repellents

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The gopher is an interesting little mammal that likes to carry away extra food to its home. They are able to do this due to the pouches that are on the inside of their cheeks. They are known for the complex tunnel systems that they build underground so that they can eat vegetation. Their long teeth and front leg provides them with the ability to push dirt out of their tunnels and up onto the ground. These mammals are more often seen in North America in areas such as Canada. People have claimed to see them in Southern areas, but more than likely they saw moles which look similar to gophers.



How to Remove Gophers With Repellent - Gophers are very irritating creatures, just like moles, voles, shrews, woodchucks, chipmunks, prairie dogs, and squirrels, they burrow a lot which causes a lot of damage within our yards. What adds more frustration to these creatures is that, they easily adapt to noise, poison baits and other things when we try to eliminate them. They learn when they survive, thus making them harder to eliminate the second time we try to get rid of them.

Anyway, let’s talk more about gophers, so that we’ll know what we’re dealing with. They are rodents that are about the same size of a rat, except they dig and rats don’t. They are also sometimes mistaken for moles due to the fact that they burrow. Using their sharp teeth and claws as a rotor gives them the ability to go through under your lawn. And the interesting part is that, they are very acrobatic because they do somersaults to push off objects blocking their tunnel.



Gophers look cute because they have these small ears and small eyes. However, the word “cute” is the only factor that’s good about these physical attributes, because due to their small ears and small eyes they have poor auditory and vision. Since they have poor vision, they have their whiskers and tail to help them when they burrow underground. Their whiskers and tail acts as a sensor to guide their way in the dark. And lastly in regards with their appearance, their teeth never stop growing.

That’s why they have the need to gnaw to keep their teeth short. If they don’t gnaw, their teeth will grow as long as 14 inches or more. Now we know what a gopher looks like and what it can do. We’ll now give you guys some tips on how to remove the gophers from your properties. The first thing you can do to keep them out of your property is that, you can mix milky spore bacteria and nematodes into your soil, which is good for your garden and destroys what the gophers eat, therefore making them find another place to find grub.

We can also use a repellent called, P3 International P7816 Attack Wave Ultrasonic Pest Repeller. This high-tech device is an easy to use weapon against gophers or other rodents even. This device releases powerful sound waves that affect their auditory and nervous system, thus making them evacuate. The sound wave can reach up to 5,000 square feet of an open area. This device is unharmful to neither humans nor our pets at home, but with some few exceptions like gerbil, hamster, guinea pig or other rodents.

You may also use Castor oil granules to spread around your yard. Gophers hate the scent of the Castor oil granules. You can use a spreader machine to distribute the Castor oil granules in an evenly manner all throughout the garden. If you Sprinkle water on the granules that are spread throughout the garden, it will speed up the dissolution, thus giving it a faster effect. These methods I’m sharing are humane ways on removing gophers. These methods do not harm the rodents but make them feel uninvited.

We wouldn’t want to kill the rodents because they might rot and smell on our yard once they die. However, for me, the best way on removing gophers is by trapping them. We can buy traps from hardware stores or order them online. If we’re going to trap them, we must use a humane trap, which does not harm gophers. Traps are really easy to use and once we capture them, we can take them to an isolated place which is far from the human society. And we release them there, giving them a new home where they can burrow all they want without anyone getting frustrated.

Go back to the main how to get rid of gophers page for better information.

Gopher Repellents - Types, and do they work?

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Gophers are not animals that can be easily scared away, and it does make sense when you think about it too. These creatures live underground in huge, connecting tunnel circuits, often directly below where humans live. The vibrations from human activity alone should frighten these critters off, if they were so easily removed, and if that weren't the case, the noise we make would surely do it. The thing is, these gophers have learned to live quite comfortable with all the noise and commotion we bring with us.

Many of the gopher repellents on the market rely on noise or vibrations in order to encourage the creature to leave. A vibrating stick, for example, is not going to do the job if a car parking in the garage, directly over where the animal might be sleeping, didn’t do it. If the noise of your kids doesn't manage to scare this animal off, when they're running rampant in the garden and making all the noise under the sun, no sound machine is going to work. These creatures have evolved, much like a wide variety of other wild creatures. They know how to live alongside us, or even under us, and they're managing to do it for really long periods of time without us even knowing about it too.

That really does mean that most of the gopher repellents you were looking at buying are now out the window. That’s the vibrating sticks out, the ultrasonic noise machines out, and even pinwheels and radios too. Lights might work for a while, but they’ll usually just encourage the creature to go back underground again. Shining lights underground won't have effect either, because the gophers will just create new tunnels that are away from the bright beams of light.

It really does seem like there’s no end to this battle, right?
Granular repellents are another product you can buy to try and get rid of gophers, but this is something that will need to be reapplied regularly, and that comes with added cost. Usually containing some sort of castor oil-based stuff, you’re not using poisons or toxins, but they aren’t always that effective. In fact, many homeowners still give us a call, meaning the repellents they’ve bought and used just don’t do the job at all. If these repellents really, truly worked, don’t you think all homes and buildings would be wild animal free by now?

Read the How to Get Rid of Gophers page.
For more information, you may want to click on one of these guides that I wrote:
How To Guide: Who should I hire? - What questions to ask, to look for, who NOT to hire.
How To Guide: do it yourself! - Advice on saving money by doing wildlife removal yourself.
Guide: How much does wildlife removal cost? - Analysis of wildlife control prices.