As far as the Gophers go, I’m not declaring victory just yet but we are FAR better off than we have been in the past.

– We hired a professional Pest-Control company, Gopher Champs.  the have made 3 trips to the site and have one more visit on the contract in about 2 weeks.

– The overall population has been decimated.  When I was at AJX on Saturday (17 FEB), I found only about 10 fresh signs of Gopher activity.  For comparison, In January before the first treatment by Gopher Champs, there were over 200 tunnel mounds on the LZ, some almost knee high.

– We’ve knocked back the population before the breeding season, so hopefully it will be easier to manage the issue going forward.  No one can expect that we got every single rodent or that they won’t eventually come back, so maintenance is important.  We are planning to use snare traps that don’t require digging big holes to place traps into the tunnels.  We can also use the Gopher Blaster, which we now own two copies of in case one malfunctions.

– I’ve heard the concerns of some members concerning the use of poison baits which is the method employed by the professionals to get this problem under control.  I understand that people are concerned about Pets and local wildlife.  The poisons are underground, and they are not the type of bait that any animal besides ground-burrowing pests are attached to.  So far I haven’t seen any evidence of any animal trying to dig up and consume the baits from the surface, so there shouldn’t be any dead wildlife laying around or any Pets harmed.  I hired professionals for a reason, they know what they are doing and they know the potential dangers (if any) of the products they deploy.  The ground is NOT ‘poisoned’.

– Some of the comments about the poisons used are honest concerns, and I’ve responded to them.  Some of them comments about the poisons are straight up snide remarks, so to those folks I will say that I expect you to be the first people to volunteer to come out to the site early in the morning to check traps, and then back in the evening to set them.  Also, if you want to go ahead and skip a flying day, you are welcome to hitch up the Gopher Blaster and pop some tunnels… I’m more than happy to show you how to use it.  I mean, since we vastly reduced the population of gophers then the maintenance shouldn’t be a big deal, right?  I drive 2 hours each way to get to AJX and I’ve been on-site almost every single weekend (flying or not) to do site work.  How far do YOU have to drive and how much time are YOU willing to give to the Club?

The above pictures were taken after mowing on Saturday, 09 March 2024. The overall green level is looking good and Gopher activity is at a minimum. The fun fact is that we are just now arriving at the explosive growth season for the grass (after the time change = more sunlight).
a special thanks to Mario for coming out Saturday morning to knock down some weeds on the approach near the train hill, and Tim Ward for running the mower around the base of the training hill to clean up more weed growth.

Our Gopher Control professionals will be on-site for the 4th visit on Wednesday, 13 March. They have done outstanding work in drastically reducing the burrowing rodent population, the efficacy is apparent when you look across the LZ and don’t see any visible gopher mounds.
The Spring pupping season for the little bastards continues through the end of May, so we plan to have the Gopher Champs team continue their work for 2 to 4 more visits. The cost for these visits is significantly lower than the initial treatment cost and I think membership will agree that vigilance is money well spent.