Columbia ground squirrel

They're back.  Today I caught a Columbia ground squirrel.  Or as we used to call the in the Midwest, prairie dogs. Out here in Montana I've seen gophers that looked like prairie dogs, and similar looking gophers but with different fur coloring: Colombia ground squirrels.  I use to have them in my middle pasture.  From 2006 to 2010 I trapped 226 of them.  The last two I trapped were in 2010.  None since then, until now.

The closest I've seen Columbia ground squirrels to my ranch is a mile away in the ditch along the highway next to another field.   In between that spot and my ranch are mostly houses and yards.  Not where Columbia ground squirrels would move and create a maze of tunnels.   When riding my bicycle I kept an eye out to see if any were moving closer.  No signs of them.  But one squirrel (or more?) now traveled some distance to my place. 

Several days ago, after I removed the hay bales from the hayfield, I went out and set my pocket gopher traps.  In the hayfield next to the road, and near the gate to the road, I found open holes in the ground.  Pocket gophers make mounds of dirt but do not have open holes in the ground.  How pocket gophers get air underground is a mystery to me.  A number of new open holes in the ground got me thinking of Columbia ground squirrels.  So I got out my traps for them which are different than pocket gopher traps. 

I have 14 traps.  Conibear and leghold traps.  I found 15 holes.  One hole I filled in with dirt and put the rest of the traps on the other holes.  In the past I learned to put the traps over all the holes I could.  Otherwise the gophers reopen the holes and avoid the traps.

The next day I found a new hole near the other holes.  One leghold trap was closed.  Because of a ground squirrel or something else?  I filled the hole back in and reset the leghold trap in the other hole.  This morning I found another one of the leghold traps was not in sight.  The traps are usually chained to a metal pole I stick in the ground.  This trap was chained to a wooden board.  The board was there but had been moved.  I couldn't pull the trap out of the hole.  Must be a Columbia ground squirrel.

I got a shovel and dug around making the hole larger and deeper.  I finally pulled the ground squirrel out as it fought to stay underground.  I then quickly killed it.  I hated doing it, but it had to be done.

I left all the traps in place.  Is it just one Columbia ground squirrel, or did a pair of them move to my hayfield?  Time will tell.

Leghold trap.   Old photo of a placed conibear trap.

Traps all set several days ago.  I had run out of milk jugs to place on the poles to mark the spot the traps were located.

This trap had the chain attached to a wooden board.  The gopher didn't get the board pulled down the hole.  The second photo shows how I dug the hole larger so I could pull the gopher out.