How to Get Rid of Gophers in Your Yard & Garden

How to Quickly Get Rid of Gophers

With Conventional Methods

1. Traps

Kill traps catch and kill gophers quickly and humanely. At Smith’s, we use commercial-grade stainless steel traps that kill gophers instantly and present a low risk of harm for users.

To find traps that you can use to dispatch gophers on your property, visit a home store or garden center.

For trapping to be effective, you’ll need to find the gophers’ burrows and place traps in or near them. Here are a few tips:

• To locate the burrow, get a large, sturdy stick, and locate the freshest gopher mound in your yard.
• Using the stick, probe into the ground 8-12” from the side of the mound.
• The burrow will be about 6-12” deep in the ground. You’ll know you’ve hit it when you feel a sudden drop in the stick.

Once you’ve purchased your traps, follow these tips to set them effectively:

• Use a long screwdriver or other spike to push down into the ground in areas of gopher activity. This will allow you to feel where the tunnels are. Active tunnels will be felt as hollow spots in the ground about 2 to 4 inches deep.
• In the area where you located the tunnel, use a small shovel to dig down into the ground, exposing the burrow.
• Once you’ve exposed the underground tunnel system, clean it out – removing all the clods of dirt you knocked in while you were digging.
• Set the trap 6-8” into the tunnel beyond the burrow’s opening – for best results, be sure to set one trap going in each direction.
• Tie a string around your preferred traps and attach them to a stake so that you can locate, check, and remove them quickly.
• Close the burrow up by placing a piece of cardboard or plywood over it. You can also place soil and sod over the opening, as long as you don’t clog the trap with dirt.
• Check the traps in the morning and evening if you prefer. Alternatively, you can let them sit for a few days.
• If gophers haven’t visited the traps within 48 hours, move the traps to a different location in the active area.

You can set gopher traps all year long since gophers don’t hibernate and are easy to catch in all four seasons.

That said, they’re less active during the colder months, so you’ll need to monitor your traps carefully.

When you check your traps, you may find a gopher still alive in the trap. This is an unfortunate situation, but it’s essential to put the gopher out of its misery swiftly.

The fastest and most humane way to euthanize a live gopher is to use a shovel to inflict blunt force trauma to the head.

Pros: Effective, rapid solution

Cons: May not be appealing to some people, requires disposal of dead animals, may require euthanasia of live animals

2. Bait

Poisonous gopher bait looks and smells like a tasty treat to gophers. When gophers consume the substance, though, it kills them quickly.

Although formulations vary, most baits are made from chemicals like zinc phosphide or anticoagulant rodenticides like warfarin. While Strychnine baits used to be popular, they’re now heavily restricted due to the dangers they present.

While baits are effective, they require a cautious application. Most are hazardous to kids, pets, and dogs, and some are even outlawed in some places.

With this in mind, always follow the instructions on the back of the bait’s packaging and use a dispenser probe to deposit the toxins.

These potions are potentially hazardous to pets and kids and are even outlawed in some places.

With this in mind, always follow the instructions on the back of the bait’s packaging and use a dispenser probe to deposit the toxins. Before you handle any bait, make sure to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), including long pants and gloves. Place all baits directly in gopher burrows and tunnels.

In California, for example, the rodenticide strychnine is legal but must be placed underground – never at lawn level.

That’s because the chemical lingers in the gopher’s system and can easily position predators (like eagles and birds of prey) who consume dead gophers.

Learn more about rodenticide laws in California here.

Pros: Effective, fast-acting, good for large gopher populations

Cons: Highly toxic, potential danger for kids, pets, and other non-pest animals, inhumane, dangerous to the environment, can be expensive

Humanely & Naturally

Wondering how to get rid of gophers without killing them?

Fortunately, there are many options, including these poison-free methods:

3. Exclusion Fencing

Exclusion fencing keeps gophers away from food sources.

Since gophers, like to feed on roots and tubers, installing exclusion fencing (made from fine metal mesh), can prevent pests from burrowing into vulnerable areas of your lawn or garden or pushing soil to the surface.

You can either place exclusion fencing around areas you want to protect (like the garden), dig a trench and line it or lay stainless steel or galvanized wire mesh beneath your lawn’s sod to deter burrowing. Do NOT use chicken wire, since it will deteriorate quickly. Instead, buy wire that’s made for gophers and designed to last underground.

To successfully exclude gophers, the wire mesh should have openings of less than ½” x 1” (small gophers can fit through 1” openings) and should extend at least 24” underground so gophers can’t burrow beneath it. Ensure your fencing extends above ground so gophers can’t just walk into the area and start digging.

Place your plants in stainless steel or high-quality galvanized steel gopher baskets before planting to protect them. This prevents the gophers from being able to gnaw and destroy their root systems.

To protect trees, make sure to use 15-gallon tree gopher baskets. Unlike other gopher baskets, this option breaks down within a few years, so it doesn’t girdle your tree’s roots.

Pros: Effective, affordable, humane, long-term solution

Cons: Difficult to install, requires significant modification to existing landscaping

4. Repellants

Repellents are naturally derived or chemical products that make an area unappealing to gophers and force them to go elsewhere.

To use store-bought repellents effectively, place repellents in and around the burrows closest to your home or garden.

A few days later, place additional repellents in burrows further out in your property, extending the repellents closer to the desired exit point. This approach will gradually push the gophers out of your yard.

Pros: Affordable, humane, non-invasive, safe for kids and pets

Cons: Requires frequent re-application

5. Barn Owl Nesting Boxes

Another way to control gopher populations on your property is to construct barn owl nesting boxes.

This isn’t a quick fix, and it won’t eradicate the gophers on your property. It can, however, help control the population of gophers and other pests over time.

Pros: Natural, organic, beneficial for the ecosystem

Cons: Long-term solution, will not eradicate gophers

6. Remove Shelter and Food Sources

Keep the borders of your garden free of weeds. Gophers are less likely to invade your garden if there’s no food to entice them.

Have your lawn treated for earthworms and other gopher food sources, and clean up fallen fruits and vegetables promptly.

Pros: Natural, organic, non-toxic

Cons: Does not kill gophers, will take time to see results

Avoid These Methods 

❌ Flooding

Some people believe that flooding gopher holes will drive the gophers out.

Unfortunately, it only damages your lawn and loosens the dirt under your grass, making it easier for rodents to tunnel through.

Additionally, flooding gopher holes actually enlarges underground tunnels, which can cause sinkholes and massive water waste.

Plus, gophers can just retreat from their burrows until the water recedes, making this method ineffective and inefficient.

❌ Live Trapping

While live trapping seems like a humane, effective way to get rid of gophers, it’s practically impossible to do it successfully.

Gophers are naturally hemophiliacs, meaning their blood doesn’t clot effectively, and they can’t heal from being wounded. They’re very fragile creatures that cannot be reliably trapped and relocated.

Even if you were able to move a gopher to a new location, gophers are extremely territorial.

The gopher you relocated would likely get into a terrible battle with other gophers in the territory, causing one or both of them to die, anyway.

❌ Fumigating

Fumigation is not a recommended way to get rid of gophers. In addition to being too involved, costly, and dangerous for amateurs, it’s also complex. For starters, fumigation isn’t just one method.

There’s carbon dioxide fumigation, which requires huge Co2 tanks and expensive equipment to inject it into tunnels; carbon monoxide fumigation, which requires costly machines that use recycled engine exhaust to fill tunnels; smoke bomb fumigation; and more.

The only thing they share in common is that they’re all extremely dangerous and potentially harmful.

If that weren’t bad enough, these methods will not reliably eliminate gophers.

When gas begins to enter underground chambers, gophers can simply move some dirt around to seal themselves in a tunnel and avoid the fumes.

With this in mind, choose safer, more effective pest control methods instead.

❌ Scattering pet waste

Although some people will tell you that pet waste scares gophers off, there’s no evidence to support this – so don’t spread your dog’s droppings around.

The same goes for other so-called “home remedies” like human hair and juicy fruit gum – don’t waste your time!

❌ Ultrasonic devices & gopher-repellent plants

We also don’t recommend wasting your money on ultrasonic devices or planting a bunch of supposedly “gopher-repellent plants” since there’s no evidence they deter the pests.

❌ Castor oil

While many online sources recommend castor oil as a natural repellent, there’s not enough conclusive evidence that it works.

Although it’s been studied as a repellent for moles, there is very little evidence that it’s effective against gophers.

How Do Exterminators Deal with Gophers?

Depending on the severity of the gopher infestation, a professional pest management company like Smith’s will offer the following:

• Trapping. Smiths’ trained pest control experts will locate gopher tunnels, expose a small portion of them, and place professional-grade stainless steel traps inside the tunnel. We’ll cover the trap, mark it with a flag, and return to remove gophers and re-set traps in a few days.
• Carbon monoxide gopher removal. Our trained techs can inject carbon monoxide into the gopher holes if trapping gophers is a concern. This method satisfies Healthy Schools Act requirements and is an excellent solution for daycare centers and schools.
• Annual gopher removal. This is the best way to control gopher populations for the long term. Since gopher infestation can be a recurring problem, Smith’s also offers a yearly gopher removal program. If you enroll in this program, a technician will visit your property every month, adjusting the gopher removal approach accordingly to ensure your yard stays beautiful and gopher-free.

They may build tunnels under bushes, along fence lines, or under trees.

Once you have a few gophers in your yard, the problem will snowball as the gophers reproduce.

Female gophers have between one and three litters per year, with each litter containing five to six pups.

The young stay at their mother’s side for a few weeks before going out on their own to build burrows and make tunnels.

With that in mind, it’s smart to address gopher infestations quickly – before they become hard to manage.

3. What does gopher damage look like?

Wondering how to identify gopher damage in your yard?

Here are a few telltale signs that these pests are present:

• Mounds. As gophers dig tunnels, they push excess soil to the surface, creating mounds that look like horseshoes or kidney beans. While the mounds can range in size, they all share a few common characteristics: gopher mounds tend to feature dirt that’s been pushed out in a fan pattern, while conical mounds tend to be the work of moles. Gophers also tend to plug their entry holes with fine dirt. Finally, gophers create several holes in close proximity – groups of holes within about six feet of one another are indicative of gopher damage.
• Patches of dried, flat dirt. If you pay a landscaping service to mow and maintain your lawn for you, their machinery may be dispersing gopher mounds. Because of this, you may not actually see the mounds. Instead, you’ll see dried patches of flat dirt that are the result of gopher hills being run over and flattened by the lawn mower. Occasionally, you may also see fresh dirt mounds on top of dried patches. This is evidence that gophers are present and active.
• Damage to crops, gardens, and bushes. Gophers are herbivores, so they’ll eat plants, fruits, and vegetables. If you’ve noticed plant damage like stem girdling and clipping or root exposure caused by burrowing, you can bet that gophers are present.

If you’ve noticed any of the above signs, you need to act fast. Gophers multiply rapidly, and infestations can quickly grow out of control.

Contact a professional pest management company to help you eliminate gophers and reclaim your space.