Snow Gophers Are Out

[shrapnel]

We had a decent day after all the snow and headed over to the gopher fields to see if they were out. They were and we shot quite a few...

 

[BuzzH]

I remember when I was ten years old and couldn't wait for the gophers to come out.

Thanks for sharing, brings back memories.

 

[Schaaf]

Thank you for your service

 

[The Hedgehog]

@shrapnel surely you jest! The gopher hunting in MT is mere shell of what it used to be. Don’t pollute this place with such nonsense. I suspect you’re on private land as well! Cheater! This is how real men take spring gophers. Sometimes a hammer is involved.

 

[JEL]

I remember when I was ten years old and couldn't wait for the gophers to come out.

Thanks for sharing, brings back memories.

I used to trap gophers when I was a kid. Got a nickel a tail.

 

[The Hedgehog]

I used to snare them poor bastards with bailing twine. My grandpa taught me that trick. The VMAX is the best way.

 

[Art Vandeley]

My roommate in college would trap them outside our house and then tie a rope to it and bring it inside the house on its leash. That house was a site to behold...

 

[LuketheDog]

We had lots of ground squirrels in CA, my buddy's dad raised extremely pricey cutting horses on their ranch and occasionally they'd get injured stepping into the squirrel holes. He paid us $2 a tail, we cleaned house around there, good times!

 

[D4570]

YUP, but little snow.

 

[Dakotakid]

My uncle taught us to fish for them using a rod and a loop at the hole, he had more patience than us kids.
But when he caught one, it was a sight to watch.

I have not made it out this spring… yet

 

[antlerradar]

I remember when I was ten years old and couldn't wait for the gophers to come out.

Thanks for sharing, brings back memories.

When I was about that age, my brother and I cleaned up on gophers at a friends ranch a White Sulfur Springs. It was a blast. We were also extremely jealous of the friends kids as the only gophers we had back home are pocket gophers.

 

[geewhiz]

Like it or not, I'm going to tell a story.

At our previous house we never did have gophers up until the last summer we lived there. It seams as though, for whatever reason, they were only on mine and my neighbors property. Like gophers do, they started digging their stupid little holes in our lawns. We (my neightbor and I) decided we weren't going to tolerate that kind of behavior. We lived in a neightborhood so we felt as though it may be inappropriate to break out the 22s, so we went full force on them with a pellet rifle and a variety of gopher traps.

Well over the course of a few weeks we were able to get rid of all of them except 1, and for whatever reason he always outwitted us. We tried to flood him out and whackamole him, CO him to death with exhaust, shoot him, trap him, poison him, and he just wouldnt die. I came home from work one day to my neighbor (a grown a$$ man in his 50's) in his back yard laying prone behind a planter with his pellet gun waiting for the little jerk to poke his stupid little head out of his stupid little hole. Never did. Well eventually I was able to get ahold of some aguila low power 22lr rounds and figured that would be the end of him.

He got to the point that he would scurry to one of his holes when he saw any kind of movement, so I would leave my back door open so if I saw him I could shoot out the door from inside of the house so as to not scare him off. Sure enough one night during dinner I spotted the little jerk standing next to one of his holes so I attempted to blow him away with the 22. I hit him right in the side of the neck and knocked him flat. They he started to wiggle and the little bastard got up and went back into his hole. Couldn't believe it. Over the next few weeks we exerted every effort to exterminate him and as his wound healed you could see a big black scar on both sides of his neck where the bullet hit him.

Finally I got some fishing line and placed a loop with a slip knot around his favorite hole in my neighbors yard, ran it through the chain link fence, across my yard and through my back door. I lied in what for what seamed like an eternity. Sure enough he made his last move and poked his head out of that hole. When he did I gave it a yank and I had him. It cinched down around his abdomen and I pulled him up and through the fence. Of course it wasnt a true snare so if I gave him some slack he would have been gone. Well, suffice it to say that gopher no longer exists, and that was the end of an era. I've never had such a vendetta for such a little critter.

Now I get to start over at our new place but this time the covenants allow up to 22 caliber, and it doesn't restrict me to a rimfire.

 

[Hem]

Split rail fence borders the inside loop of my subdivision, where currently I am finishing a basement for a neighbor.
Clients cat walked 100' of the bottom rail to stay out of the snow with a freshly killed gopher.
Good kitty.

 

[brockel]

Will be out in the Clyde Park area over Easter hopefully doing the same thing

 

[mtmiller]

What the fugg is a gopher?

 

[BAKPAKR]

What the fugg is a gopher?

 

[shrapnel]

They want to get out pretty bad to dig through this much snow...

 

[The Hedgehog]

I prefer the over the posturepedic blind..

 

[The Hedgehog]

Have no idea the trajectory of this pellet rifle. I’ve been slinging lead, missing, and crippling gophers for an hour. Im a way better shot with a bow. Need to run this thing over a labradar.

 

[BAKPAKR]

They want to get out pretty bad to dig through this much snow...


View attachment 270551View attachment 270552

You want to hunt them pretty bad to drive through that much snow!