Dirt mound after mowing?

[Glock 40]

I would like more info on trapping moles.

See below if you still have questions you can pm me and I can give you a call.

Ive been trapping gophers and moles for many years, trying almost every thing on the market. Success was iffy until I found the gophinator.
100% on gophers and moles now.
Good intel in this link.

https://www.traplineproducts.com/?g...z_G_W8-iFwpCLR9FwYBx12GvcIOSSr68aApltEALw_wcB

What Dennis listed is the company that makes the mole traps I use. The gopher trap is a larger version. They are the only way to go for moles. I use something else for gophers but you can use the ones Dennis listed for sure. I will post some stuff I learned here with the absolute best thing I have found to keep both them from coming back also.

Gophers - these guys are the easier of the two to deal with. They eat vegetation so keep that in mind. They make big hills in your yard.

• Basic trapping get something pointy and solid no bigger than 1/2 in to poke holes around the mound to find the tunnel. Often they can come in from different directions to a mound or be on a curve. If you open the tunnel and it has multiple tunnels Try plugging one side and putting the trap on the open hole.
  
• I prefer to open a tunnel on gophers and use Cinch or DX-2 traps . The benefit of these traps are you can see when the trap has been triggered or if they back-filled your hole. With a well placed trap I normally have a dead one in 30 minutes after opening the hole.

• If they make a giant hill it will kill your grass if you don't remove it pretty quickly. Get a 5 gallon bucket and put the dirt in there. You will use it to back fill the hole after you have killed the little @#$!@#$.
• Your other option if you have a blower powerful enough you can blow the mound down and it will settle back through the grass.
  
• If you use the Cinch trap set a hair trigger on it. Sometimes you have to open your hole at an angle to get the nose of the trap up in there.
• Be prepared to dole out justice with a brick if one gets caught by the nose. You will have to pull him and finish him off.

Moles - these little suckers take some practice. They eat bugs and if you can remove food supply it can help with them. They make runners and tunnels all over your yard. When it gets cold they just go deeper.

• If you want to catch them 2 words TRAP LINE get the smaller trap for moles.
• When you get your traps make sure you have marker flags. Call an okie locate you will get 100 free ones in your yard.
• The trapline page shows some small cable lines tied to theirs. Make the cable a minimum of a foot long you can buy it at lowes and get the crimps in 100 packs on amazon or ebay much cheaper than lowes.
  
• Dont bury the cable in the ground. Set your trap then pull the long end above ground and flag it. 1 flag per trap so you know how many you have out. When you are ready to pull them you don't have to dig them up. Just grab the cable and pull them out. If you got some resistance you may have a winner.
  
• 2 traps isn't going to give you a lot of success. Get a minimum of half a dozen traps. Increase your chances of catching them faster. I set 10 traps at a time or 5 pairs. I taught my dad and some other folks they all do at least 6 traps at a time. Traps are almost always set in pairs in an active runner.
• Walk down (smash) all runners after its rained check again next day you want the main runner all the short runs are feeder runs. Stay on the main run.
• If your soil is soft enough which if you have these suckers it probably is. You can use a yard roller behind your mower. They are filled with water and smash everything flat. I have one and it works well after it rains.
  
• Its best to set traps when ground is moist as you will open a tunnel and put a trap going each direction.
  
• If your tunnel is collapsing its too dry and your wasting your time.
• Never leaver leave a mole run open they will back fill far away from your trap.
• When you go to insert a trap line. Set the trap without rotating the spring and feed it into your tunnel to make sure its clear. Once its clear of roots set the spring and install in the tunnel.
  
• When you set out new traps once flags are installed backfil where you put traps. Then each side of your traps a foot or two away stomp down about a foot of the tunnel moving away from your trap. This will help you have an idea if anyone has been through that tunnel before you pull them. If its still smashed no one has been towards the traps.
  
• I never pull a trap in less than 24 hours. When I started I caught a lot quickly. Overtime I had to leave them 2 or 3 days. They can get ripe but its not a bad thing see my bonus post below on that.
  
• Don't pull traps day after trash man comes. Your wife will not be happy at smell of rotting moles for 5 or 6 days.
  
• If you have ones you just can't seem to catch. They get real active after a rain. Find a week where you will have rain multiple days. Stomp down all your tunnels then wait for first rain and find the active tunnels. Then put your traps in them. Leave them till after it rains again. I have a hunch the water pools in the tunnels so they go for higher ground and get active. My hardest catches have come from doing that. Took me a year to figure it out.
• BONUS!! When you catch one its very common for new ones to move into same tunnel within days. The absolute best solution I have found to prevent the little bastards. Is as soon as you catch him jam his dead stinky rear back in the tunnel you caught him in and cover it up. When I started doing that my numbers decreased substantially. I have a half acre lot and once I got it under control I started catching them on the perimeter coming from the neighbors yards. If you don't have a pet that will dig them up this may not be an option. Otherwise always return them to the hole. This will put that tunnel out of commission since they don't want to go were dead buddy is.

If I think of anything else I will update this post.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

That I can’t do. With 45 trees on the property, our 3 acre lawn is a mix of fescue and Bermuda.

Well, you can, but it'll kill every living thing except the bermuda lmao... I figured that out after killing a couple of cherry blossoms my better half personally picked out and planted.

 

[Oklahomabassin]

Thank you Blake711 for the 411 on the trapping!

 

[beastep]

Also, if you treat the grass in Spring with MSMA, you'll never have ground rodents.

I use MSMA. Just used some today. What is the theory behind this? I still have gophers.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

I use MSMA. Just used some today. What is the theory behind this? I still have gophers.

That's crazy. Guess I've had luck. I assumed the MSMA puts enough arsenic in the soil that it keeps pests away or kills them. Neighbors on both sides of me have moles. We trap em all Summer long, but I haven't had em since I started spraying MSMA.

 

[beastep]

Well I just spray and mow my immediate yard which is about an acre. I live in the middle of a 1800 acre ranch so there isnt much thats going to work here. I was just wondering how the MSMA kept them away.

 

[dennishoddy]

Well I just spray and mow my immediate yard which is about an acre. I live in the middle of a 1800 acre ranch so there isnt much thats going to work here. I was just wondering how the MSMA kept them away.

That describes our place. We can never stop them, only control the ones that come across the fence into the yard.
I’ve read of using castor bean oil to create a barrier. Looked into the cost of treating a 3 acre yard, and decided trapping them isn’t so much work after all.

 

[MacFromOK]

I used to get a farm gadget-builder magazine (actually more like a small newspaper) years ago. One guy made a jointed pipe exhaust for his Briggs & Stratton push mower (used 2-3 90 degree ells IIRC) that he'd stick down in holes and let it idle for an hour or two.

Might be an option if you don't have too many.

 

[Gunbuffer]

I believe it’s a pocket gopher. If you look at the photo you can see roughly two lobes that make a heart shape. The top of the heart, the cleavage is at about 4-4:30 of the pile. The hole is under that part of the pile. Each lobe is made from either leg kicking soil out of the hole.
Most often the hole will branch out into a corridor, so you’ll have two holes.
Gotta dig down to those and trap each side. I wire all my traps in pairs and then just wrap it around a stake mid point of the wire to hold it.

 

[dennishoddy]

I used to get a farm gadget-builder magazine (actually more like a small newspaper) years ago. One guy made a jointed pipe exhaust for his Briggs & Stratton push mower (used 2-3 90 degree ells IIRC) that he'd stick down in holes and let it idle for an hour or two.

Might be an option if you don't have too many.

I bought a system like that from Ace Hardware to go on my pickup exhaust. I didn’t see a lot of results. I think my blow sand soil didn’t let the fumes get very far down the hole. After hours of idling the pickup they were still there. A dead one in hand from a trap is a better indicator of success.