SPORTS

Tips to get rid of those pesky groundhogs

Dick Martin
Gannett Ohio

Is there anyone out there who doesn't actively dislike groundhogs? Deep city dwellers perhaps and apartment owners could care less, but those who come into contact with these good-sized rodents tend to dislike them intensely.

I don't like them because they love my garage. I had a dirt floor there for long years, but once they found it and began happily to dig up my floor with multiple holes scattering mounds of dirt over my riding mower, push mower, rototiller and other equipment, it was war.

Finally, I had to have the floor cemented, but then they decided to dig their holes around the outside of the garage. Many a rural dweller has had the same problem.

Gardeners don't like them because they love to munch on the produce in a well-kept garden. It's no fun to diligently till, plant and weed a nice garden only to have a groundhog mow down your just sprouted green beans, feast on the spinach and lettuce, enjoy the sweat of your brow until little is left.

Farmers just might dislike the animals most of all, since they make major inroads on soybeans and hay fields, burrow under their barns and outbuildings at every opportunity, and make holes that cattle often step into and break their legs.

Which is why I receive anguished calls every year around this time asking me what someone can do to get rid of a woodchuck or several that have taken up homesteading under their house or elsewhere on the property.

The first point is an important one — you can't dissuade a chuck from taking up residence once it has decided to do so. Putting mothballs down their holes, or pouring down Clorox is only a temporary cure. Even if they leave, they'll be back.

Since I live in the country I solve my problems with the animals the easy way — with a 12-gauge shotgun, and many farmers and rural residents do the same. But city dwellers can't do that, so they must go to plan B.

One method that works is to trap them, and they're not hard to trap using one of two methods. The first is a favorite of a good friend of mine who farms 300 acres not far from my home.

He bought a couple of big box traps from a local sporting goods store and when a new animal moves in, he first blocks up any other holes around since chucks often make two, even three holes leading down to their resting chamber.

Then he puts a wooden box over the main hole with a stone on top to hold it down. The box has a hole cut on one side that is exactly the size of the box trap's mouth and the trap placed there.

The animal has no choice but to walk into the trap. and next morning he usually finds the animal waiting, bright-eyed and bushytailed — and very angry.

An even easier way is to bait them into a box trap, but there's no point in placing one in your garden or just anywhere at random. They won't enter the trap.

Instead, place the trap as close to their burrow as possible, hopefully a foot or less, and bait the trap pan with goodies from carrots and cabbage leaves to green tomatoes, cut apples, watermelon rinds, or a combination of these.

It's wise to put a barrier along both sides of the trap from the hole to the door, maybe a couple of sticks of firewood or some large stones to lead it into the trap. Put it there in the evening and he should be there next morning or the following day.

Another good choice, so an elderly farm lady told me, is to fill the holes with kitty litter. Not new either, but litter that's been well soaked with cat urine and feces.

"I had at least six of them in my barn and they were mowing down a half acre of soybeans nearby every spring," she said. "With their holes full of that pungent stuff, they all left."

None of these methods works forever since they'll probably return next year and the next, but they can save your farm buildings and gardens this year, and that's good enough.