The gopher will come from one direction or the other to investigate the opening, and I’ll get him.Ĥ) I bought a very long pointy screwdriver cheap at Harbor Freight and it’s useful for poking around in a fresh fluffy gopher mound to find the opening, and the direction of the tunnel. The gopher tunnel will be open at each end of my hole, and I set a Cinch trap, horizontally, into each opening of the tunnel, pointing in opposite directions. Then I dig out a section along that horizontal tunnel that is about eight inches wide and fifteen inches long. Either way, what I do is dig down along the failed tunnel until I hit the horizontal tunnel that it connects to (usually only about ten inches). See the next tip for the solution.ģ) If you find a trap sprung, but with no gopher in it, you probably have the situation described above, or maybe something else is wrong with your hole. In that situation I find that the trap often gets sprung without catching a gopher, and that’s bad because it trains that gopher to avoid your traps in the future, plus it wastes your time. If that point is about eight or ten inches down the tunnel from the surface, then the round jaws of the trap will be just about at the intersection. The gophers don’t mind itĢ) The the tunnel from the surface connects at an angle to another tunnel at some point. They are easy to set and work great.ġ) Use WD40 to keep the traps from rusting. I’ve used six Cinch traps to kill 150 gophers in six years. I concur I live on a acre east of San Diego where I planted about forty fruit trees in the last four years. Lastly, if you’d like to do some deeper reading on how gophers dig, breed, and feed, this University of California page can’t be beat. There are lots of prettier and more expensive ones around, but you don’t need such a thing for setting Cinch traps. I bought the Fiskars hori-hori knife in the photo above at Home Depot for about $15. I’m sharing my experiences here only to help others who are struggling with gophers damaging their vegetables and fruit trees like me.)Īlso, if you’d like to get a hori-hori knife, don’t bother paying a lot if you’re just using it for gopher trapping. (Just to be clear, I have no relationship with Thomas Wittman, Gophers Limited, or Cinch. Be sure to buy the small size, which is suitable for trapping pocket gophers in California. You can also get them at the Gophers Limited website. This is where I bought my last couple traps. So maybe you’d like to try out a Cinch trap in your yard? Y ou can buy one directly from the manufacturer through their website,. A little spray of lubricant every now and then keeps them sliding smoothly. Lastly, I keep a can of lubricant (such as WD-40) in my bucket of Cinch traps and tools because over the years the traps rust. I’ve now caught many gophers by resetting failed first attempts. If the gopher plugs the tunnel, just open it up again and reset the trap. I’ve also learned from Wittman not to quit on a mound if the trap doesn’t work the first time. Prior to buying the hori-hori, I used a trowel or stick or my hands, all of which didn’t work as well. ![]() To do that poking, I’ve bought a hori-hori knife as Wittman suggests, which helps open the gopher’s tunnel to the right diameter so that the Cinch trap fits snugly in it. Wittman owns a company called Gophers Limited based in Santa Cruz, California, and the guy knows what he’s doing.įrom Wittman, I’ve learned how to hold the trap optimally while setting it (which requires some strength), how to position it in the tunnel, and where to poke into a gopher mound to find the tunnel in the first place. Many of the most useful things I’ve learned have come through watching the videos of Thomas Wittman on YouTube and following his advice. While I was catching gophers with the Cinch trap right off the bat, I’ve increased my effectiveness through doing or learning a few key things. And any tool is no more effective than the tool’s handler. The Cinch trap is, in the end, only a tool. ![]() My personal keys to effectively using Cinch traps
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