Cinch Gopher Trap Kit, Professional-Grade, Heavy-Duty Reusable Trap System for Gopher and Mole Control | Easy Set, Humane, No Chemicals, Ideal for Lawns, Gardens, and Farms | Made in USA (1- Large)

I have never had to deal with a gopher problem before, so I hope anyone new to this problem like me can learn from my experience. Long story short, the Cinch Trap is awesome, and by far the best and most effective gopher trap I tried.Over the last month or so, I spent about $250 on various types of traps and watched numerous YouTube videos that show you how to use each type of trap. The problem with all of the other traps I used was that you had to locate the main tunnel and place the trap there. When the traps weren't working, I watched all of the YouTube videos I could find about how to locate the main gopher tunnels. I dug up more of my hillside trying to find the tunnels, and I put traps into the tunnels I found, and none of the traps worked. I created more of mess on my hill on top of the gopher damage. The gopher would make fresh holes and mounds all around the traps I placed. While I was trying to place traps, the gopher would literally pop it's head out of other holes and look at me, taunting me. I truly understood Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack, so infuriating. I started to feel desperate because I just couldn't catch this destructive creature, and I was ready to turn to a professional until we called one and heard how much they charge.Thankfully, I came across some YouTube videos that describe how to use the Cinch Trap, and it looked too good to be true. But it's that good.The beauty of the Cinch Trap is that it's designed to be placed in the hole of a fresh gopher mound. You don't have to find the main tunnel that you can't see. You just find the opening of the tunnel in a fresh mound (which is easy to do), expose the hole and make the hole big enough to fit in the trap, set the trap in the hole, and leave the hole open for the gopher to come back and try to plug the hole. Minimal effort or mess, and super effective.I ordered my first set of Cinch Traps, and while I was waiting for them to arrive, I actually managed to catch my first gopher by sticking a GopherHawk directly into a hole where I saw the gopher coming out to eat a nearby plant. About 10 minutes later, I heard the trap go off. Victory at last!I thought I might not need the Cinch Traps, hoping that this was the only gopher I'd see in my yard for a while. And then the next day I saw fresh mounds again. I tried placing my 2 GopherHawks directly in the new holes, hoping this would work again, and neither worked. So I decided to give the Cinch Traps a try. Unfortunately, the first set of Cinch Traps I ordered were Medium sized, and they ended up being too big. I had to make the holes larger to try to fit the trap inside the hole, and I couldn't place the trap properly in the hole.Using the GopherHawks directly in the fresh holes also wasn't working, so I ordered the Small size Cinch traps. They arrived this afternoon, and I quickly and easily placed them into some fresh holes that the gopher made in the morning, and where I had stuck GopherHawks this morning, to no avail. I went back to check on the Cinch Traps a couple of hours after placing them, and success!As long as you order the right size that fits into the hole, this thing works like a charm.There are some very helpful videos on YouTube that show how to use the Cinch Trap (search for Cinch Trap Surface Method). Almost no digging is needed, just a little bit of digging with a narrow shovel to make the fresh hole big enough to fit the trap inside the hole. Super simple and effective. Happy hunting!UPDATE: I've caught a total of 4 gophers with the Small Cinch Traps. Each time was super fast (within hours the same day or overnight after placing the traps). Can't rave enough about well these work. Highly recommend the Small size, as the Medium ones haven't worked for me.

Our back five acres looked like a Martian landscape. Gophers, customarily active in fall and spring, followed their genetic programming and engineered tunnel after tunnel. Each critter created multiple large mounds, littering the property with huge piles of dirt.Okay, I confess I sort of liked the “free” dirt. Scooped up and redistributed to the sundry bare spots and depressions around the homestead, it was expedient and practical. But unless you harvest the dirt every day, it quickly ages and ¬turns hard. Scooping it up then is real work, so I’m not a huge fan.The only option to shoveling the gopher’s handiwork into the wheelbarrow is to level and rake-flat each fresh mound. That method unfortunately has the same expiration date: if you don’t follow-up daily, the mounds turn solid. Really solid -- like the consistency of cheap concrete.Moving was a tempting but impractical option, so I resorted to trapping the little bas**ards. Over the years we used “Victor” gopher traps with spotty success. My wife was more patient in placing the trap than I, so her success rate was better than mine. Still, I doubt we ever caught the culprit more than 20% of the time.Executing my due diligence, I researched “how to kill gophers” far and wide. At one point, I was converting an old lawnmower to route the exhaust and pump it into the ground. The theory was the carbon monoxide would improve on the Victor’s 80% failure rate. Turns out the connections involved (think red hot surfaces) was more complicated than I expected. Go figure -- no one sells plumbing to connect a lawnmower muffler exit port with a long, flexible, skinny, heatproof tube. Imagine that.Next, I briefly considered the “Rodenator” until I discovered the cheap models were over $1000 and the better models sold for several times that. The idea was incredibly appealing: pump acetylene and oxygen into the gopher hole, ignite it, and say sayonara to both gopher and tunnel. I even fleetingly considered a poor man version where I would purchase a cutting torch to obtain industry-standard (read: safe) fittings to connect the tanks and mix the gasses. Yes, I even found a way to remote-detonate the gasses from a safe distance: a small chunk of steel wool lodged between both prongs of an electric extension cord. Connect the other end to a car battery and whallah, instant ignition. Seriously: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.Happily I opted for cheaper solutions that were coincidentally less likely to bring me to the attention of those fun people at Homeland Security. (“Yeah, we need the cops out here right now. There’s somebody blowin’ up stuff right next door!”)Well, okay, this is Texas, so the neighbors response would have more likely run along the lines of, “Hey, that’s awesome! Can I borrow it for my niece’s birthday party next week?” Still, I was hoping for something more practical and less likely to result in tissue damage. I mean, after all, I would have ended up owning a cutting torch, so I’m sure I would have eventually found something large and metallic that needed cutting…Next stop: Amazon.com. I ordered a “death clutch” gopher trap figuring that just looking at the thing would cause gopher cardiac arrest, cause that was the effect it had on me. This wicked-looking medieval contraption had a reputation for success. No idea if that reputation was well-deserved as I could never get it to work. I bought it knowing in advance from Amazon reviewers that it would arrive sans directions. As suggested, I watched numerous YouTube videos about how to arm it. I’ll confess I never did figure out how to set the trap, at least partially because I was so afraid of the sucker. After one valiant final attempt (I think I twisted the spring the wrong way) I gave up and threw it away. God help anyone rummaging through my dumpster this week.I gave Amazon.com one final try and discovered the “Cinch” trap. Huge, goofy looking thing, but people swore by it rather than at it. From the level of on-line praise it garnered, you’d think it was a religious cult rather than a varmint catching apparatus. Well, this being Texas, kinda hard to tell the difference sometimes.It arrived factory-fresh, complete with a manufacturing defect. Sigh. That certainly took the bloom off the rose. When the jaws closed, they touched. In other words, they aligned perfectly, creating an artistic, but decidedly un-lethal loop rather than the gopher-squeezing action I was looking for. A very long (15 minute) YouTube video confirmed what I had guessed: I’d have to bend the jaws in opposite directions. That accomplished, it works fine.Actually, fine is an understatement. Once I got comfortable arming this gadget (the second arming wire exerts much less tension on the trigger than expected, but it still works fine) I’ve had 100% success: Locate tunnel within gopher mound, insert trap, remove dead gopher. Only down side is that it sometimes does not kill instantly, so I have to check the traps frequently in order to humanely dispatch my former enemy. Feral cats are the beneficiaries of my newfound trapping expertise, a reward for their eliminating other rodents, which helps discourage rattlesnakes. That’s a win-win-win in my book, though I’m not sure the gophers would agree.I can’t bring myself to give this amazing device any les than five stars. It’s simply the best gopher trap I’ve ever used. The medium size trap work great on Texas gophers. If you have smaller gophers or moles, you’ll likely want the smaller size. Frankly, if it rusts too badly, I’ll simply buy another one. Yes, it works that well. Despite needing modification before it would work, and despite the extra time to patrol the trap more frequently to make sure the gopher doesn’t suffer, I still have to give this incredible device five stars. Nope, I don’t have a single shred of connection to the manufacturer, I’m just a wildly loyal fan. This device has my highest recommendation!

We have a combo of gophers and moles in our yard. This trap eliminated one mole and three gophers that had evaded all the other solutions. Unlike other traps, the jaws stealthy extend into the tunnel and are less likely to be noticed by the animal, who then activate the trigger once they bypass the jaws. It's an effective solution to bring the animal into the strike zone.A word of caution, this is not a humane trap and not all the kills were instant. It's worth checking them regularly to avoid suffering and you may have to finish the job.

100% recommended. I have years of experience with these traps against gophers and moles and they work amazingly well as long as you place them properly. You're going to want to dig out the burrow a decent amount before placement so that you get as straight a run as possible coming up to the trap.Measure the burrow of what you're trying to kill before you buy. I used Medium size for large moles in the PNW. I initially bought Larges and they had no chance of fitting.

Unfortunately, they didn’t work. The gophers are too smart and fill them up with dirt and then work around them.

I was hoping this size was in between the current Medium and the size that they are...like the one I got some years ago. No such luck. I might try heating the metal and bending the grab jaws so they are wider and shorter so they at least fit the smaller holes better.Also, the spring tension is very strong, I consider it dangerously strong. Be Careful !!No complaints about quality.