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Mobile "Gopher Gasser"
When the mower deck wore out on his 25-year-old Simplicity garden tractor, Kenneth Aller of Louisville, Ohio, decided to convert the tractor into a mobile "gopher gasser."
When he spots a new gopher mound, he uses a shovel to open up the tunnel. Then he slips one end of a flexible exhaust pipe over the engine e
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Mobile "Gopher Gasser" TRACTORS Modifications 27-5-4 When the mower deck wore out on his 25-year-old Simplicity garden tractor, Kenneth Aller of Louisville, Ohio, decided to convert the tractor into a mobile "gopher gasser."
When he spots a new gopher mound, he uses a shovel to open up the tunnel. Then he slips one end of a flexible exhaust pipe over the engine exhaust and sticks the other end of the hose down into the tunnel, sealing it off with dirt. He lets the engine - a 12 hp Kohler - run for about 15 minutes at a fast throttle.
He made a wooden rack that mounts on back of the tractor and uses it to carry a shovel as well as the hot exhaust pipe.
"It works every time and wipes out the entire colony," says Aller. "I tried the idea for the first time last summer and wiped out colony after colony. None of the gophers lived to dig their way back out, which made it a lot easier to make hay this summer. For years I used smoke bombs and guns to try to get rid of gophers, but I could never get rid of them all."
According to Aller, the reason exhaust from garden tractors works so well is that their engines have a lot more back pressure than the ones on cars and pickups. "The 12 hp Kohler engine on my garden tractor has an amazing amount of back pressure, which forces the smoke deep down into the tunnels. With the pipe off, I can stand 15 ft. away from the engine's muffler and still feel the exhaust coming out," says Aller. "I don't know the long term effect of this idea on engines, so I wouldn't try this idea on a new garden tractor. However, my tractor is 25 years old so I don't have a lot to lose. I pull the choke on my engine to pour as much smoke as possible down into the tunnels.
"Sometimes when I put the pipe down a hole, I'll see smoke coming up from three or four other holes in the area which means they're all connected together. When that happens I close up all the holes so that I can kill all the animals at one time," notes Aller.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Kenneth Aller, 8697 Lisbon St., Louisville, Ohio 44641 (ph 330 488-1986).
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