Just yesterday I had an experience with a gopher. I was walking my dog through a small park and noticed new holes and piles of fresh dirt. My dog is a 7 year old Siberian Husky. She noticed the new holes also. As it turns out, her gopher tracking skills are very impressive. She became very focused on the smells and sounds coming from below the grass. She was just frozen in one spot and listening intently. I didn't think a gopher would poke its head out of one of the holes while we were standing there. Then suddenly my dog lunged at a hole and in the blink of an eye she had an adult gopher in her mouth. Then one second later I hear a crunch sound and she drops the gopher on the ground. It was mortally wounded and died in about 5 seconds. Then my dog acts like nothing happened and walks away. I underestimated my dog's hunting skills!

I bought some gopher deterrent flares a month ago… not knowing anything about them and thinking there was some actual active ingredient besides sulfur smoke…so basically I bought a 4 pack of half sized road flares with a picture of a gopher on the packaging, for 3 times what regular full sized road flares cost…. Lesson learned

When I had gophers in my back yard the method I used to get rid of them was to first push a plastic tube down the opened tunnel, as far as it would go. I aimed for 6-8 feet. Then I poured gas down the tube. Before pulling the tube out, I blew any gas left in the tube out. Then I lit a sulphur smoker and shoved it in the tunnel. I quickly buried the hole with a few shovels of dirt and stamped it down. Within a minute, the fuel - air mixture in the tunnel would explode, with a loud thump! noise. Any gophers that survived would go back to the neighbor's yard. It would be a year or more before they came back.

That is a hell of an image of your father sitting out there in his garden just waiting for gophers to appear. Sounds like it was quite restorative for him as well

Where's the gophers?

I don’t see any gophers popping up

I got bit by a gopher when I was about five - lucky it wasn’t rabid. Our orange ginger cat, named “Bogasso”, had one cornered and was sitting there nonchalantly, while it had nowhere to run. I stupidly reached for the gopher and and it layed my finger open! It was my own fault, but I do get a little satisfaction seeing its brethren getting dispatched like this.

Sorry Glenn, but you will NOT "blow out" a highway flare. They are !very! difficult to extinguish! Excellent technique tho!

I’ve done this and it does work, but as stated, go to the freshest pile first and follow up as needed. The first time I did it, I was shocked at the smoke pouring out of the holes, and even in a spot where there was no visible hole but obviously where the pocket gopher was close to busting through the surface. For me it was the best alternative to poisons, because I have a dog and would never expose him to anything that might cause great harm.

Works for moles too. I stomped down all the tunnels, then found the new ones the next day. Lit the flare and stuck it in the tunnel from the surface and covered it up. Smoke arising from all over the yard was spooky. Did this for a cpl of days and no more issues

Loved hearing you tell the story about your dad.

The BEST ever solution that I ever came up with was to plant an entire hillside full of gophers and gopher holes with oleander. Once the oleander roots established themselves all over the hillside, the gophers disappeared, poisoned, probably, by the roots. I tried these gas flares, gopher bait stations, even bought a gopher snake (I released it onto the hill where it promptly slithered away, never to be seen again).

Wow, what a great idea. I used to try to flood them out, but this is so much better because too often the water would end up going deeper into the ground rather than flooding their tunnels. Only on a fresh tunnel would the water work. I remember once a gopher made the huge mistake of making a fresh tunnel in a parking strip and I was able to flush him out quite easily.

When we were kids my friends uncle had a farm. One day he called my buddy and told him to grab me few buddies and head over to his farm. About an hour he met us at the main gate and handed each one of us a 22 rifle that didn't have one. He told each one of us where to stand ans spread us out in a long line. Then he over to the irrigation head and turned the valve on. Soon we realized the hose was going right into a gopher hole. Soon water started flowing out as the smoke did in your video. Soon the gophers followed. That was probably the single best couple days of gopher hunting I've ever experienced in 50yrs. We had about 30 acres of gophers to get rid of so he could get his cattle back in their.

Great alternative to poisons. There are a lot of owls and hawks that fall victim to poisoned gophers. I try my best to avoid that. I love this simple idea. Trapping is a pain.

This process works great for ground moles and voles too. I used my shop vac to generate the needed wind. This year, I had none.

This video put me on the road to ending the destruction from gophers, and digger squirrels on my farm. It's cheap, easy, and effective. Next I will be trying the AMDRO gopher gassers. They are cheaper than flares, just as easy to use, and made for the purpose. Thanks Blair. Merry Christmas.

My dad used to run a metal flex hose from the tailpipe of his old truck and just let it idle all day. Periodically he'd put a squirt of oil in the carburetor to create more smoke so he could see all the openings. One days treatment usually solved the gopher problem for a good while.

We had a neighbor who would walk his alfalfa field hunting gopher holes. He's stop, scratch away the dirt, pour some gasoline in the hole then stand up set the gas can aside and drop a stick match in the hole and put his boot over the hole. The dirt would spew out all over at the explosion. We always thought he'd blow himself to kingdom come, but he was relentless on those gophers and it seemed to work.

We used a lawn mower. Took off the muffler, adapted the exhaust to a garden hose, and stuck the free end of the hose down the tunnel and left the mower running for 1/2 hour. Cheaper than flares, just a bit of gas.