GopherHawk® Single Trap for Gophers and Moles, 1 GH-TRP

I was going to give it 3 stars, but I wanted this wash trap hack read.I purchased 7 traps in 2 years. Great design, but 4 have broken. Typically they split lengthwise, either by a perfectly shaped gopher or accidental discharge. But they’re great traps.I may have found a remedy, I wrap the end 3-4 times with stranded fiberglass tape when they are new. So far so good.There is a probe & trap combo I’d recommend. The probe is quite stout (works great finding the runs) but I use an 1 ½“ garden dirt auger drill.Cleans the trap hole out perfectly, & with a flashlight you can see their under ground freeways.The GopherHawk works in both directions unlike many other types, and you can easily set it between boulders in cramped quarters.

This is a great product:I received it Tuesday, immediately deployed. Wednesday its triggered but missed. Immediately re-deployed. Friday it caught the first gopher. Immediately deployed on another location, today (Sunday) it caught the 2nd gopher.Here more details: I had been fighting with the gopher on my front lawn for quite a while. I tried victor gopher trap. No luck. and almost lost a trap because the gopher pulled the trap down down into his tunnel. I tried gopher bait. The gopher does not like it I guess because the next morning the bait was pushed out to the ground! :( I tried poison gasser. Even doubled the amount. No. A few days later, the used gasser tube was pushed out to the ground. I tried water. No luck either. I even tried to vacuum down the tunnel by a wet-dry vacuum, hoping to suffocate this annoying little thing. No. none of these worked. I even made my own trap, cost me two whole days. Its specially designed with 3 pair of hooks to twist to wrap if the gopher touch the trigger. I thought I was very smart because the 3 pair of hooks covers a both sides of the trigger. As long as the trigger got touched, no matter which direction the gopher comes, it will certainly catch. However, I was outsmarted. The gopher still enjoy messing with my lawn and driving me crazy.Until I decided to give gopherlawk a try. As I said at the beginning, it worked great.I did not buy the wedge and probe tool. Here is what I thought. The trap is of course ideally placed in the main tunnel. However the main tunnel is usually pretty deep and not easy to find. On the other hand, the mound is easy to work with. You can almost always poke it open from a new mound. Just work slowly. Remove the the mound will show the blocked tunnel. Poke sideways. Not vertically. Because it's impossible to block a vertical opening from inside, right? so the tunnel might be at some slope/angle. Once it's opened the gopher will for sure come back to block again. So, that's the chance to catch. So, once you poke open the tunnel, just stick the gopherhawk in. I don't think it matters if its vertical or at an angle. don't bury it with dirt again. Keep it open will make the gopher feel obliged to come back and push dirt to block the opening. Then it will get caught. Just use one or two brick blocks to keep the gopherhawk stable in place from falling. That's it.Other details:Once set, the gohperhawk does not seem to have a mechanism to reset it. So be careful. I try not to empty fire it. So I hold the back end against my body, use a stick to trigger it, then slowly release so the spring can safely withdraw.another tip: If you caught the gopher and they are still alive, you might wonder how to deal with it without bloody nasty. I used a bucket of water to drown it and bury it to its tunnel. it's its home anyway.I hope my experience can help.update: in the last 12 month since I bought it, 15 gophers caught.

These have become my favorite traps, the quick and easy to set, especially when the soil is a little soft after a rain. Last year I caught about 40 gophers and moles, with a majority from the Gopher Hawks. One unanticipated issue was my traps kept disappearing. I finally figured out that the raccoons were harvesting the gophers overnight sometimes taking a traps. I've had a couple messy kills where a gophers leg was caught in the trap and needed to be dispatched ; in the attached photo, the raccoon took care of that for me this time. If you find traps are disappearing, tie them down with a string and a stake.

I have about 6 of these and have been using them for three years. The advantage of these over traditional gopher traps (eg, the ones with jaws that you push onto the tunnel) is that you don’t have to dig a (fairly) large hole in your yard because the Gopher Hawks catch gophers no matter which way they are traveling in the tunnel so you only need one (with conventional traps you need two- one in each direction of the tunnel, since you don’t know which way they’re coming); Gopher Hawks are much faster to set and remove than conventional traps; you can visually see when GH have been triggered; easy to empty out so no messing with gophers bodies. I took off one star because for moles I feel the Wire Tex Gopher Eliminator is better because they work better on the shallower mole tunnels, whereas the Gopher Hawk tends to fall over in the shallow tunnels unless you brace it. Check out YouTube for tips on both the Gopher Hawk and Mole Eliminator.Tip: I spray paint the tops of my gopher Hawks pink or some other bright color so they are easier to spot than black plastic in the bushes. If the trap is really out of sight, I’ll put out a pink wire irrigation flag (garden section at Home Depot) or a pink plastic ribbon on front of the bush to remind me of where the trap is. In theory, you don’t need to leave them out more than a couple days if the tunnel is active, but life gets busy and then I forget where I put them

Wow set this trap yesterday in the gopher hole caught him by his front foot this morning! Im impressed i have tried 2 other traps never could get him. Great trap look forward to catching more varmits

Works great for moles. This helps a lot for moles that have deeper runs. (Not good for shallow runs but there are other traps that can take care of those) I just move the dirt on the mound, find the hole, figure out which direction the tunnel is going then set the trap about a foot out. I've caught like 5 moles doing this. I keep getting other ones that come in and take their spot. Next step now is prevention. Grub control and castor oil.