How To Make A Gopher Trap

Gophers can wreak havoc in your carefully maintained garden or vegetable patch. 

While they may be adorable, getting rid of them can be incredibly challenging. Luckily, a gopher trap is one of the best solutions to remove these little pests. 

While it may seem difficult at first, creating a gopher trap is incredibly easy and can keep these rodents out of your property effectively. So, without further ado, let’s get started. 

Items Required

These are some of the items you will need for creating the trap:

• Wooden box
• Nylon or fishing string
• Carrot

Preliminary Preparations

Before you get down to making a gopher trap, you need to identify the gopher mounds, find the tunnel or tunnels, and uncover them. Always focus on new tunnels, as older ones will most likely have been vacated. 

Making A Gopher Trap 

1. Preparing The Box 

You will need a wooden box of sufficient size for creating the gopher trap. Create a hatch on one side of the trap through which the gopher can enter, and then make a hole on the upper side of the hatch. 

Make sure the hole is in the center and about half the size of a carrot that will be used as bait. Also, make a hole at the opposite side of the trap. 

2. Attaching The String 

Next, you need to cut a piece of the fishing string and slip one end of it through the hole from the outside of the trap. This piece of string should be about four feet in length and pass through the hole in the box that lies at the opposite side of the hatch. 

Reach inside the box and tie the carrot with the string. Ensuring that the hole is half the size of the carrot will prevent the carrot from being pulled out of the trap. 

3. Position The Trap 

Position the wooden box so that the hatch or door closes from top to bottom. And make sure to provide enough slack so that the door hangs at a 45-degree angle. 

Then, tie the other side of the fishing string tightly to the center and the top of the hatch, passing it through the hole in the hatch. 

4. Placing The Trap 

Place your trap near a gopher colony where there are freshly excavated tunnels. Once a gopher enters the box and finishes feeding on the carrot, the string will pass through the hole, causing the hatch to fall and trap it inside. 

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