Trapping is the most reliable way to get rid of gophers, with success rates around 86% when traps are placed correctly in main tunnels. Other options like toxic baits, fumigation, and underground wire barriers can work too, but each has trade-offs worth understanding before you start. Here’s what actually works, what doesn’t, and how to do it right.
Confirm You’re Dealing With Gophers
Before you start setting traps, make sure the damage is actually from gophers and not moles or voles. Gopher mounds are fan-shaped and flat on top, with the plug hole off to one side. Mole mounds look different: they’re rounded and volcano-shaped with the hole in the center. If you’re seeing crescent or kidney-shaped dirt piles with a visible plug on one side, you’ve got gophers.
Fresh mounds are the key indicator of active tunnels. Gophers can create several mounds per day, and a single gopher can be responsible for 30 to 50 mounds. Despite how much damage they cause, you’re often dealing with just one or two animals in a residential yard, since pocket gophers are solitary and territorial.
Trapping: The Most Effective Method
Trapping consistently outperforms other control methods in field trials, reaching about 86% efficacy. The two main trap styles are spring traps (brands like Macabee and Victor) and box traps. Spring traps are smaller, cheaper, and widely available at hardware stores. Box traps are easier to set and a good choice if you’re new to gopher control.
The critical step is finding the main tunnel, not just the shallow lateral runs that branch off toward the surface. To locate it, probe about six inches down near a fresh mound. When the probe suddenly drops with little resistance, you’ve hit a tunnel. The main runway tends to run deeper and connects multiple mounds in a line.
Once you find the main tunnel, dig a small hole down to it with a post-hole digger or trowel and clear all the loose dirt out. Set two traps facing opposite directions inside the tunnel so you catch the gopher regardless of which way it approaches. Stake the traps so a caught gopher can’t drag them deeper into the system. Then cover the hole with a piece of plywood and seal the edges with soil.
Light control matters more than you might expect. A small amount of light entering the tunnel actually draws the gopher in, since it will try to plug the gap with soil and trigger the trap in the process. But if too much light floods in, the gopher pushes a large plug of dirt that can spring the trap without catching it. Sealing the hole well prevents this.
Check your traps daily. If nothing is caught within 48 hours, move the trap to a new location near a fresher mound. After you do catch a gopher, leave the trap set for another day or two to confirm there isn’t a second one using the same tunnel system. Trapping is most productive in spring and fall, when gophers are actively pushing up new mounds.
Toxic Baits and Their Risks
Poison baits formulated for gophers typically use zinc phosphide as the active ingredient. When swallowed, zinc phosphide reacts with stomach acid to produce a toxic gas that kills the animal. Baits are placed directly inside active tunnels, and the entry holes should be sealed afterward to keep pets and non-target wildlife from reaching them.
The biggest concern with toxic baits is secondary poisoning. Zinc phosphide bait is often mixed with grain or food-based ingredients that dogs find appealing. If a dog digs up and eats the bait, or eats a poisoned gopher, symptoms can appear within 15 minutes to 4 hours: vomiting, weakness, labored breathing, loss of coordination, and convulsions. In dogs with empty stomachs, symptoms can be delayed up to 12 to 18 hours. Some formulations include ingredients designed to trigger vomiting early to limit how much toxic gas builds up, but the risk is real. If you have pets or small children with access to the yard, trapping is a safer choice.
Fumigation: Soil Type Makes or Breaks It
Fumigation works by filling the tunnel system with carbon monoxide or other toxic gases that asphyxiate the gopher underground. Traditional gas cartridges are pyrotechnic devices that burn inside the burrow, producing carbon monoxide. Newer machines use pressurized engine exhaust cooled and pumped into tunnels at concentrations around 25,000 parts per million of carbon monoxide.
The catch is that fumigation depends heavily on your soil. In dense, moist soils, gas stays contained in the tunnel and reaches lethal concentrations. In loose, dry, or highly organic soils, the gas leaks out through pores and cracks before it can do its job. Field studies found that pressurized exhaust machines achieved only about 56% efficacy in heavy organic soils, well below the 70% threshold researchers consider acceptable. Even in finer loamy soils, efficacy topped out around 65 to 70%. Compare that to trapping at 86%, and it’s clear fumigation works best as a supplement, not a standalone solution.
If you do fumigate, plug all visible mound openings first except the one you’re using for injection, and work when the soil is damp. Spring conditions, after rain, are ideal.
Underground Wire Barriers
If you’re planting new garden beds, laying sod, or installing raised beds, burying gopher wire before you plant is one of the most permanent solutions available. Gopher wire is a 3/4-inch hexagonal mesh made from 20-gauge galvanized or stainless steel wire. The openings are small enough that gophers can’t push through, but large enough for roots and water to pass freely.
For lawns, remove the top 1 to 1.5 inches of soil, lay the mesh flat, then replace the soil on top before sodding or seeding. For individual trees or garden plants, you can line the bottom and sides of the planting hole with the wire, forming a basket. This won’t remove gophers already in your yard, but it protects the plants they’re targeting. It’s especially useful for raised vegetable beds, where lining the bottom with mesh before filling with soil keeps gophers from tunneling up from below.
What Doesn’t Work
A lot of products marketed for gopher control have no scientific backing. According to the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management program, no repellents currently sold have been shown to protect plants from gophers. That includes castor oil sprays, which are among the most popular products on store shelves.
Plants commonly recommended as gopher deterrents, including gopher spurge, castor bean, and garlic, haven’t held up in research either. Planting them around your garden borders won’t drive gophers away.
Ultrasonic stakes, vibrating devices, and wind-powered pinwheels also fail in field trials. Gophers live underground surrounded by constant vibrations from sprinklers, lawn mowers, foot traffic, and vehicles. They simply don’t startle easily, and they habituate quickly to new vibrations.
Barn Owls: Helpful but Not a Solution
Installing barn owl nest boxes is sometimes promoted as a natural gopher control strategy. A nesting pair of barn owls does eat roughly one gopher per day during breeding season, which sounds promising. In practice, though, it rarely solves the problem. In surveys of growers who installed owl boxes, only 23% of those with occupied boxes felt the owls were effective at controlling gophers. Just 7% considered them very effective.
Barn owls can reduce gopher numbers modestly over time, but they won’t eliminate an active infestation in your yard. If you like the idea, treat owl boxes as a long-term complement to trapping rather than a replacement.
Hiring a Professional
Professional gopher removal typically costs between $300 and $600, with a national average around $400. Most services include two visits: the first to set traps, place bait, or fumigate, and a follow-up to check results and remove any caught animals. For large properties or severe infestations where dozens of mounds have appeared, professional help can save significant time. For a typical residential yard with a handful of mounds, a couple of spring traps and some patience will usually get the job done for under $30 in materials.