[Shop-talk] Gopher control

[Eric Murray]

A long time ago I wrote about my gopher problem.... big lawn, lots of gophers.
I got some good advice to use lye and chlorine bleach.
That's worked ok for some years but recently the
government put lye on the watch list because it's used for
making meth... buy some and you get on a government list.


Not wanting a no-knock raid on my rural home, I stopped buying lye.
The gophers have gotten out of control.  But last month my
wife was at a gardening seminar and got a flyer for "Gophers Limited"
which is a local gopher-eradication service.
(http://www.gopherslimited.com/)
The owner is pretty good about sharing his information.   One bit of 
which is that he uses "cinch traps".

I looked at some of his videos on youtube and bought six traps from
http://www.wildlifecontrolsupplies.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=NWS001&Product_Code=NWSCT01

(they had them cheaper than the Gophers Limited guy and I could order
in lots of 2 instead of only 2 or 12).

I got the smaller mole traps since we have small gophers here in California.

I got them today and set them.  Within two hours I had caught two gophers.
One was big enough that he barely fit the trap.

I think these are better than the lye and bleach or anything else
I have tried (poison, poison gas bombs, juicyfruit gum, shooting), and 
they are reuseable.  


Eric