Cinch Gopher Trap Kit, Professional-Grade, Heavy-Duty Reusable Trap System for Gopher and Mole Control | Easy Set, Humane, No Chemicals, Ideal for Lawns, Gardens, and Farms | Made in USA (1- Large)

Our back five acres looked like a Martian landscape. Gophers, customarily active in fall and spring, followed their genetic programming and engineered tunnel after tunnel. Each critter created multiple large mounds, littering the property with huge piles of dirt.Okay, I confess I sort of liked the “free” dirt. Scooped up and redistributed to the sundry bare spots and depressions around the homestead, it was expedient and practical. But unless you harvest the dirt every day, it quickly ages and ¬turns hard. Scooping it up then is real work, so I’m not a huge fan.The only option to shoveling the gopher’s handiwork into the wheelbarrow is to level and rake-flat each fresh mound. That method unfortunately has the same expiration date: if you don’t follow-up daily, the mounds turn solid. Really solid -- like the consistency of cheap concrete.Moving was a tempting but impractical option, so I resorted to trapping the little bas**ards. Over the years we used “Victor” gopher traps with spotty success. My wife was more patient in placing the trap than I, so her success rate was better than mine. Still, I doubt we ever caught the culprit more than 20% of the time.Executing my due diligence, I researched “how to kill gophers” far and wide. At one point, I was converting an old lawnmower to route the exhaust and pump it into the ground. The theory was the carbon monoxide would improve on the Victor’s 80% failure rate. Turns out the connections involved (think red hot surfaces) was more complicated than I expected. Go figure -- no one sells plumbing to connect a lawnmower muffler exit port with a long, flexible, skinny, heatproof tube. Imagine that.Next, I briefly considered the “Rodenator” until I discovered the cheap models were over $1000 and the better models sold for several times that. The idea was incredibly appealing: pump acetylene and oxygen into the gopher hole, ignite it, and say sayonara to both gopher and tunnel. I even fleetingly considered a poor man version where I would purchase a cutting torch to obtain industry-standard (read: safe) fittings to connect the tanks and mix the gasses. Yes, I even found a way to remote-detonate the gasses from a safe distance: a small chunk of steel wool lodged between both prongs of an electric extension cord. Connect the other end to a car battery and whallah, instant ignition. Seriously: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.Happily I opted for cheaper solutions that were coincidentally less likely to bring me to the attention of those fun people at Homeland Security. (“Yeah, we need the cops out here right now. There’s somebody blowin’ up stuff right next door!”)Well, okay, this is Texas, so the neighbors response would have more likely run along the lines of, “Hey, that’s awesome! Can I borrow it for my niece’s birthday party next week?” Still, I was hoping for something more practical and less likely to result in tissue damage. I mean, after all, I would have ended up owning a cutting torch, so I’m sure I would have eventually found something large and metallic that needed cutting…Next stop: Amazon.com. I ordered a “death clutch” gopher trap figuring that just looking at the thing would cause gopher cardiac arrest, cause that was the effect it had on me. This wicked-looking medieval contraption had a reputation for success. No idea if that reputation was well-deserved as I could never get it to work. I bought it knowing in advance from Amazon reviewers that it would arrive sans directions. As suggested, I watched numerous YouTube videos about how to arm it. I’ll confess I never did figure out how to set the trap, at least partially because I was so afraid of the sucker. After one valiant final attempt (I think I twisted the spring the wrong way) I gave up and threw it away. God help anyone rummaging through my dumpster this week.I gave Amazon.com one final try and discovered the “Cinch” trap. Huge, goofy looking thing, but people swore by it rather than at it. From the level of on-line praise it garnered, you’d think it was a religious cult rather than a varmint catching apparatus. Well, this being Texas, kinda hard to tell the difference sometimes.It arrived factory-fresh, complete with a manufacturing defect. Sigh. That certainly took the bloom off the rose. When the jaws closed, they touched. In other words, they aligned perfectly, creating an artistic, but decidedly un-lethal loop rather than the gopher-squeezing action I was looking for. A very long (15 minute) YouTube video confirmed what I had guessed: I’d have to bend the jaws in opposite directions. That accomplished, it works fine.Actually, fine is an understatement. Once I got comfortable arming this gadget (the second arming wire exerts much less tension on the trigger than expected, but it still works fine) I’ve had 100% success: Locate tunnel within gopher mound, insert trap, remove dead gopher. Only down side is that it sometimes does not kill instantly, so I have to check the traps frequently in order to humanely dispatch my former enemy. Feral cats are the beneficiaries of my newfound trapping expertise, a reward for their eliminating other rodents, which helps discourage rattlesnakes. That’s a win-win-win in my book, though I’m not sure the gophers would agree.I can’t bring myself to give this amazing device any les than five stars. It’s simply the best gopher trap I’ve ever used. The medium size trap work great on Texas gophers. If you have smaller gophers or moles, you’ll likely want the smaller size. Frankly, if it rusts too badly, I’ll simply buy another one. Yes, it works that well. Despite needing modification before it would work, and despite the extra time to patrol the trap more frequently to make sure the gopher doesn’t suffer, I still have to give this incredible device five stars. Nope, I don’t have a single shred of connection to the manufacturer, I’m just a wildly loyal fan. This device has my highest recommendation!

We bought these traps (medium) about three weeks ago, but I wasn't going to write a review until we had the proof they worked. Well, as of this morning, we finally trapped (and killed) our first gopher, an extremely active one at the edge of our garden and creating all kinds of havoc right in front of our garden storage shed. Part of the delay had been because it'd been rather rainy in these parts and so there wasn't a whole lot of fresh digging until this past weekend.I dug out two of the more accessible fresh dirt mounds, clearing the tunnel entrances with a stick and crowbar. The first trap never went off (probably because the gopher was more active further along in his tunnels) and the other trap didn't go off because it had been clogged with mud, plus I don't think I set the trip-wires quite right. Yesterday, we cleared out this second hole again and I carefully reset the trap into the tunnel entrance. Like I said, this morning the trap was tripped and not only had it grabbed the rather large and fat pocket gopher securely, it had actually killed the garden-destroying blighter. (Ours here are most likely the Bottas variety, btw.)As other reviewers have noted, it's important to have the right size trap and to carefully prep the location where the trap is to be set. I'd also add that it's essential to be sure the trip wires that keep the trap from springing shut need to be set just so and oriented so it is obvious they'll be able to pivot up when the gopher trips the round trigger. Basically, vertically oriented on the loops with the wires up and as far from the base as possible, rather than twisted down and flat against the plate. (I'm fairly sure our first attempt over the weekend failed because the wires jammed.)It does take a bit of hand strength to set the trap too -- I found it helped to wear gloves while doing it. Finally, you have to have access to one of their tunnels, and from that it should be clear whether or not you have the right size trap -- the clamping prongs should slide right inside, but be fairly snug against the walls. Too small a trap and the critter could conceivably just shove it out of the hole entirely; too large and you won't be able to get the cinch prongs into the tunnel. It'll likely take some shovel work to create a large enough flat space in front of the tunnel, too. I know some folks would look for a tunnel between the mounds, but honestly i just dug at one of their fresh loose-soil mounds until I had my placement hole about 6-8 inches deep and wide & long enough to maneuver and place the trap so that the flat metal base was level with the tunnel floor. The round wire trigger was right at the entrance, maybe an inch inside. To avoid springing the trap, I'd hold down the trigger wires and/or the loop trigger with my thumb, and then finish adjusting everything once the trap was placed. I've not yet had the trap go off accidentally (knock on wood).One caution I'd offer is it's almost certainly a good idea to wear sturdy leather gloves and have sleeves when handling the sprung gopher-clutching trap, because they can have disease-carrying fleas. (Fortunately pocket gophers don't get the plague-carrying type of fleas, unlike rats.)Anyway, this trap is certainly way better than my old method, which was to try to flood them out or drown them -- wasteful of water, plus there were several mounds out where the hose just won't reach. I managed to drive out two gophers with the flooding, but it took a LOT of tries and a lot of time. These traps are way better. I would definitely buy them again.On edit: 1 November '15 -- Caught (and killed) a second gopher today. After seeing some fresh digging in some spots further away from our previous trouble zone, I dug them out and put two more traps in. Within 90 minutes, one of them had sprung, catching a rather smaller pocket gopher than the first one, but still the same general type.2nd edit: 4 November '15 -- Caught gopher #3 overnight. (Yes, we had a lot of 'em out on the east end of the property...)3rd edit: 9 November '15 -- #4 over the weekend. These traps really do work, but definitely it's important to get the right size and to set them properly in the tunnel holes. We've come up with a system where we use a spade to dig out the tunnel entrance and create a flat space in front of it, then a crowbar to widen the tunnel opening so the prongs fit well inside.

Got this trap and opened it, found it's missing the pin to set the trap. I have no idea if this trap works, I can't even set it. Also, the product listing photo shows 3 traps, which seems willfully misleading when there's only one trap included.

Fue una buena elección y funcionó de maravilla, la tuza cayó al segundo día.