A Simpler Strategy for Live-Trapping Pocket Gophers (Rodentia: Geomyidae)

Abstract

During 2014-2015, we trapped Texas pocket gophers (Geomys personatus) in coastal South Texas for a translocation study (Hansler et al. 2017). In the 2017 paper, the trapping method was briefly described in three sentences. Herein we provide more detail on the technique and discuss a preliminary experiment demonstrating that cantaloupe is an effective bait for pocket gophers (Rodentia: Geomyidae). Because of their fossorial lifestyle (Williams 1982), pocket gophers are inherently difficult to live trap at the surface because they rarely come above ground. They are usually live-captured by digging and inserting a live trap in their burrow (Sherman 1941;Baker & Williams 1972;Hickman 1979) sometimes using a specially constructed device (Connior & Risch 2009;Moore et al. 2019). Burrow depths for Geomys personatus average 240 cm and range from 80-440 cm (Kennerly 1954). We used standard Sherman live traps near the surface. Baits, such as granola or peanut butter, used for trapping non-fossorial rodents yielded little success in the original study and were not even discussed (Hansler et al. 2017). We observed that captive gophers housed in aquaria seemed to prefer cantaloupe over conventional feed such as rat biscuits, granola, pelleted rodent foods, and a variety of other fruits and vegetables. We therefore began using cantaloupe as bait and it appeared that we captured more gophers with cantaloupe than we did using other baits or no bait. To evaluate whether this observation was correct, we conducted a trial in fall of 2015 in the Flour Bluff area of Corpus Christi, Texas. This study was designed to compare using cantaloupe with using granola and gopher scat bait.Active gopher mounds were located by identifying those that were darker in color due to the moisture still present in the sand. An