A lifetime of trapping Pillager

Converse

from page 5

the animal while others want the tail and still others want both.

He allows the landowner to recoup the bounty.

For him, it’s about helping people restore their land and get the most out of the crops they’ve planted.

“One gopher can cover quite a bit of ground,” he said.

Anytime a farmer plows up a hay fi eld or pasture, the machine disrupts the earth and the gophers’ tunnels collapse, keeping them busy rebuilding. The scurrying mammals prefer to dig in loose, damp earth for ease and Converse has found they like to be on sloping ground so when it’s really wet, they can move uphill a bit to dry out.

“They’re excellent diggers,” Converse said. “They can dig through a township road … creating a tunnel underneath the tar; the road sinks and cracks or settles, or it creates a big crack or a dip in the road.”

He did trap for townships in certain places, but doesn’t always have the time to get every place done. When he does that work, he coordinates with the township, setting traps just after mowing and removing them before the mowing is necessary again.

“You get to see a lot of country, see a lot of crops and farms and see a lot of wildlife and livestock,” he said.

The price of gas makes his work more expensive. He’s always balancing the mileage of a drive with the cost of fuel and the cost to his customers.

“I feel sorry for the farmers in the fi rst place for having to get rid of the gophers,” he said. “But, they work quite quickly, making mounds and tunnels which is hard if you plant soybeans.”

It becomes diffi cult for farmers to work with the mounds. During the harvest, especially with soybeans, the combine head runs close to the ground and if a farmer raises the head so they’re not digging into the gopher mounds, they miss the beans.

“The more acres you have … that are sandy or gravelly, there’s a chance of having more gophers,” he said.

It also depends on what a farmer is raising. The gophers typically stay just to the edges of corn fi elds where it is grassy. On hay fi elds, Converse will fi nd mounds everywhere because alfalfa is the gophers’ favorite.

Gophers can produce two litters of offspring a year.

“They’ve got their multiplication tables down pretty well,” Converse said.

Tree planting can also attract gophers. If farmers use a planting machine to put in the seedlings, gophers tunnel up and down the furrow, snacking on the roots of the seedlings as they grow. He’s also seen them chew through piping meant to protect irrigation and under-

PHOTOS BY GRACE JEURISSEN Clint Converse digs to fi nd an opening on a fresh gopher mound. He uses a small pointed garden shovel to quickly clear the opening to the mound. Clint Converse sets a trap by holding the spring back; once a gopher pushes on it, the trap catches it.

A pocket gopher is caught in one of Clint Converse’s traps. Converse will pull the gopher from the hole and reset the trap to catch another.

Converse page 9

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