I Grew Up Fighting Gophers in Redlands

Hire an Exterminator or Do It Yourself?

Most people searching for gopher control in Redlands want someone to come out and handle it. I don't do paid trapping — this site is me showing you how I do it, so you can do it yourself. For most Redlands yards that's the right call anyway.

Do it yourself when you're dealing with one or two gophers in a normal residential yard. A Victor 2-pack runs about $15 and you reuse the traps indefinitely, so the whole job costs less than a single service call. The hard part isn't the trap, it's finding the main run — and it's not under the mound. That's the part this site teaches.

Hire a pro when the property is large with activity in several zones, when you genuinely don't have time to check sets every morning, or when you've probed the same yard repeatedly and still can't find the main run. Residential gopher work runs about $150 to $500+ depending on property size, method, and whether it's a one-time treatment or a recurring contract. If that's your situation, paying for it is a reasonable call, not a failure.

Full numbers in the gopher control cost guide, and what to ask before you sign anything in hiring a professional trapper. Want me to connect you with a licensed local trapper? I'm lining up trappers in the Inland Empire — tell me about your yard and I'll reach out within 1-2 days.

Where It Started

I was 15 years old the first time I set a trap in my dad's backyard in Redlands. He had a deal for me: $5 for every gopher I pulled out of the ground. No cash, no gopher. It was a business arrangement, not a chore.

My tool was a piece of rebar I found on the ground near a construction site a few blocks over. Still have that exact same piece — it's in the garage right now. I didn't watch any tutorials, I just probed, guessed wrong, probed again, and eventually figured out where the main run actually goes. It's not under the mound. Took me three failed sets to learn that.

I got good fast, mostly because my dad was an unforgiving critic and $5 was real money when you're 15. The financial motivation sharpens your technique faster than any guide ever will. Every gopher left in the ground was money I wasn't making.

Redlands has interesting soil depending on where you are in the city. Near the old citrus grove areas — the University of Redlands side, Lugonia, the older neighborhoods along the base of the hills — you hit that heavy red clay. Parts of the newer developments toward the south and east have looser, sandier soil. The clay holds moisture differently, the sandy stuff behaves differently under the probe. I learned both without knowing what I was doing. I just noticed that the rod felt different and the gophers were sitting at different depths.

That experience is the foundation of everything on this site. I've used the same basic process — scout, probe, flush, trap — since I was a teenager. I've refined the gear and I've trapped across different soil types in different cities, but the core of it hasn't changed.

Why Redlands Has So Many Gophers

Redlands doesn't get a winter break. Year-round irrigation means gophers stay active all twelve months — there's no cold season that forces them deeper or slows down their breeding. If you have a yard with irrigation and decent soil, you have a yard that can support gophers every month of the year. That's different from a lot of the country where winter naturally creates a lull.

The city also sits on top of a legacy citrus grove footprint. A lot of those old groves were converted to residential lots decades ago, but the deep root systems they left behind don't disappear overnight. Gophers have been feeding on mature root systems in this area for generations, and those tunnels run deep. You're not dealing with a new population moving in — in some neighborhoods you're dealing with an established underground infrastructure that's been there longer than the houses.

The clay soil near the historic neighborhoods holds moisture for a long time after irrigation. Gophers go where the food and moisture are, and clay retains both. The trade-off is that the clay also lets them dig deeper, more stable tunnel networks. When I probe clay soil in Redlands I often feel gophers sitting 14–18 inches down, which is deeper than average. That depth makes flooding more effective — the water follows the same path the gopher carved and reaches chambers you can't get to any other way.

The newer developments on the sandier soil have their own issue. Construction disturbs existing populations and pushes them into adjacent yards. When a new subdivision goes in, all the gophers that were in that field have to go somewhere. If your backyard borders a recently graded lot, you're likely inheriting their displaced population. Sandy soil is also faster to tunnel through, so a gopher that just moved in can establish a full burrow system quickly.

What Works Here

These are the three methods I'd reach for first in Redlands. They're not the only options — see the full gear page for everything — but these match what the soil and conditions here actually call for.