Have you been struggling with gophers tearing up the beautiful yard or garden you’ve built? Are you wondering how to get rid of gophers with gasoline?
While gophers are cute little critters, they’re also prone to damaging the areas that they call home.
By following the advice listed below, you’ll be able to solve your gopher problem in a few different ways.
How to Get Rid of Gophers With Gasoline
There are a few ways of killing gophers with gasoline. You can use gas bombs or cartridges sold in stores. Gophers tend to seal up their tunnels when they get the slightest hint of gasoline.
You may have to act quickly, but remain careful. Use the following method if you can run gasoline through a hose into a gopher tunnel:
1. Connect the hose into the tunnel
Just connect a hose from the gasoline canister into the gopher’s tunnel
2. Push the hose down
Push the hose downward into the tunnel and make sure the gas stays in the hole.
3. Check For Other Holes
Before pouring the gas down the hole by tilting the gas canister. Check to make sure there are no openings or holes connected to this tunnel. Seal them first.
4. Release The Gas
Lets the gasoline flow and allow the liquid + fumes kill them.
Can I Use Gasoline to Get Rid of Gophers?
There are a lot of varied ways to get rid of gophers. While you certainly can use gasoline to get rid of gophers, it’s not recommended for a few reasons:
What Are the Pros of Using Gasoline?
- Gasoline is readily available to most people, making it an easy solution.
- It’s cheaper than some other methods, which can be priced at $75+ (yikes)!
What About the Cons?
- Gasoline is toxic to a great number of plants and animals. This can cause secondary poisoning and damage your garden or lawn – but we’ll talk about that in a moment.
- The idea that igniting gasoline is the way to remove gophers is a common one – and dangerous. This can cause serious damage to your property – so don’t play with fire, period.
- In relation to secondary poisoning, gasoline can cause harm to unrelated nearby wildlife. Any friendly, welcome critters (such as squirrels or other rodents) can get poisoned by consuming gasoline-tainted plant life.
What’s Secondary Poisoning?
Secondary poisoning is when you introduce a poison to an area (usually intending to target one thing, like a gopher) and you inadvertently poison the surrounding area. One such instance is a local meat-eater (like a coyote or raccoon) eating the poisoned animal.
While this may not be on your list of concerns, it should be. Using an actual poison or something similar (like gasoline) can cause serious harm to surrounding flora and fauna.
This can result in damage to potentially endangered species, as well as damage to your lawn or garden. And we’re trying to prevent that, aren’t we?
So What Are the Other Options?
You have a few alternatives when it comes to removing gophers. The humane (and more difficult) method would be to live capture and relocate your little furry nemesis. Alternatively, you can use water, smoke, or gas (fumes, not gasoline).
One thing to keep in mind before you start your crusade against the fuzzy little guys, do some research. Depending upon the area in which you live, gophers may be endangered.
This means that practices that result in the gophers dying could both net you a heavy fine (or jail time) and cause irreparable harm to your local ecosystem.
Okay – now that you’ve done your research (which you did do… right?) it’s time to come up with a plan of attack.
Humane Ways to Remove Gophers?
Assuming you’re not interested in hiring a trained professional to remove and relocate the gophers, here’s what you can do:
- You can use castor oil, peppermint oil, or dryer sheets placed near the gopher holes to drive them out. Repeat the process until they’re gone.
- Live traps are one of the easiest and least involved methods. Just place it, bait it with some greens or peanut butter, and wait.
- Solar (or battery) powered rodent repellents that emit an ultrasonic sound that tends to discourage most local wildlife (including your garden challenger) from making your lawn home. These are generally expensive.
- Some plants, such as rosemary, lavender, or catmint, will act as natural repellants once planted and grown.
How Can I Do That?
If you know they’re not endangered and are committed to killing the gophers, here are some easy methods:
- Smoke them out. You can buy smoke bombs designed for gophers that won’t cause secondary poisoning. However, this runs the risk of damaging the soil on your property – so be sure you want them out before doing this.
- You can poison them with traps. Be sure to avoid poison traps that have strychnine in them, as this will remain in the animal’s system after death and can cause secondary poisoning to innocent wildlife.
- Fumigation. This can be done in a number of ways with gas pellets and similar products. However, again, this can damage your property – so do your research before buying the first pellet that pops up on Google.
Final Thoughts
Another common gopher removal method is simply drowning them with water. While this can work, it also runs the risk of damaging your property.
This is because the water will simply make it easier for the gophers to dig through the dirt on your land, as well as potentially causing areas that have been heavily excavated to sink.
While there are a great number of gopher removal methods, it’s extremely important to do your research before pursuing any of them.
Yes, the gophers are damaging your property – but that doesn’t mean you should damage it further or cause unnecessary harm to other wildlife.
Thanks for visiting ThePestManagement.com for the best information to help you to make the pest control process easy, safe & affordable.