DaveC Loc: Illinois

Hot, Cross, Bunnies

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

Hot mud.

redtooth

Things must really be moving slow in Illinois .

martin muller

OH NO. Now some one will spend all day trying to do this.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Very good!!

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Bunnies are cute. Use a woodchuck hole instead. Bunnies did little damage on the farm. They liked carrot leaves (they didn't eat the carrots unless we dug them up first) but preferred broadleaf weeds. OTOH, woodchucks ate anything, particularly newly planted seedlings. Right down to the ground.

I tried a lot of things to get rid of woodchucks. The most effective things were traps, trucks, .22s, and the twelve gauge (the truck was sometimes tricky to use since you had to try to run over the woodchuck without running over the crops). There were two things I thought of but never got to use.

(1) Liquid nitrogen. Since woodchucks have (at least) two holes, one usually moderately obvious and the other well hidden, you have to find both (all) and cover all but one for most gas bombs. Liquid nitrogen doesn't have that limitation. The idea is to pour liquid nitrogen down the hole you can find, then cover that hole. The liquid evaporates and fills the hole with nitrogen. Nitrogen will suffocate the woodchuck but since it's the major component of air, the woodchuck doesn't realize he's being suffocated, unlike other gases. I estimate it would take about a cubic foot of LN2 to do the job. I just never got around to getting a good LN2 source on the farm.

(2) I used to cover the holes whenever I found them. The next day they would be open again. I believe the woodchuck leaves a scent around the hole (my nose was not good enough to detect it) because when I took the backhoe and stirred up the soil in a 2 foot radius around the hole, it did not get opened again. At least right away. And since there are other entrances to the burrow I decided to try to destroy the burrow. I got a small fan that ran on 12 volts so I could run it from the truck (I installed a socket on the front of the truck for that purpose). I attached the fan to a 3" diameter pipe. I took a small container of gasoline and placed it in the hole as far as I could reach. I then ran the fan into the hole to evaporate the gasoline into the burrow. Then I had a pipe with a cap on one end onto which I installed a spark plug. I would fill the pipe from my oxygen-acetylene torch and put a piece of plastic over the open end secured with a rubber band. I would put that on a stick and put it into the hole and seal the hole. I then had a spark coil that I could plug into the socket on the truck. That would ignite the oxyacetylene which would ignite the air-gasoline mixture and collapse the hole. It worked once but it was such a complex process that I never got time to use it.

The all-time most effective thing to get rid of woodchucks was coyotes. They didn't eat crops (much). I had a big problem with woodchucks until the coyotes moved in. They wiped out the woodchucks in a few months. Then they wiped out the local cats. Then they moved on, since there wasn't any more food for them. The cats came back quickly. The woodchucks came back after a couple years. I never found a good way to get the coyotes back.

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

HOHIMER

I used carbide (Calcium Carbide). The stuff used in Miner's Lamps. Place a few pieces of carbide in the hole. Add a little water and cover. Look for the gas to appear from the other end of the hole; then light it. BOOM!
Calcium Carbide mixed with water makes Acetylene gas (Used in welding/brazing.).

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

We used to just put the garden hose full blast down the hole and wait for the exit, sometimes long reptiles with sharp fangs came out instead

josquin1 Loc: Massachusetts

Hopefully arrested.

BBurns Loc: South Bay, California

"Woodchuck Recipes"

Klickitatdave Loc: Seattle Washington

Probably a lot of mud and some really pissed off bunnies.