Need to rid property of Ground Hogs, any ideas

Best prevention for a groundhog infestation is some kind of terrier dog...although one of the best GH killers I ever saw was a border collie.

He would slip up and get between the hog and his hole. Then he would reveal himself to the hog and begin circling until he saw an opening for a quick, crunching of the neck.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

22-250 Remington pushing a 52 grain HPBT at 3840 fps.

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The more a man travels, acquires wisdom and learns about life, the more likely he is to marry a Country Girl.

to be slightly contrarian....

are the groundhogs invading your place,
or have you invaded their's, and don't like em....

I invited myself into the little ecosystem that I'm inhabiting, and as much as possible try and live with the local flora and fauna... I will remove any foraging varmint that moves in and sets up shop... I've retired some marginal cropland, letting it revert to wilderness, in mitigation for my homesteading activities... like 30 to 1 (set aside 30 acres for the 1 acre I've deemed offlimits to predatory varmints)...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

You never know, you might like it!!!

Good answer!!

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Hey,

I've shot a few with a 22 mag. Good out to 100 yards and cheap too.

My 2 coppers,

tuvold

Even better with a good 6X scope.

Are these little ones, or the 20 pound monsters I grew up with who would take on a dog? If their little, then a jack will do, bigger and shooting seems like the best answer. Wonder what they taste like? Heard they were greasy

Dogs. Our livestock dogs eat pests from mice on up. Saves me wasting time sitting at a chuck's hole or doing traps that might catch an unintended animal.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

It seems people use the terms moles, voles, gophers, pocket gophers & 13-line ground squirrels, interchangeably. (Although they're all separate critters.)

If your problem is the burrowing buggers you never see that leave mounds of dirt all over the yard/pasture, I have a solution that worked wonders for us. Their eating grubs – kill their food supply and they’ll move on.

Spread Grub killing pesticide. (Seven works well, but if you happen to have a tick problem also, we found a granule in a dark green bag at Menards that controls both.)

The benefit of this method is grubs are the larvae of the Japanese beetle, the shiny iridescent green beetle. (Not the orange lady beetle.) So you will also eliminate those beetles that strip entire trees in a day. (Been there, seen that….unreal!)

We just moved here last winter. The beetles were so bad this summer that next spring well just spread grub killer right away, because we know so many beetles hatched on our place and laid millions of eggs. YUCK!

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If your problem is just the tiny 13-line ground squirrels that only leave 1 or 2 inch diameter holes in the lawn….well the fun option there is a .22 while sipping the beverage of your choice from the deck!

Black tipped Ferrets, but then you will have Ferrets.

We had a hog that once burrowed up into the barn dirt floor. The Mrs. sat outside with pistol and waited. Missed the hog but got a big gourd in the garden. Must have scairt him as he never came back.

I've heard that the best way to fix them for dinner is to get get some fresh cow manure and pack them in it. Completely cover them. Ask a farmer for some if you don't have cows. Leave them in the sun until the manure hardens and then toss the whole thing on an open fire with your favorite wood. Hickory or mesquite. Cook for about forty five minutes and then remove from the fire. Open up the cow pack carefully and then throw the chuck away and eat the covering. Don't reuse the woodchuck.

We had a 20lb boston terrier that wooped a 40lb wood chuck. He (and his predecessors) are death on anything relating to a varmint--squirrels, mice, ground hogs, muskrat (the dog could swim like a fish as well), possom, racoon, etc. The only thing that he ever came out on the loosing side was a chance encounter with a beaver. He may have not even been on the loosing side of that one as I never saw what the beaver looked like after the fight.

I keep offering my snakes to be borrowed but no one wants to borrow them!

Shoot them with 22 rifle. Find a good recipe, their good eatin. I think it was xbob who posted a recipe. Hint! When cooking sprinkle some brown sugar on the meat, it takes out the wild taste.

You might try these:

Solar Gopher Chaser

That was just the first hit I googled. You might find better. Or maybe someone here has tried them and can comment on their effectiveness.

Moth Balls or crystals - paradichlorobenzine. Down the hole. Replace when the moth balls have evaporated.

When you get new critters - like baby chicks - sprinkle moth balls outside the pen - so the moth balls would be between the chicks and potential predators. Disguises the smell, and confuses the predators.

If you can't bring yourself to eat them, could you use them as dog or cat food? That wouldn't take near as much preparation. Maybe you could even dehydrate chunks to use for pet treats?

Four days later and the ground hog is sitting 50 feet away from his entrance but won't go near it since I stuck a 4" plastic pipe into his hole and emptied the kitty litter box into it.

If I run out of kitty litter I'll get some more moth balls....snakes in the insulated garage walls moved right out and didn't come back after discovering moth balls in there.

T