Kim E. wrote:
...We have a vegetable garden-ruining groundhog too!!! How high was the
fence you built that they climbed? We were planning to do a 4 ft fence
(we have deer to contend with also). Also, should we bury the fence a
bit - have you ever had the groundhogs tunnel under a fence?...



Use the fence. Don't bother burying it. Just make it difficult for the
woodchuck to get into and out of the garden. (You can't make it
impossible.) If you them plant something outside the fence that
woodchucks like, they will stay outside rather than risk being caught
inside the fence in an emergency. Clover works well, but takes some time
to get started. You could even start a sacrificial garden outside
somewhere with broccoli or cabbage or sunflowers. Use cheap seed.

Be alert for tunnels appearing in the garden. If one appears, get a
woodchuck smoke bomb. Not the small ones that most hardware stores have,
they're designed for small rodents like voles, but the large
woodchuck-sized ones. Agway carries them. They're about 1-1/2 inch in
diameter and 5" long (estimate from memory). Tie the bomb to a long
stick. check to see which direction to shove the stick into the hole to
get it as far in as possible. Get a shovel full of soil ready. The fuses
are never long enough, so get everything ready to go. Light the fuse,
shove the stick into the hole (bomb end first, of course) as far as it
will go and start filling the hole.

It works much better if you can find all the entrances to the burrow
(there are at least two, and possibly three or four). Bomb them all. If
you miss one or two the woodchuck could be back in a week after the
smoke dissipates. If you get them all, it might take two or three weeks
before it comes back. If you get lucky and the woodchuck was in the hole
when you bombed it, it might take four weeks before another woodchuck
finds the hole and moves in.