Tips for Moles and Gophers
How to Get Rid of Moles in Your Yard
Follow these tips to help you rid your yard of the moles making unsightly tunnels and mounds.
Take Back Your Lawn
It's a terrible feeling when you look out and see your beautiful lawn crisscrossed by a web of tunnels and unsightly mounds. Moles make a horrible mess of your yard. If they've invaded, there are measures you can take to take back your lawn.
Ways to Get Rid of Moles
Repel or eliminate moles in your yard by following these steps:
- Remove their food source
- Avoid overwatering your lawn
- Apply repellents
- Poison moles with bait
- Kill moles with traps
Make Your Yard Undesirable
To help prevent mole invasions from occurring in the first place, start by making your yard unappealing to them.
Kill grubs and insects. The main reason that moles invade your yard is to search for food. Their primary food sources are earthworms, grubs, and lawn insects. If no food is available, they won’t find your yard attractive. To help limit the moles’ food supply, use products labeled to control grubs, ants, mole crickets, and other lawn insects.
Don’t water too much. Moles (as well as earthworms) like soft, damp earth, so avoid over-watering your lawn and keep it on the dry side to limit mole and earthworm activity. Remember: Most lawns only need 1 inch of water per week from either an irrigation system or rain to stay healthy, and this will also help limit mole activity.
Apply repellents. You can also use mole repellents to make your yard undesirable to the furry, tunneling pests. Tomcat® Mole & Gopher Repellent Granules or Tomcat® Mole & Gopher Repellent Ready-To-Spray are a convenient, non-lethal way to remove moles from your yard. Moles despise the smell and taste of its active ingredient, castor oil, and will relocate elsewhere. Mole repellents should be reapplied to your yard monthly while moles are active in order to stop them from reinvading your yard.
How to Kill Moles
If repelling them isn’t good enough, there are two very effective ways to kill moles – trapping and baiting. Tomcat provides products for both options to meet your specific needs and preferences.
You’ll have the most luck killing moles in your yard if you use traps or bait in the spring or fall. Both products should be placed in a main, or active, runway. These are usually the straight tunnels in your lawn or the tunnels that follow the perimeter of your yard. To identify a main runway, carefully poke holes in the top of the runway using your index finger, half-inch dowel, or small probe. If the mole repairs the damage in one or two days, it is a prime runway to set a trap or place bait.
Traps: The Tomcat® Mole Trap provides a method to kill quickly and hold the mole to provide proof of control. Unlike many competitive spear traps, the Tomcat® Mole Trap does not draw blood, and its “hands-free” design makes it easier to use than other traditional mole traps. For more information, see our article How to Use a Tomcat® Mole Trap.
Baits: Tomcat® Mole Killera and Tomcat® Mole Killer Grubs kill moles by simulating their food source, earthworms and grubs. Moles eat the baited earthworm or grubs and die quickly (within 12-24 hours after ingestion) underground in their tunnels. For more information on using baited earthworms and grubs, see our article How to Use Tomcat® Mole Killer Baited Worms & Grubs.
