Too bad that you are going to miss some prime shooting time but family needs to come first.
We had very few gophers in this area, it used to be gopher hunting not gopher shooting like it is now. That all changed about 15 years ago when most of the ranches started changing from flood irrigating or wheel lines to center pivots, once the center pivots came on the scene the gopher population literally grew by the tens of thousands. Now from around the first of April until around the first to middle of July I have all of the shooting a person could want. If I go about 50 miles away to a higher elevation I have shot as late as mid-August there, not as many but they are the larger Columbian ground squirrels there.
Weather is starting to turn colder and windier here, according to the forecast it will be a week before it is going to be decent enough to bring them up in any great numbers again.
drover
