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Gatling Gun

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Big Muddy rancher

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I was just over at the Cabelas site and they have a working 22lr replica of a gatling gun. Just what I need for the gophers. 300 - 400 rounds per minute. just need a team of minaturs to pull it around and I would be set. Of course I would have to quit posting here as I would be loading clips all night.

Did i mention it cost $12,500. oh well my old Lakefeild will have to do. :cry: :cowboy:
 
BMR
What kind of gophers are giving you problems and what do they do that is the problem.

In this country we have something that digs up the dirt in the hayfields and pastures. They are called, moles, pocket gophers and lots of nasty names. Everyone has different opinions on just what creature is doing it. They dig in pastures too, but that isn't much of a problem. They are one of the reasons I quit putting up hay.

I've been mowing and stopped to go to dinner and come back and they have already had mounds built up in, on and over the hay that I'd cut less than an hour before. I've seen a mole and the cats bring in a short tailed things that looks like a mouse, only bigger. We have striped gophers, but I can't see any harm in them.

My brother brought a hound cross of some sort one time and left him here when he left. He was only good for two things, getting mice and killing hand raised pheasents. Dad finally had enough of him and took the shotgun to the field one day. Funny, I never saw that dog again! :shock:
 
They eat grass and crops. Pile dirt and dig hole. Don't you have them in S.D.

They are like mini prairie dogs. They are furry tailed rats. Have i mentioned that I don't like them? :cowboy:


PS they attaract badgers that dig bigger holes and pile more dirt. Broke my heel in a badger hole once.
 
Maybe we should go together and get us a couple of them guns, we are really being overloaded with those cute little RATS. Places where we poisoned and torched three years ago that were clean are now crawling with the little buggers and it seems that they all brought their relatives!!! Have one pasture that you better cross slow if on a horse cause now the badgers have brought in reinforcements and they mean business :mad:
I'll have to get wifey out there with the shovel again. About ten years ago she went with me to change a dam in an irrigation ditch. We were walking over to the dam and the dogs took off after a badger that was just starting to dig a hole. The dogs were going nuts and the badger put it in high gear with the diggers and got down in the ground about four feet and turned around to fight. Since I had a shovel in hand, I dug down from straight above the growls until I could see hair. With wifey standing there and the dogs still barking up a storm, I hit the badger on the head with the shovel. Told wifey to grab him out of the hole and go show him to the kids. She said no way am I going to stick my hand down that hole, that thing is just playing possum and he'll chew my hand off. I said here, hold the shovel and I'll get him. So I gave her the shovel and poked him with a stick. That had to be the fastest dead badger I've ever seen. Ran right past me, wifey, the dogs, and had about a fifty yard head start before the dogs knew what happened. At least he wasn't digging in the hay field anymore. And I still wonder, why doesn't she trust me?
 
BMR
Thanks for the info. Sound like what we call moles. But we never see ours.

sw
Why would you kill a badger if he kills the pests? I sure wouldn't takle one barehanded. You must be a he-man kind'a guy!

Got a tree hugger/buffalo rancher who writes in the Rapid City Journal and he explained this winter that if ranchers would just quit overgrazing, we wouldn't have so many praire dogs as the grass would hide the predators who eat the praire dogs. Funny, my dad told as a kid that there was a dogtown 1 to 5 miles wide and about 35 miles long just to the west of us. Guess them old indians and cowboys must have kept it overgrazed all them years! :wink:
 
sw it didn't take a badger to make my wife not trust me. :wink: My son trapped a badger once and checked the trap before school but had me go take it out as he had to get on the bus . i shot the badger and when I felt it was dead I pulled it from the hole. Well I lost the pin from the trap so reached into the hole to find it but jerked my hand back when i heard snarling . I trapped three more young badgers out of the same hole.
 
Jinglebob our gophers are exactly like prairie dogs except smaller here this might help a baseball player on steroids-prairie dog a baseball player not on steroids looks like a gopher. Badgers do kill pests for sure but the holes they dig are kind of tough on horses and the people who ride them-nothing gets the pucker factor going like riding through a nest of holes after a cow. I killed one once with a crowbar-the old heart was pumping that day. We have an old female has a litter in a little pasture by house every year-thats where our colts get raised if they survive in there for a year they know where to put their feet.
 
I think I get the picture now!

I like your idea about the colts.

I picked up a badger hole on my ol yeller horse at a dead run one time. Way worse than gettin' bucked off!

I learned a neat trick a week or so back at a branding. Old feller had some smooth hot wire up for bulls and it got knocked down and was laying in the grass. I thought I was past it, ridin' my colt, when he picked some up on his hind feet. Couldn't step over it so backed him up and stepped off and got him untangled. Looked like a good way to get him used to not fighting wire around his legs. I wondered if a feller left some around for colts to walk thru' so they would get used to stuff like that. 'Course I suppose they could get hurt. Maybe not to good of an idea after all!
 
Jingleblab.......
short tailed thing like a mouse but larger....vole
gopher with stripes........thirteen lined ground squirrel
 
I meant to add also,You said"what we call moles".It sounds like pocket gophers to me!
The Richardson Ground Squirrels are common in Eastern S.D.
 
OK, so what's making the mounds in the hay fields(and everywhere else, but it don't matter in pastures)?

What's a pocket gopher look like?

Neighbor and I were riding back after branding today. He lives down along the Cheynne River. His hayfield are predominetly western wheat grass. He said that as the mole/gophers/voles moved into the field, wherever they left mounds, the alfalfa grew in the mounds. Must be one of God's little farmers! :lol:
 
we had moles out "east", and they burrow along just under the sod, but don't make burrows with dirt mounds. when i moved out here, my yellow muttly dog dug up half the yard going after striped gophers, and run them all out of here. the ones i see are about the size of a small rat, they're striped (duh..!), but they didn't leave earth-mounds. there is something that digs in the fields (of all kinds) and leaves mounds--i've often wondered what does that. seems like badgers really like steep roadsides for dens...

where's clarence? bet he could help out on this...
 
what you guys are talking about are pocket gophers they are about the size of a beer can and just as round they have long curved claws on their front feet for digging and they leave dirt mounds all over.Theres a guy here who makes his living trapping pocket gophers he gets $5.00 per gopher and has a route he works all season long...They will dig in most areas here but the alfalfa and clovers are a big draw the better the forage the more gophers you'll have....
 
JB,

Those "striped" gophers, are they chipmunks??? A number of years ago we had chipmunks all over the place, that year we had whole corn stored in a grain bin, guess what??? Chipmunks cached whole corn in the blower fan in the pickup, in the holes where the gates close, everywhere they could stash, they did. We didn't have a problem with them at all, thought they were very cute, until a kid decided to catch one. The lil bugger escaped and was running free in the house, just purchased a brand new sofa, I WAS MAD because the lil chipmunks are burrowers and guess what the escaped chipmunk did...burrowed in my brand new SOFA!

Anyway, we have Richardson's gophers, they make big mounds, like to sit on top of them and make their noise, you can find their hole. The "pocket gophers" are the lil buggers who have mounds on top of the ground, but you can't find a hole. I've learned how to trap them but they are just as you pointed out, JB, you quit haying because of them. Prairie Dogs and Richardson's gophers are about the same in my point of view. Pocket gophers (or moles) are a pain because you either have to blow 'em up or drown them out. Those "striped gophers" you talk about, I think, are chipmunks, and I have no problem with them. That one year we had a million of them, they were so cute running along the top of the pipe fences (there was pipe for them to run on).
Anyone else have something to say about striped gophers? I'm really curious.
 
HANTA, they really aren't the same. Striped gophers are bigger with a longer tail. We don't have chipmunks here, but we do have Striped Gophers. Striped gophers carry their tail out flat. This info from my husband who really pays attention to all the 'little critters of nature.'

We had chipmunks in W. Montana. They are cute. We had a dog that we called "Cat". She was part Catahoula and this dog was a real kick in the butt. She should have been owned by a rodeo clown. She was really talented and would do anything for a laugh. She used to climb up on the corral fence. If you were looking over it, she would climb up and look over it, too. I do have a photo of her doing that, but don't know how to get it on here~anyhow, this particular day, she was after a chipmunk. The chipmunk ran up the poles on the side of the loading chute. She went right after it. The chipmunk shot straight up the upright and stopped on the very top. The dog climbe up to the top rail, balanced there, and put her nose up, up, up to the edge of the upright. About that time the chipmunk looked over the edge. Their noses just about touched! The chipmunk shot in the air and the dog just about fell off therails. It was sooooooooo funny!! Of course, those scenes are left totally to memory, no camera catches them!!
 
Faster Horses,

I sure pictured your dog and laughed out loud!!! Thanks for the info on the gophers, I guess we don't have the striped kind, but we sure have enough of 'em!! :mad: :mad: :evil: :evil: :twisted: :!:
 

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