So how are the gophers doing where you guys are?

.22LRGUY

.22LRGUY

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Answer where I was=not good. lol

22LRGUY isn't holding a 22LR here but the same case size. ;) Fresh back from a 2 province gopher safari where that stainless thing gave the T1x 22 a little break from time to time. Carried a note pad as well out there, in remote parts of the west a small team of gopher shooters can draw a little attention and by "attention" I mean offers to come shoot other properties. That intense western sun needs to be considered when your heritage is 80% Irish and 20% Scottish, so always sun shirts/gloves/Buff etc on long days out there.

Hope you guys are getting after them too!

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The last few dry summers should have been good for the Manitoba gopher population, they are plaguing city sports fields and parks. Debates over how to deal with them, traps vs chemicals, etc.
 
AKAalbertacoyotecaller said:
I was out a few weeks back and could only find 15 all weekend. It’s a long drove 7-9 hours for me to get there so it was really disappointing. Don’t know if it was the cold spring we are having or what the issue was.
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We were getting a little nervous leading-up to departure. Word from AB was that the weather had been good/lots of gophers...then a foot and a half of snow. After that, some concern gophers may have drowned since they weren't re-emerging they way land owners thought they would. Good news for us (other than 4 days of heavy rain) was that they were showing up again in the days leading up to us flying out.
 
We had one in the backyard last year when we moved in. Not a gopher but close enough. Hasn't come back yet but got a pellet pistol for him just in case since I'm in city limits haha
 
wrangler4867 said:
Excuse my ignorance since my shooting is in a completely different vein.

What does one do with 400 dead gophers?
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Nothing goes to waste.

Dead gophers feed eagles, hawks, ravens, magpies, crows, turkey vultures, badgers, weasels, fox, coyotes, and even black bears will eat dead gophers.

They also make great bait for winter trapping. (frozen)

As Grizzlypeg stated below, gophers are cannibalistic, they also eat each other quite regularly when they see a downed comrade. They are a lot like our current Liberals, who will eat each other or their own young............:ROFLMAO::oops::LOL:

Yes I know plenty of you guys want to eat Melanie Joly:LOL:
 
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Shot a couple thousand rounds in s Alberta, was slow at our fav spot. We have shot 10s of thousands on the ranch in the past. We shot on a new bull pasture that was loaded and a pasture we were at before. Lots there too. It was very dry and grass was not growing. They have had over 6” in last few weeks and should be better.
 
I love the, "we shot thousands stories"!.........:):ROFLMAO:

I have been shooting gophers for approximately 36 years now. The most we have ever shot was between 450-500 gophers in six hours of constant shooting. And that was with Ruger 10/22's back in 1998. Now this was a private BC ranch near Greenwood, BC. And two of us shooting non-stop it seemed......:) There was some walking in between targets as well.

We have been to Alberta three years in a row now, every time we go in May is an absolute let down.....:( Of course we hear the same story of the guys in April shot 300 gophers in a day. I've never seen more than 100 gophers in Alberta at any time. Especially not in May.

Maybe April is the better month, however I'm thinking these hundreds and hundreds of gopher stories are just that, stories!.....:ROFLMAO::unsure::LOL:
 
wrangler4867 said:
Excuse my ignorance since my shooting is in a completely different vein.

What does one do with 400 dead gophers?
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They quickly disappear. As mentioned, birds eat them, foxes eat them, and quite disgusting, they survivors eat some of the dead. My uncle used to throw some in a pail and take them to his favorite fox den to help the mama out. The gophers wreak havoc on cattle land and some crops. Beside a dug out, where the draining is good, the cattle have to walk down to get to the water, they just perferate it with dangerous holes. It gets to the point where the only other option is poison to deal with them, and I can't imagine the amount of poison needed to deal with many thousands of gophers on a piece of land.

As for how I estimate the 400 plus gophers, well, I went through a good box and a quarter of 525 Federal and the kill ratio once I get warmed up is about 2 out of 3. As time goes in the day, it pretty much one shot one kill as you get more proficient. Some of these prime gopher infestations are just unbelievable in the number of gophers. You can either patiently shoot one spot for a long period of time, or alternate between spots and not waste much time. And one good spot isn't a dozen gophers, its 25 - 50. They love the dry sandy land around Deloraine, especially after a number of dry years and no one shooting them.
 
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Weather certainly has not been in our favour this year in Manitoba. Seems like whenever we plan an outing it’s either raining, gale force winds or both. Today being another prime example with it being rain, cool and wind. Looks like the same again all week.
 
First year I went on gopher-pocalypse in SE Saskatchewan in 2016, I kept tabs on gophers hit and wrote it down in my shooting book. I brought 3 rifles and when one barrel got hot I changed rifles and wrote down the tally in the book. The trip was shorter then, and there were 4 of us that went for about a day and a half of shooting. My count was 1160 gophers killed.

Now I go for a bit longer and keep track of ammunition fired and estimate my hit percentage.
This year we went for 2 1/4 days of shooting. We were rained out, or "winded" out with that infamous and torturous prairie wind for a full day, leaving us with just over a day of honest shooting. My estimate is 500 gophers killed by me, which was a poor showing from the normal results.

Good gopher grounds do exist!
 
Just came back from a 2 week slaughterfari in S/W Sask with 2 CGN buddies. 500-800 gophers per day was common. This year there were plenty of hotspots but rain and slick side roads prevented us for several days to get into the honey holes.

Been doing this since 1994 and have experienced 1000 gophers per day in some years. Rotating .22lr and .17hmr rifles as to not overheat barrels and going through cases of ammo in the process. The included pics are from 2025 and I think the unofficial guesstimation was 7,000 KIA.
 

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Heading home yesterday after sporting clays in Carstairs, AB the road was littered with them. Magpies were having a field day. Must have counted over 50 roadkills over several km stretch.
 
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