Cinch Gopher Trap Kit - Professional-Grade Gopher Traps That Work Best, Heavy Duty, Reusable Rodent Trapping System - Ideal for Lawns, Gardens, Ranches, and More - Outdoor Use, Small (3 Pack)

I bought this trap to protect my garden from an invasion of ground squirrels, and boy, has it delivered! This trap is like the Hotel California for squirrels – they check in any time they like, but they can never leave.First, let me tell you about the ground squirrels. These guys are relentless, like tiny furry burglars with a taste for fresh veggies. They all seem to come from the same hole, like they’ve got a secret underground clubhouse. Well, thanks to this trap, their party has come to an abrupt end.After trying several traps with mixed results, I’ve had the best luck with this one. The trap has become a daily ritual for me and my dog. We stroll out to the garden, and she’s wagging her tail, practically skipping with excitement. It's like Christmas morning for her every day. She can’t wait to see what Santa Squirrel has left in the trap overnight.We’ve caught so many squirrels that I’m starting to think we might be running a side business here. Each one is a new adventure for my dog, who is an enthusiastic helper in this process.If you’re looking for a trap that delivers consistent results and provides endless entertainment for your dog, look no further. Just be prepared for your garden to become the talk of the squirrel town – word travels fast in the rodent world!

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!

This trap works a lot better than any other one we have tried. It's a bit tricky to set up the first few times until you get the hang of it, but it's not complicated. The only drawback (which has been true of all of the traps that we have tried over the years) is that most of the gopher holes are just too small to fit the trap's jaws in. I'm not sure if we just have a smaller than normal gopher species but it's been a consistent problem with all of the traps, so it's not unique to the CINCH trap. If I can find a smaller one than the one we got I will gladly buy it. The first 3 times we set the trap, we pulled it out within hours with a gopher in it's jaws. It's very sensitive when set right, so the gophers have a very hard time trying to seal up the hole and bury the trap without getting snagged in it. It's heavy duty and is holding up great even though we have left it outside in the rain a few times nowI would have given it 5 stars, but it's a bit difficult to set the trap. The spring is very strong and I have difficulty holding the spring tension while moving the trigger wires in place. You have to be relatively strong to set it. Another minor issue is that I could see this trap's trigger mechanism going off on a curious household pet. An animal outside the gopher hole could trip the trap and get snapped buy the trigger mechanism (not the jaws of the trap, but the trigger wires themselves). We cover our trap with a bucket when it's set to keep our cat from accidently setting it off.If you don't have pets (or cover the trap) and you have strong hands, this trap kicks butt over anything else we have tried.Whatever you do, do not test this trap while holding on to any part of it because the metal trigger parts snap around to places you would not expect and the spring is so strong that it will do some damage to your finger(s). Yes, I tested it by poking it with a ruler while holding the flat base (and I thought all of my fingers were safely away from all moving parts...). You have been warned - it is a long lasting pain ;)

Very easy to use , Set them for the first time and pulled out 1 Mole , Another thing I liked about them was that you don’t have to touch the dead Mole , Just release the claws and drop it back down the hole . Done

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.