On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:30:13 GMT, Don Murray
wrote:
Don Foreman wrote:

If they're pocket gophers, right on. They do appear above ground but
seldom. Shooting gophers requires sniper-grade patience. Flooding
sometimes works, shoot them with a .22 handgun when flooding makes
them come up for air -- but you'll kill or not with first shot.

When my kids were little and we would visit my uncle J.R. he would
gather up his gopher getters. Thay were made from 3/8" steel rod, bent
into a 10 to 12" u with the ends bent up. On the ends was a backing
plate where he mounted a 3" piece of 3/4" pipe out from the plate so he
could get a pipe cap on it, aimed at and 12 to 14" above the ground. The
cap had a hole in the middle of it. Above that was the workings of a
mouse trap mounted so it would hit the pipe cap. A piece of welding rod
was used to trigger the mouse trap. It ran though a tube on the backing
plate to the ground where it was bent 90deg. He would place this over
the gopher hole, put a thin piece of wood over gopher hole that the
welding rod would touch. Then put a 12ga shotshell in the pipe, put the
cap on, cock the mouse trap, put a sawed off nail in the hole in the
pipe cap as a firing pin, and wait to hear from the gopher.

I am not recommending to build one of these, just relaying something I
saw 30+ years ago.

Geez - wouldn't it be easier to build a miniature Claymore Mine?
(The "Front - Toward Enemy" markings optional)

-- Bruce --