Welcome to the club. Lots of great folks here sharing knowledge and humor. That's a dedicated pup. Good job on him.
Chazsbetterhalf and Ohio dave ...Funny that my Chihuahua/Italian greyhound mix is unmoved by these things being on my lawn and chowing down on my garden. He will walk around and pretend he doesn't even notice them. Now I know it would be above his pay grade to attack and actually kill one, but maybe if he at least barked and pretended he cared it might help. They seem to visit heavy about every 2 weeks to feast on the new shoots and flowers on my pumpkins and Cuccuzza's/long gourds after destroying them on their last visit. Just as things start to look promising again disaster strikes Luckily they don't seem to like the older stalks and so we were able to get a few good fruits to fully mature once they grew up into the higher parts of the trellis and the stems got woody. Cuccuza on vine in case no one here never heard of them...It's an italian thing and apparently groundhogs are Italian
This morning I thought I heard a loud wimper of pain. Go to the patio to see him dragging one around it was still kicking. It got away from him twice he caught it both times before it made it to a hole. The 3rd time it got under the shed and he couldnt get it out. Don't know what happened to it after that
I see a couple of these ground hogs on my land. One in each corner of my baseball field shaped lot, both under where I stack wood. One of them kicked dirt all over my pile. Unfortunately there's no shooting allowed in my neighborhood, otherwise the 10/22 would take care of them. I don't want to trap them in gear that one of my pups could get hurt. I'm leaning toward air gun. Oh yeah, I can't let the wife know. She thinks they are cute.
Holly always seems to get them by the back of the neck and shakes the he**out of them. I imagine she brakes their neck. She did not want to let go but she finally did. I was about 15 ft away and watched the end of it when she caught her 1st one.
I've had one around my wood pile all summer. They seem to be pretty alert critters. If we see each other at the same it will be gone in a heartbeat. My wife surprised one in the garden several weeks ago. It was setting on top of her wire arch eating a tomato. Looked right at her and kept on eating. She came in and got me. I grabbed the. 22 and stepped out on the deck thinking surely it had hauled ground hog but by now. She told me were it was and I'll be darned if it wasn't still there. The foliage from the garden made it hard to pick out head or front shoulder area in the red dot. I also only had narrow back stop area. So with the red dot on the center of the gray I squeezed of a shot and he hit the deck hard, just not hard enough. It was able to make it under the fence and out of sight before I could get another shot off. I did draw blood so I'm hoping it ran off and died. I have another I'm on the hunt for now.
Yeah, apparently they are pretty blind or severely near sighted and often need a noise to startle them out of their peaceful yet apocalyptic grazing. I've had one stay 8 feet from me before I made a slight noise where it tilted his head as if to say "did I just hear something?". When I made no further noise it was like "must've been the wind or something", so it stayed in place munching on an apple core. I tried to tip toe away to get the hose to at least soak it to let it know it's not safe here and the thing heard me and flew almost at squirrel speed. I can't shoot my air rifle since I'm in a very dense location with small properties that normally would not even be visited by ground hogs, but I am 3 houses away from the golf course so we get every rodent known to the north east including the occasional misfired golf ball that cracks a window or dents the car.
I hobby farm at my place. Grow beans, sweet corn, and pumpkins mostly. I shoot ground hogs with my .22LR when I see em. Otherwise electric fence is the way to go! I surround my plots with electric fence each year. I do one strand down way low about 6 inches off the ground to repel ground hogs and coons and another up high for the deer. That's the only way I get a good harvest of sweet corn for the stand to sell. Easy to establish and set up. I take mine down and put it up every year since I use a tractor to moldboard plow and disk the area.
I got a young one yesterday evening. It will go on the recycle pile for the red fox who I think got mama.
