The GopherHawk gopher trap is a good solution to controlling gophers - once you understand how a gopher thinks, and how to best place and monitor the trap. DirtFarmerJay demonstrates!
Buy your DFJ T-Shirt, Cap, or Coffee Mug at https.//www.dirtfarmerjay.com/shop
Gophers are a real problem around our place. Because gophers readily grow or replenish their population they rarely can be eliminated, but they can be controlled. If there is a gopher problem on your property, it will not solve itself. Gophers continually expand their range, so you must be vigilant and use control methods to eliminate incursions into your yard.
In this episode, DirtFarmerJay shows you how to utilize a “stick” type trap made by GopherHawk®. This device was recommended to us by one of the DFJ viewer family members after he viewed our earlier video, “How to Win the War Against Gophers.” We showed several devices and methods on the market for gopher control but spent some time emphasizing the “smoke” type cartridges that are ignited and inserted into gopher runs to kill the rodents.
Our viewer said there is a better way, so we checked it out! We contacted the GopherHawk® company and they sent us one for testing. We also purchased a set of replacement straps so we could keep our trap in great operating condition for a long time to come. You can buy the GopherHawk® trap as a single or in sets, along with parts, by visiting www.gopherhawk.com.
The GopherHawk® requires locating the underground run using the included probe, making a hole down into the run, and then setting the trap. If the trap is set off, there is an indicator on the shaft of the trap above ground. There are two big advantages to this approach. First, there is minimal damage to the yard or bed when setting the trap. Second, you know when the trap has “fired.”
However, there are a few tips and tricks we show you to help you be successful with this trapping approach, along with a recommendation of keeping repair parts on hand for ongoing use of the gear.
Sure, you can call for a professional exterminator to rid your yardscape of gopher invaders, but why? Now you have another approach to allow you to “Just Do It Yourself!”
Buy your DFJ T-Shirt, Cap, or Coffee Mug at https.//www.dirtfarmerjay.com/shop
Follow us on Social Media to know when we’re building projects or releasing new episodes!
Hi, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Not too long ago, we did an episode called
How to Win the War Against Gophers.
Boy, do a lot of problems with gophers
and a lot of people responded to that.
We have about five acres
and gophers are constantly a problem.
We have some areas that are uncultivated
and they really work their way at us.
You have to stay on it.
Well, I'm gonna demonstrate to you another product
that's been recommended to us called the Gopher Hawk.
How good is it?
Does it really work?
What are the tips and tricks
to really make it go to work for you?
Stick around and I'll tell you all about it.
Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
You can check out that video that we did earlier
called How to Win the War Against Gophers.
It's shown right above there
and we'll put it on the end card as well.
We show you all sorts of different methods,
devices that are out there and several of you responded.
Now, one of our viewer member families named KBKESQ,
I'm not sure if that's Kibbe Esquire or whatever it is,
but wrote in and just simply said this,
no, no, no, get yourself a Gopher Hawk trap.
It's 10 times faster.
So we took the recommendation, contacted Gopher Hawk.
They sent us a complimentary trap
and we had the conversation with them
that we would review it,
but we need to be free to say whatever we needed to say
about it, the good, the bad, and ugly.
They readily agreed.
So we're going to show you how this trap system works.
I have some friends that take care of some athletic fields
for the town that we live in and they use these traps
because there's minimal damage
beyond what the Gophers already done in placing the trap
and they call these type of traps, a stick trap,
simply because that's the biggest hole you need
to put into it, you set the trap and then it catches
if you've placed it correctly,
the Gopher and eliminates the Gopher.
Now how these stick traps work is that you need to find
where the run is of the Gopher
and what this system comes with is a trap
and a probe that nests right inside of this right here.
This probe is used to jam into the ground
and to find where the run is.
And then when the run is located,
you simply take the tip of this, put it into the soil
and rock this around where it breaks through.
And then the trap is placed into the resulting hole
that was made by this tip.
And this is lifted up against there.
And when it does that, you can see these hoops come out
that if they are suddenly released
when the Gopher is in there,
it's gonna catch the Gopher and immediately kill it.
All right, the trap's now set.
We let it set overnight.
The next day when we came out the trap,
you can see the yellow now showing.
And what happened?
Here we go.
Look here, the indicator is letting you know
the trap has fired and I really can't pull it out.
The reason is the animal is bigger than the hole here.
So to keep it in there,
I'm just gonna use my trenching shovel here.
We'll go ahead and dig up around it and let that,
now that I've gone in, I can feel the cavity break loose.
We'll go ahead and just let this loose here.
Now, warning, those of you who didn't want an end
to a creature, we're actually gonna pull it up
out of there with the creature attached.
I think it just let it go.
There it is right there.
So you can see it has been caught.
It is dead as dead can be.
It's got its nice little teeth
that it uses to chew tunnels right here.
But now it has been caught.
To release it, I'm gonna pull this and push down, drop it.
And now the trap is ready to reload and reset.
All right, so we have one and I'll go set this
another place in the property and we'll go from there.
All right, that's trapping success number one.
Let's go and get another one.
In this case, the burrows aren't so deep
and we went ahead and pushed the trap in
and you can see again, it's fired off.
But when we pulled it out, there was no gopher
and there was just a little bit of dirt.
So what happened?
Well, it's likely that the gopher glanced by it
and probably got hit hard enough that it killed it
or maybe it filled it with dirt.
So in this case, we went ahead and dug it up
and wouldn't you know it, there's the gopher.
So don't give up, be a little persistent.
All right, here's another tip.
If you've got a trap that you've placed
where you know there was a run,
the probe determined where it was
like I did in this placement.
But that trap sat there unfired for about three days.
So I knew something was up.
So when I pulled the trap out, you can see here,
they had filled it with dirt.
So what had probably happened is I had placed the trap
either right adjacent to the run
or when I placed the trap, this is important to notice,
that I had placed one of the straps right in the center
of where the gopher's gonna come through.
So that's another tip.
Try to place these in ways that makes it easy
for the critter to enter in and set off the trigger.
So when I pulled it out of there,
you can see it was full of dirt.
All you need to do at that point is shake the dirt out.
Now to fire off the trap, simply wrap it,
not real hard, but something to get solid
that'll dislodge the trigger, it'll fire and shut.
And now you can try again and put the trap back to work.
All right, just a couple more tips
to help you be successful using the Gopher Hawk.
Number one, always have replacement straps on hand.
And you can see they come in a little box here.
You can buy multiple sets.
This set of two only cost me about $8
and shipping was very reasonable.
And it comes with instruction
about how to replace those straps.
When you push these straps out
and if you accidentally jam them in the ground,
you can bend them all out of shape and deform them.
Unfortunately, it's very easy to replace them.
And essentially what you're doing is unscrewing the spring.
You can see right here, once you unscrew the spring
and unload this, that takes the pressure off of this
and you can service it on the other end.
Full instructions are in there.
Another tip that I would say is
consider getting more than one of these.
You can buy them in sets
and therefore you can have several going at the same time
instead of having to work one at a time.
Third tip, many times the Gopher itself
is gonna be bigger than the hole
that you've put this down in.
So if you just simply pull this out after it's fired,
you may damage the trap or it can't come up
because the animal that it's pulling up,
the dead animal's bigger than the hole.
So what you do if you feel resistance
is just take a shovel, dig around, loosen it up
and then pull this out and then discard the rodent
or if you wanna self-bury it
and put it back down in the hole and bury it.
So what's the verdict on the Gopher Hawk?
We think it's a pretty good system to have
as part of your arsenal.
It may not work for everything you want
but it is a great tool to have for gopher control.
The things we really like about it, it's very visual.
Number two, it's a minimal damage to the yard
and with just a little bit of understanding
how to set the trap and how the gopher thinks
of getting this place in the right run area, location,
it won't be long before you start pulling gophers,
dead gophers out of your yard and pushing back the assault
on all that beautiful yard scape you've created.
Another thing, if you wanna know about other types
of products that serve this, there's all sorts of things
like noise suppressors and box traps
and a McAbee trap is another kind.
You can check out our other video
by just taking a look at this video right here
and that'll tell you about all those different kinds
of traps and you can also take a look at this other video
that YouTube thinks you really wanna see
because they know what you're thinking.
Hey, until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay
from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Thanks for joining us today.
