So there you are, standing in your garden, admiring the healthy colors and the abundance of food this year’s harvest will bring — then you spot it, a small hole in the earth next to your carrots. Reaching a hand into the hole, you find that there is a vast emptiness within, a large tunnel that runs right underneath your plants. It’s at this moment you realize you’ve been hoodwinked by your local groundhog.
A groundhog, or woodchuck as some people call them, can be the end of your garden. I could tell you that the groundhog doesn’t drink water (or Gatorade), that they have extremely capable incisors and claws to defend themselves with, and that they can remove hundreds of pounds of earth in order to construct a burrow… but who cares? The important thing is knowing how to get rid of these pesky creatures from the yard.
Just like the porcupine, red squirrel, and coyote, groundhogs have no closed season, meaning you can legally “hunt” them at any point during the year. Many farmers would agree that shooting them is the easiest and most effective way to get rid of them. A .22 will do just fine, just make sure it’s a clean shot and you don’t maim the animal. However, there are some of us who live inside city limits, don’t own a firearm, or simply prefer not to shoot the critters — this article is for you.
I first witnessed the groundhog’s presence in my yard while I weeded the garden. Right from the start he seemed like a chunky fellow and, judging by his girth, it seemed as though he had really been enjoying the fruits of my labor.
I felt like the character “Rabbit” from Winnie-the-Poo, as I witnessed my vegetables disappearing before my eyes. Since I didn’t have my own Have-a-heart trap, I borrowed a friend’s and worked on setting it up immediately. I went to the store and bought some broccoli, broke it up a tad just to get the smell a bit stronger, and baited the trap. I then placed the trap about five feet from one of the groundhog’s entrances/exits that went right underneath the shed in my backyard, and camouflaged it with surrounding foliage. After a week of no success I tried a different, more fragrant, bait: apples. A few days later I noticed I finally caught something… a raccoon. I made more adjustments.
Instead of having the trap five feet away, with a log barrier that would “push” the groundhog in the trap’s direction, I took one entrance of the trap and pushed it right up against the hole that came out from underneath the building, leaving only a couple inches of room so that the metal panel could swing freely down into place.
The next day I checked the trap and found the chubby woodchuck sitting calmly at one end of the cage: the apples had done the trick. The furry creature watched me as I approached, shifting its weight to get a better look at me, and when I got close, it began to ram the ends of the trap one after another in an attempt to get out. I let out a victory laugh. “Where you goin’? You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
If you have a groundhog problem, do something about it immediately. Traps work, but make sure to remove the animal at least five miles away (as the crow flies), but further is even better. Also, remember that the groundhog you removed still has a mansion underneath your shed and gardens, a vacant spot that another groundhog or different critter could move right into. I heard once that if you soak cotton balls in ammonia and throw them down the hole then this will keep animals out, but that sounds like a pretty temporary solution to me. Though basically the same idea, I believe spraying coyote or fox urine would last longer and be more effective all-around.
In order to protect these vulnerable spots in your yard from these fantastic diggers, you can always try building a fence. Make sure to bury a good part of it in order to dissuade the animals from digging underneath, and make it tall enough to they can’t easily climb over.
Whatever you do, do not sit back and think, “there’s enough to feed us both,” because chances are, folks, there isn’t. Happy gardening!
Dear Sam Hill,
My mom definitely needs a trap like this. My grandmother read this to me, and I listened carefully. I’d like to catch mostly deer and rabbits. They eat our flowers, and they eat only Mom’s vegetables. My sister’s garden is getting bigger! I think it’s because the deer and rabbits don’t see hers, because it’s far from the fence. Mom’s garden is by the fence near the street.
We live in a town but we still have deer and rabbits. Good luck to your garden, Sam!
Your reader,
Abigail
i guess you didnt know that theres a woodchuck bomb that you can buy at farmers union that you light and throw in the hole to kill the rotten creatures too.
Isn’t coyote hunting season from December 16th – August 31st still?
If you live were you can use a gun to kill them get some friends together and put a garden hose in one hole and turn it on full blast as they come out of the hole shoot them and they will be gone for good.
Marge: That reminds me of the movie Caddy Shack, and if I remember correctly the Groundhogs Won the battle.
Abigail – Thank you very much for writing in! Deer and rabbits can be pesky creatures. It would to difficult to catch a deer in one of these traps simply because the traps aren’t big enough to fit one, but rabbits are a different story. It might be helpful to know that these Have-a-Heart traps can be purchased at Agway or Tractor Supply…tractor supply does seem to have the better deal, but I believe Agway has more variety in sizes. Good for you, your mom, and your sister for having a successful garden this year, feel free to send me some pictures!
Woodsnut – I personally wouldn’t recommend any of these smoke or poison “bombs” to anyone. Especially for underneath the garden.
Sarah – Nope. that’s the season for -night-hunting- coyotes.
Marge – That does seem pretty effective. I’ve tried to flush them out before but was unsettled by how much water was dissapearing into the hole and going underneath my gardens…I eventually gave up!
Had a mother and (I thought) one baby under my deck here in Wilton back early spring; did a HavAHeart Trap and caught the young one and took it a long way away – hoping there was no one’s vegetable garden closeby. But the next day I saw the mother out with another two – and then a third. Phoned the county animal control but he never returned my call. She just finally took them away (after eating my sunflower seeds and a few plants) because I guess there was not enough food to feed such a passel of young ‘uns.
Sam, this event sounded like something from a cartoon. We’ve never had a problem with woodchucks here in Greenfield, but have had occasional deer problems. Someone once told me to buy blood meal (most hardware stores including Home Depot sell it, mix with water, soak some rags with it, and put around the garden. I explained the procedure to a gardener at the farmer’s market. He said it made sense because their gardens were out in the middle of nowhere and they didn’t have deer problems, but they mixed blood meal into their soil. I would recommend this to anyone with deer problems, just remember to refresh the rags every now and again.