Gopher Removal Palos Verdes

Eric : Hi everybody. So we’re here with Travis from All City Animal Trapping. All City Animal Trapping has trappers in different regions and Travis specializes in the South Bay area. And he’s been noticing, a lot of calls coming in for a gopher in Palos Verdes , like gopher removal and gopher issues. So Travis give us some insight on what’s going on out there.

All City Animal Trapping : Hey, thanks, Eric. So Palos Verdes in general has the highest gopher population that I’ve seen. Especially with the restrictions over the last year. I don’t know if the city had something in place to do some control for them, but, I’ve noticed the rabbits in Palos Verdes and the gophers in Palos Verdes have kind of sprung out of control. In conjunction with that, that brings the predators, the coyotes and the foxes and things like that. So once you have the pest and the nuisance wildlife at a certain level of the predators can now sustain a higher population.

Gophers in Palos Verdes

But speaking of gophers, as to how they affect Palos Verdes residents in general, basically if you’re not familiar or the people watching are not familiar with it, what you’re going to end up seeing is circular holes in the ground, that’s your first sign, and then you’re going to seek dirt mounds piled up, maybe a foot off the ground, depending on the size and how hard to go for as they’re working and how long they’ve been there.

But what ends up happening is these dirt mounds and these holes get connected by tunnels that can go all over your yard. If you let them get into the grass, they will ruin your grass. If you let him get under bushes and roots that they like they’re feeding off of the roots down there. So gophers are essentially blind moving through tunnels, just using their whiskers and scent to figure out where they want to go.They don’t want to be up on the surface.

Dirt Mounds

They don’t want to be in the sunlight because they know predators are looking for them, like birds and like Hawks. But the devastation that they can do to a lawn is almost on par with what a raccoon can do when it’s going out grubbing, except to go for he will not leave your yard, if they like it there, they’re going to stay in the tunnel systems below these dirt mounds. I’ve seen them pull rose bushes completely into the ground by eating the roots out and basically pulling the whole thing down.

And so the reason I want to speak about it in Palos Verdes is, just driving lately down, Palos Verdes Drive North, Palos Verdes Drive South, any place that has a medium, you can see if there’s dirts spill over from the curves, like you see piles of dirt spilling over the curves, you should know, or at least educate yourself to the fact that that’s gophers. And it can go for miles on some of these streets that in circle, Palos Verdes, some of the main streets.And so we’re talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of gophers. Our goal is not to eliminate every gopher out there.

Gophers Come Out at Night

It’s not possible, nor should that be our goal. But what we want to do is keep them out of your yard. The problem that Palos Verdes residents face with that is that a lot of their houses have canyons behind it or huge sloping areas that go down.The goal can’t always be to get them out of there. That’s long-term long running gopher removal treatment, but as it affects your yard itself, we can definitely do that.

We can do small hillsides, some of the properties and with almost a football field size Canyon in the back, and you’re going to have the equivalent of 200 gophers maybe back there.And you can tell by the amount of mountains, it looks like little landmines, every three or four feet stretched out in every direction. So then they progress using the tunnel systems that they’ve built up into your yard when they do that, you have to act quickly. If you think that they’re going to go away, you’re wrong and they’re gonna stay, they’re going to multiply, they’re going to create new tunnels, which in turn is going to create new mounds, which means they’re going to eat all the roots of all the plants that they like thus killing your yard. So you’re left with a couple of options.

Many Hillsides and Canyons in Palos Verdes

A lot of people try to handle it themselves, which is fine. If you know how to do it, but if you don’t, the problem is it takes a little bit of experience. So what I do is I come out with a probe. I probe the soil and I can feel sensitivity wise, when I push into a gopher tunnel, I can feel resistance, resistance, resistance, dunk, and I’m dropping into the tunnel.Now I have to dig that tunnel out. Once I find a tunnel that goes two, sometimes three ways.

Then I have the option of putting poison, gas or traps. Now there’s a bunch of different types of traps. It’s a bunch of different types of poison. There’s a bunch of different types of gas. They all do essentially the same thing. The gases, they kind of look like road flares. You line them, you put them in there, the smoke expands through the tunnels that affects the gophers.

DIY

Poison works the same way it would work for rodents. I think trappings the best method overall, it just requires more work because you have to dig out more tunnels to put more traps. You’re not going to solve a huge gopher problem by finding one tunnel and putting two traps.You’ll catch two gophers in those two traps, but there’s going to be a lot more. So you need to add those traps all around the yard and this heavily affects Palos Verdes right now, really, really, really affects Palos Verdes. So that’s why I wanted to talk about it a little bit more with people and explain to them their options.The poison works okay, but you have the risk of cross-contamination.

I wouldn’t recommend it. If you have a dog, are you doing it in places that kids play with the poison is going to be underground, it’s just, if something digs it up, can be problematic. The cross-contamination comes from if they die on the surface and then a hawk gets to them.We don’t want anything like that to happen where something else is getting poisoned in the process. So personally, I like to stick with using the gas because it doesn’t really affect anything outside of what’s in the tunnels and then trapping is the best way to show the customer “Hey, I caught it. We’re making progress.” 

In Conclusion

So I like those two methods. What type of traps you use? What type of gases you use? We can get really, really deep down the rabbit hole with that because I’ve used them all. I like certain ones. I don’t like certain ones, but the bottom line is just, if you know how to find the tunnels, you will be a lot more successful, but it takes experience to do that, which is why I recommend hiring a professional.

Eric : This is good stuff, because most of us don’t know anything about the subject. So it’s nice to have someone like you go out and give options. Like if you do this, this could be a side effect. Or if you do that and, give the consumer a choice on what can be done and what are the good points, starting points, because it sounds like some of these things that you’re saying are pretty labor intensive. It’s just not going to be, sprinkling something and leaving.

Hire a Professional

All City Animal Trapping : No, not at all. And I wish it were, I wish it were. Gopher jobs, especially when they stack up on me, they take a while I’m down on my hands and knees, with a trowel and a probe, with probe in the soil, digging out and I get false positives all the time. I’d dig out tunnels and the tunnels either collapse or I was wrong, the soil was just loose there. So it takes an experienced hand to do it well. There are different traps and options that can make it easier, but people need to know going in based on the extent of how bad the problem is. When I come out there’s small couple of mounds in a yard, I can sell people one or two visits, I’m going to get this guy out of here.

But if I can see looking from your yard down the slope and see mound after mound after mound, I’m going to tell the customer, I can keep them out of your yard right now. But the problem is down that Hill right there, which may not even be your property. So you may need an ongoing service in the future. Once we get the yard leveled out, we get all these mounds down. There’s no new activity, chances honestly are then in a year. You’re going to get some more activity because they’re right on the other side of your wall and right down the slope over there. And there’s just too many of them in Palos Verdes right now.

Eric : Yeah, and NPV, there’s a lot of land. The Peninsula is huge. I grew up there.

All City Animal Trapping : Right.

Contact All City Animal Trapping

Eric : So, you know, you’re talking about Palos Verdes states, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills states. When people talk about the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it covers a lot of land out there cause you have Hermosa Beach. You have so many people that are living in a smaller area. I think Hermosa is like two miles wide by two miles deep. And PV is just huge, and on Atlanta. So that makes sense. It’s concerning to think that you have the predators coming in, then you have a problem. So people, it’s not good to ignore anything in life, and this is no different. You have to kind of address the problem before it escalates.

All City Animal Trapping : Right. Absolutely. And I’m not trying to make people overly nervous about it. I just want them to know that if you see it, get on it early, get on it early. Because the more extensive the problem, the harder the work is the more it’s going to end up costing in the long run.

Eric : Exactly. Well, all right. People can go to your website allcityanimaltrapping.com and Travis specializes in the South Bay area. If you have any concerns with gophers or any kind of animal removal, animal trapping, wildlife removal, wildlife trapping, give us a call. Thank you.

All City Animal Trapping : Thanks.