# Pocket gopher vs Badger



## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Didn't help much being he was already in a trap,lol.


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

I give up! How did you know a Badger ate on the Gopher?


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Tx Jim said:


> I give up! How did you know a Badger ate on the Gopher?


The badger will dig the trap out with the gopher.Just something that happens here if you have badgers also in same field.Usually the trap is drug out of hole and the gopher is gone.Sometimes trap and all is gone.

Badgers love to eat gophers and make hell of a mess digging for them.

Neighbor stoped over and brought some conibear traps and we set 4 of them for badgers.See if we got any in the morning.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Catch of the day


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

Those are some big buggers. A lot smaller ones here.

When I was a kid I used to trap gophers out in Dad's pastures and fields. I just had a little brick tied to each trap as that was enough to keep a gopher from dragging it. I had some gophers that were eaten in the trap and I was a bit disappointed as I was paid per tail. No tail, No money. One morning one of my traps was gone. Tracked the drag marks left by the brick through a barley field and found where something had started digging. Being 8 or 9 years old and wanting my trap back I started digging by hand into the dirt. It was a badger that was checking my traps and got caught in one. As he started digging this new hole he eventually covered the brick up and couldn't go forward or back so he was stuck. Once I dug down far enough to see fur I got scared as this badger was growling and hissing but he couldn't back up, I didn't know that and all the noise he ws making scared me enough to go get Dad and the .22 to get my trap back.

I caught lots of things trapping gophers. Snakes, mice, and a weasel. Lost 2 traps with bricks tied to them and think it was hawks that carried them away as I saw one pickup a gopher in a trap and fly away with it but that one dropped it after a couple hundred yards.

Also learned lessons in over supplying the market. Dad started out paying me 25cents per tail. As my daily catch grew and it was costing him serious money, he down to .10 and eventually down to .05 cents.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

My dad used to trap muskrats in the endless swamps around what is now Philadelphia International Airport.

His family grew up dirt poor at the end of the runway of what was an old Navy air base along the Delaware River. He told me they flew P-47 thunderbolts and several different sea patrol aircraft from the old runway. The old house he grew up in still stands along the old canal at the end of an old street with RR tracks. Both sides of the runways had canals & swamps loaded with muskrat & ducks. Looking for a way to make money after the depression during WW-II, he and his brother (my uncle Bud) trapped muskrats and hunted ducks. My grandfather was a European immigrant working as a machinist at Westinghouse raising 7 kids.

Anyway, he had quite a trap line and used to get paid $5-$10/pelt. A lot of money back in the 1950's.

One time his brother was helping him check the trap line and he found one in a trap. Thinking it was dead, he picked it up and it bit the inside of the palm of his hand so badly, he had the scar for the rest of his life.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

I have had decent luck last few weeks running ground hogs over with pickup truck. 
One day I was leaving my field and saw one of those miserable buggers and just drove at it and easily ran it over. I tried it again last week and it was pretty easy if they're far from their dens.


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

Got one in my UTV... Took a couple passes over it to finish it off...


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

What pocket gophers look like up close




__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1511686112177429


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

How you trap them


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Beer money

A Resolution Setting the 2017 Pocket Gopher Bounty NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Murray County Board of Commissioners set the 2017 Pocket Gopher Bounty at $2.00.


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

swmnhay said:


> What pocket gophers look like up close
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I can't believe how big those suckers get there. Ours look the same here but are half the size. How big do the badgers get that eat those big suckers? I'm imagining a badger the size of a Rottweiler. lol

I was a bit disappointed you didn't show the kill shot. Trying not to upset the activists? jk


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

Dakotaline snares over in Lennox, SD buys them for a buck, but you have to gut em and freeze them.

https://dakotalinenares.myshopify.com/


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

IHCman said:


> Dakotaline snares over in Lennox, SD buys them for a buck, but you have to gut em and freeze them.https://dakotalinenares.myshopify.com/


im not gutting a pocket gopher for $1.00.I wonder what they are doing with them?Bait for trapping?Chinese restruant?


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

I don't know, but I would think they must use them for lures and baits.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

Speaking of trapping, here's my dad age 16 setting muskrat traps and enjoying some duck hunting in about 1950 in what is now the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge along side Philadelphia Intl Airport.
Back then it used to be a hunter and trapper paradise. Just a few miles outside Philadelphia. They grew up dirt poor. My grandfather didn't have a car. My dad and his brother both went to trade school for poor kids. Trapping money was for survival.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

We put a couple out of their misery this week too. We shoot them or run them over or blow them up ,,but a conibear trap is still the best.


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

I got a skunk in a conibear last night. It wasn't too bad believe it or not...


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

I set some connibear traps for badgers but no luck.I did get a skunk in one,,!

63 confirmed pocket gopher kills and about a dozen kills lost to badgers robbing the traps


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

I really put a hurt on our groundhog population, so now its not near as much fun to go trapping. Some days all I have is empty traps...


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