Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Encouraging Groundhogs

I grew up shooting groundhogs almost daily from late spring to early fall on the farm. It’s an indoctrination, a way of life. They’re kind of my super villain or I’m theirs. I’d miss them if they were gone.

Plant soybeans or alfalfa on your property to encourage them

You're welcome to the ones that have been undermining my barn for years. It's a constant battle to keep them thinned out- - - -I've given up on eradicating them. You might have to patch up a few .243 or .22-250 holes in them, though!
Jerry

Yes, yes... after you release them onto your property, perhaps you could train one for Caddy Shack II

Now I've heard everything. Maybe train some mice for the circus too. Or better yet. Release some feral hogs...

Yes, Bloomberg can teach you how.

Driving around and looking at soybean and hay fields was how I located groundhogs in the Sequatchie Valley of East Tennessee during the sixties and seventies. I still drive around today, but there are no chewed down fan shaped areas in the beans. When the coyotes moved in here in the eighties, groundhog populations almost disappeared. Today the only groundhogs are found in kudzu cut banks along highways and around buildings too close to houses for coyotes to hunt.

Dont see many whistle-pigs around my area, not in several years.

I had a Tobacco barn next to big gully, the whole place drowning in kudzu. Used to snipe chucks in there with a marlin 783, 22 wmr

Little brown heads poking up through those vines. 4x simmons, didn’t need a fancy rig. Just some tick spray, a root beer and a bag of Funyuns.

All the chucks now are in town, edge of roads and city parks.

Along with coyotes and like predators something I've noticed too is the economic need (or desire) by farmers to plant every inch of crop land possible resulted in removal of more and more scrub cover, wood lots and overgrowth along fence rows, which also contributed substantially to reduced numbers of small game including non-game nuisance animals like groundhogs.

I've been told by some local farmers too that nowadays turkeys have gotten so plentiful in some areas that they are starting to cause as much crop damage as groundhogs ever did. They said turkeys (and fowl in general) are worse than deer in that they eat sprouting seedlings right down to the roots killing the plants whereas deer generally just eat the tops and move on.

You need to obtain some breeding stock and then raise them like rabbits. You can release the surplus one year olds.

They have moved to town around here. I guess there's less coyote traffic.....although they have been in town on and off. I live in town on a river bank and they are all over the neighborhood. There is one porch that they have dug under and it has been the den for 10 generations of the critters. I had to put a small fence around my garden patch just so I could have a few tomatoes.

"I'll take 'Threads you'll never see' for $200, Alex."

I still shoot dozens of woodchucks every year in upstate NY and there are tons of coyotes in the area. It's bullshyt that coyotes killed them all off. You very rarely see coyotes out in these fields during daylight hours and woodchucks ain't nocturnal. If the coyotes got them all they'd have to be digging them out at night and I don't find dug out chuck holes ever. There are places here that used to hold good numbers of chucks 30 years ago that are devoid of them now. Other areas are still loaded with them. I killed 14 off a 200 acre farm in one afternoon just last summer.

Be careful what you wish for Shaman. Once they have undermined your building or pavement foundations you will regret wishing for them.

I live fairly close to you (Kenton County). They are still in the area, I've killed 4 in my fairly small urban yard in the past two years.

I think I've finally wiped out this clan, but the damage they caused remains to be repaired this spring.

Hey shaman,

I've got some gray diggers around my place I'd be willing to live trap and send you.

Smaller targets, make you aim better.

I'm sure y'all southerners would love them things as much as we do.

I'll toss in some Belding's ground squirrels too. They're only above ground for about 4-5 months though, so you gotta get on them quick in the spring.

Geno

My grandpa and his horse made decent money when he was a boy back in the 1920’s on ranches and farms in Ontario Canada during the summers. He said a box of 50 shells for his .22 were a nickel and a pack of smokes were .10c so he figured he netted.35c on fifty groundhogs since the farmers paid a penny for every tail he brought in. He admitted he missed but not much. He counted on a thirty five cent profit. 😁

Have an orchard.......which they usually put where it’s too steep for corn.
Will make you hate them real soon when you don’t see a hole on a hill side when mowing.
And are hell on barn foundations.
Shot them out of fruit trees several times.
I have one under the house addition now. Seems to love heavy metal and chewing on the joists at 2am.
Apples in the live trap tomorrow.....
Hope coyotes like them.
Woodchuck and deer........coyotes are sort of on my side. I don’t shoot coyotes........

Anything else is a target.

Hawks love ground hog too.

Yeah, I've got a few old chuckholes in my tobacco barn. They're pretty extravagant. I guess I should feel I'm lucky not having them.

(Sigh!)

Count your blessings Shaman. There are plenty of other things to shoot. No sense wishing for vermin.