The Great Gopher Hunt

Gophers: A Penny a Piece

One day Pa announced that the gophers along the pasture were going into the cornfields. They had dug up the entire first row of the newly planted corn. 

“If you boys can catch some of these gophers I’ll give you a penny a piece for them.” 

My brother Ted and I were really excited. If we could catch those gophers we would make a lot of money.

Ted said, “Let’s take our buggy and put a barrel of water on it. Then we’ll go in the field and drown out those gophers. We should be able to drown out a whole lot of them with a whole barrel full of water. At a penny each we will be making a lot of money!” 

Our buggy was a made-over surrey that was just four wheels with a wood platform. The normal tongue was also removed and a rope was tied to the front axle for steering.

We found an old fifty-gallon barrel and proceeded to fill it with water from our stock tank. The barrel was on the ground. After a few minutes we realized that once the barrel was full we wouldn’t be able to lift the barrel on to the buggy. We emptied the barrel and started over. We set the barrel on top and then we handed the buckets up to fill the barrel. Problem solved.

How to Get Rich Quick with our Clicker Dings

We decided to take along our clicker dings. Clicker dings would make a lot of noise and cause the gophers to come out of their holes to see what was going on. 

What is a clicker ding? A “ding” is just a Yankee-Dutch way of saying “thing.” Because my parents were immigrants from the Netherlands, our English was mixed through with low-German or Groenegan.

In this case the “clicker ding” was our homemade toy. We’d take an iron wheel and find a piece of metal rod in the shape of a long “U” about three feet long. One end of it went through the center of the wheel and the other end was used as a handle to push it along. Then we took some heavy wire and wrapped it around this handle with a little peg sticking out at the bottom that could engage the spokes of the wheel. The other end could be a handle a lot like the speed and spark handles on a Model T Ford.

When you push the clicker ding through the fields while pushing that upper lever down, it engaged the spokes of the wheel and make an awful racket. Ted and I each had a clicker ding so we put them on the buggy along with the barrel of water.

When Ted and I told Ma that we were going out to catch a bunch of gophers she said, “Well, you’ll have to take Eddie along and watch him.” 

Then of course, Marvin and Maynard wanted to go along too. We put three-year-old Eddie on the platform of our buggy and started pulling and pushing it toward the pasture. As we pulled it along, the water splashed out from the top. We soaked Eddie, but he didn’t mind since it was a hot day. He was just happy to go along. Marvin and Maynard pushed the buggy from behind and Ted pulled to steer the buggy with the two ropes in the front.

The Gopher-Catching Method

We eventually got to where the gophers were abundant. We took our clicker dings and started running back and forth across this pasture, making a lot of racket. It didn’t take long; we soon spotted gophers coming out to see what all the clatter was about. 

Our method of catching the gopher was quite simple. One boy pours the water down the hole. When the water starts bubbling we know the gopher is there and will be coming out. Another boy sits waiting, ready to grab the gopher by the nape of the neck as soon as his head is out of the water. 

That first hole did not prove to be successful. We poured bucket after bucket of water down that hole and nothing happened. This gopher had dug himself such a long hole that the water didn’t reach him.

We again ran our clicker dings around the field and spotted another gopher. I don’t know if it was scared for its life or just curious. This time Ted said he’d snare the gopher. He took his fishing line, set the snare in the hole, and lay down quietly to wait for the gopher. The rest of us had to be very quiet. We were sitting and trying to busy ourselves with other things like picking dandelions. (By this time little Eddie began to get tired and had to be carried around.)

Finally Ted snared this gopher! But as he held it up the gopher managed to wriggle loose and get away.

We went back to the drowning out method and caught another gopher. Holding it by the nape of the neck we got it in a bucket and put a cover on it.

We had finally caught our first gopher! But the barrel was just about empty and the younger brothers were tired of the work saying, “Let’s go home” and “I’m getting thirsty.” We couldn’t give the younger children water from the barrel because the cattle drank out of that same tank.

The little ones got on the buggy and we went back home. We reported to Pa that we had gotten one gopher. He said, “You got one gopher?”

“Yes,” we told him, “that’s all we could get. We scared the heck out of a lot of them but we just couldn’t get ’em.”

“Well I’ll tell you what,” he replied, “I’ll give each of you a penny because you really did work hard on catching that one gopher.”

I’m sure we were quite a sight: five kids pulling a buggy with a barrel on it and our “clicker dings” making a crazy racket in the pasture.

• 

• 

•