Spring
Feb – May
Peak Breeding. Maximum Damage.
This is the big one. Gophers come out of their winter slow-down breeding hard and expanding territory. In irrigated ground a female can produce up to 3 litters a year, against 1 in nonirrigated sites, and litters average 5–6 young — most of that pressure lands in this window. New tunnels go in fast, mounds multiply overnight, and root damage hits its annual peak as plants are trying to establish new growth.
What Mark Does in Spring
- Start trapping before the first new mound appears — early February if you had activity last fall.
- Walk the yard every morning. Fresh mounds are your best intel.
- Set traps in pairs in the main runway, not the lateral branches.
- Don't let even one mound sit unchecked for more than 24 hours during this window.
Bagger Pro-Tip: Spring is not the time for repellents. You've got active breeders pushing territory — you need lethal traps or
bait stations working every day. Castor oil and
sonic stakes are fine as a perimeter hold but they will not stop a breeding surge.
Summer
Jun – Aug
Underground, But Not Gone.
Surface activity drops off in the heat. You'll see fewer fresh mounds, and it's easy to think the problem solved itself. It didn't. Gophers go deeper in summer — sometimes 3–4 feet down — and they keep working your root systems. The lack of surface signs is misleading. Irrigation lines are at especially high risk because gophers follow moisture.
What Mark Does in Summer
- Check irrigation lines and drip systems monthly — chewed emitters and wet spots where there shouldn't be any are signs of subsurface activity.
- Maintain any traps you have set — gophers are still moving, just deeper.
- This is a good time to install gopher mesh under new garden beds before fall planting.
- Probe areas where turf looks stressed — collapsed tunnels cause dry patches even when you're watering.
Bagger Pro-Tip: If your lawn has a dead patch in summer and irrigation isn't the cause, probe it before you reseed. You're probably standing on a collapsed tunnel. Fill the void first or you'll be reseeding again in three weeks.
Fall
Sep – Nov
Cache Season. Second Surge.
Fall brings the second major activity spike of the year. Gophers are caching food — bulbs, roots, tubers — for winter, and they expand their tunnel network aggressively to do it. This is the season they hit vegetable gardens hardest as crops finish and root systems are at their most dense. It's also your second-best trapping window of the year.
What Mark Does in Fall
- Get traps back in the ground the moment you see new fall mounds — usually mid-September in Redlands.
- Pull out any spent summer crops and check the root zones for evidence of gopher feeding.
- If you're planting fall bulbs, put hardware cloth baskets around anything valuable.
- Fall is the best time to install a barn owl box — owls scout through winter and may nest the following spring.
Bagger Pro-Tip: The gopher that destroys your fall garden is almost always the same one you ignored in August when it went quiet. One gopher in a system can cache enough roots to survive the winter. Don't let them coast.
Winter
Dec – Jan
Slow Season. Not Off Season.
In the inland valleys of Southern California, there is no true gopher winter. Temperatures rarely get cold enough to push them fully dormant. Activity drops — you'll see fewer fresh mounds — but tunnels are still being worked, especially after rain when soil loosens. Up in the foothills and in colder climates, gophers slow down more significantly but do not hibernate.
What Mark Does in Winter
- Keep a baseline set of traps in any area that had activity in fall — don't fully stand down.
- After the first good rain, walk the yard. Saturated soil collapses old tunnel voids and makes new mounds easy to spot.
- Use the slow season to do infrastructure work: gopher mesh installation, raised bed retrofits, hardware cloth barriers around tree root zones.
- Order replacement traps and gear now so you're stocked before the February push.
Bagger Pro-Tip: Winter prep beats spring panic every time. Mesh installation in January means less trapping you'll need to do in March — it won't stop every gopher, but it protects what matters most and lets you focus your trap sets where they count. If you know you have gopher pressure, get ahead of it now.
