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I always get a couple groundhogs every year in the back yard. I shoot them so they don't dig into my septic leech field.
I just shot #8 for the year and #9 is in the hole next to him. I'll get him tomorrow maybe. It's a platoon!
I did shoot one with the Ruger Slabside. I went to take him for a ride the next morning (dump in a creek on gravel road) but he was gone. Something drug him up into the thick brush. Got a couple whiffs of him but only for a couple days..
This 80some acre hay field behind the house got planted with silage corn in the spring. I think that is driving all of the groundhogs out.
(House is red heart)
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They are destructive. Holes can injure livestock and destroy foundations. They eat crops and gardens. I have no choice but to get rid of them. They dig towards my septic drain field. And one bit my wife and she had to get rabies shots. All must die!
jbp-ohio wrote: ↑Wed Aug 20, 2025 12:04 am
They are destructive. Holes can injure livestock and destroy foundations. They eat crops and gardens. I have no choice but to get rid of them. They dig towards my septic drain field. And one bit my wife and she had to get rabies shots. All must die!
After 8 hours the ribs are picked clean.
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I have never heard of anyone getting but by a groundhog. Glad your wife is OK
My late father in law used to shoot at them out of his back door in his wood pile. He always missed being half blind. Over the years I got a few for him.
CPJ 2.0 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 20, 2025 2:06 am
“We decided if we ever saw you we would tell you how my brother in law had his nipple bitten OFF by a beaver. “
Thankfully I don’t have groundhogs here. But I have had an invasion of ground squirrels the last few years. Very similar in their destructive ways. They dig holes and tunnels. But they also are known to get up in vehicles and chew up wiring.
This year has been a little slower. I think I’m at around a dozen so far. Haven’t really kept an accurate count. Last year, I stopped counting at 60. Suppressed 22 with 1050 fps subsonic ammo does a good enough job. Longest shot so far has been 90 yards, but the vast majority have been inside of 50.
I also get gophers. They are much more difficult to hunt. They stay in the ground and rarely come out. The only time I see them is when they are digging a new tunnel to the surface and are pushing dirt out. If they see me, they go down in the hole and seal it up behind them. They’re much easier to trap than shoot. They’re much more destructive in irrigated fields like mine. When the field is being flooded and you see a whirlpool of water going into the ground, all you can do is wait and watch the ground collapse, then fill the sinkhole with dirt and replant the area. It’s amazing how much water their tunnel systems can suck down and how big the sink hole is afterwards.
