SHOP VERMIN

uncle harry said:
I can attest to how quick they are ! Next thing I know is that Cabellas will be offering Groundhog blinds with turkey hunting camo suits as a package,
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as a young lad, my next door neighbor had a canvas duck blind set up next to his garden and with a Sears 22LR semi-automatic, would sit for hours and reek havoc on the local ground hog population
 
What I do for squirrels in the orchard is full the boroughs with a mixture of oxygen and propane and bang no more boroughs. There are special machines just for this. Don't think I would use it around buildings because of fire . Down side is the noise.
 
Back when I was a lad, shooting groundhogs was a sport. Guys used to go out with flat shooting rifles and take them out at a couple of hundered yards. When groundhogs sense something is up, they sit up on their haunches, thereby making a pretty good target. At two hundred yards, the groundhog wouldn't even know they were there.
 
While on the subject, does anyone have a good means of getting rid of moles? They have really been invading the past few years. If I can pinpoint them in a tunnel, I'll stomp the tunnel in on either side of them to prevent their escape and flood them out with a hose. When they stick their head out a good swipe with the end of the hose takes them out.
 
RJSakowski said:
While on the subject, does anyone have a good means of getting rid of moles? They have really been invading the past few years. If I can pinpoint them in a tunnel, I'll stomp the tunnel in on either side of them to prevent their escape and flood them out with a hose. When they stick their head out a good swipe with the end of the hose takes them out.
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These work pretty well but there are other products that also work but the use is "off label" so isn't supposed to happen. These basically create sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide puts them to sleep and possibly kills them but the sulfur dioxide combines with the water in their lungs and makes sulphuric acid and makes sure they don't wake up.

Just a regular smoke bomb will do the same and give you nice colored smoke at all the entrances so if they do bail out you can whack them with whatever means you have available. A farmer friend of mine cut his alfalfa and invited a couple of guys with shotguns while he stuffed military style smoke grenades and maybe an OC or CS grenade in the holes. It was fast shooting as the little 13 lined ground squirrels shot out of the ground coughing and found no where to hide. Wasn't sporting at al but he said the hay production at the next cutting was double what it was from the cutting the day we went to war. We went through nearly a case of shells and I suspect many of the little rats died underground unable to find their way out in time.

It did look kind of funny to passerby, orange, red, purple smoke rising out of the ground and 3 grown men running and gunning in the field. We had a deputy stop by and pull out his cell phone and when the farmer sat his gun down and walked out to the road to talk to him he waved him back and left. We figured he wanted no part of it or he knew what we were doing.
 
I have had some success in repelling ground squirrels, raccoons and ground hogs by putting a few laundry soap pods down the hole or under the building. We bought some laundry soap pods to try but they smelled way to strong to keep in the house. So instead of pitching them in the garbage I stuck a few around in various holes and stored the remainder under the tool shed. There was a marked reduction in critter sightings from that point on. It is cheaper than coyote urine and it seems to work better.
 
MontanaLon said:
View attachment 321252
These work pretty well but there are other products that also work but the use is "off label" so isn't supposed to happen. These basically create sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide puts them to sleep and possibly kills them but the sulfur dioxide combines with the water in their lungs and makes sulphuric acid and makes sure they don't wake up.

Just a regular smoke bomb will do the same and give you nice colored smoke at all the entrances so if they do bail out you can whack them with whatever means you have available. A farmer friend of mine cut his alfalfa and invited a couple of guys with shotguns while he stuffed military style smoke grenades and maybe an OC or CS grenade in the holes. It was fast shooting as the little 13 lined ground squirrels shot out of the ground coughing and found no where to hide. Wasn't sporting at al but he said the hay production at the next cutting was double what it was from the cutting the day we went to war. We went through nearly a case of shells and I suspect many of the little rats died underground unable to find their way out in time.

It did look kind of funny to passerby, orange, red, purple smoke rising out of the ground and 3 grown men running and gunning in the field. We had a deputy stop by and pull out his cell phone and when the farmer sat his gun down and walked out to the road to talk to him he waved him back and left. We figured he wanted no part of it or he knew what we were doing.
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Thanks for the lead. I may have to give it a try. I see that Home Depot sells them.

From the MSDS, it looks like the ingredients are the same as for black powder with possibly an inhibitor to provide a slow burn rather than an explosion. The MSDS states tha oxides of sulfur are produced when burning. These would be sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide. Sulfur dioxide is a gas sometimes used to bleach cherries to make Maraschino cherries. It combines with water to make sulfurous acid which reacts with metal oxides to make sulfites. Sulfur trioxide combines with water to make sulfuric acid. When I worked in a chem lab tears ago, we used to digest samples in sulfuric acid on a hot plate. As the water was driven off, dense white clouds of sulfur trioxide would form and even though we were operating in a fume hood, some of the fumes would escape into the lab. If carbon monoxide is being produced, almost certainly carbon black is in the formula. Sodium nitrate is listed as 50 -75% of the ingredients in the MSDS.

Over the years, I have breathed in more than my share of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide, the former with my Gilbert chemistry set as a lad and the latter working as a chemist. Obnoxious but not particularly lethal. Professional exterminators will use hydrogen cyanide which is considerably more deadly. Levels of more than 100 ppm cause death in a few hours; over 200 ppm, in a few minutes.

Hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) is as lethal as cyanide. It's only saving grace, if any, is that no one can stand to be in an area with a lethal amount long enough to succumb to it. It can be produced by heating sulfur and paraffin. One of my early chemistry experiments. It took forever to air out my bedroom. At the time, I wasn't aware of its toxicity. In chemistry qualitative analysis lab in college, we used a hydrogen sulfide generator to precipitate various metal salts. Again we had no idea of its toxicity, just that the smell was obnoxious. There was no such thing as an MSDS in those days.

A potential DIY fumigator would be to heat a closed vessel containing paraffin and sulfur with a tube leading into mole tunnel. The reaction stops when heat is removed. As long as you had a good breeze blowing it should be safe. The neighbors might not appreciate it though and I have no idea as to how long the odor would remain.

Pouring ammonia into a burrow or tunnel should also work. I expect that it would be more a repellent than a poison though. The plus is the it is a good soil nutrient.
 
RJSakowski said:
Thanks for the lead. I may have to give it a try. I see that Home Depot sells them.

From the MSDS, it looks like the ingredients are the same as for black powder with possibly an inhibitor to provide a slow burn rather than an explosion. The MSDS states tha oxides of sulfur are produced when burning. These would be sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide. Sulfur dioxide is a gas sometimes used to bleach cherries to make Maraschino cherries. It combines with water to make sulfurous acid which reacts with metal oxides to make sulfites. Sulfur trioxide combines with water to make sulfuric acid. When I worked in a chem lab tears ago, we used to digest samples in sulfuric acid on a hot plate. As the water was driven off, dense white clouds of sulfur trioxide would form and even though we were operating in a fume hood, some of the fumes would escape into the lab. If carbon monoxide is being produced, almost certainly carbon black is in the formula. Sodium nitrate is listed as 50 -75% of the ingredients in the MSDS.

Over the years, I have breathed in more than my share of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide, the former with my Gilbert chemistry set as a lad and the latter working as a chemist. Obnoxious but not particularly lethal. Professional exterminators will use hydrogen cyanide which is considerably more deadly. Levels of more than 100 ppm cause death in a few hours; over 200 ppm, in a few minutes.

Hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) is as lethal as cyanide. It's only saving grace, if any, is that no one can stand to be in an area with a lethal amount long enough to succumb to it. It can be produced by heating sulfur and paraffin. One of my early chemistry experiments. It took forever to air out my bedroom. At the time, I wasn't aware of its toxicity. In chemistry qualitative analysis lab in college, we used a hydrogen sulfide generator to precipitate various metal salts. Again we had no idea of its toxicity, just that the smell was obnoxious. There was no such thing as an MSDS in those days.

A potential DIY fumigator would be to heat a closed vessel containing paraffin and sulfur with a tube leading into mole tunnel. The reaction stops when heat is removed. As long as you had a good breeze blowing it should be safe. The neighbors might not appreciate it though and I have no idea as to how long the odor would remain.

Pouring ammonia into a burrow or tunnel should also work. I expect that it would be more a repellent than a poison though. The plus is the it is a good soil nutrient.
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What is your take on using ammonia and sodium hypochlorite (SP?) together to produce ammonium chloride when poured down the hole ?
 
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