I'm at a customers house that has pocket gophers, and je has tried trapping them himself with mole traps..... needless to say these are the most trap shy gophers I have come across....i use the dk-1 death clutcher traps and even tried some trapline mole traps with no sucsess......anybody have any tricks up there sleeves???
My nephews lived in Madison, and they caught pocket gophers like the gophers could not get into the trap fast enough. Sometimes they used potato skins on the trigger, but they never had problems catching them.
Move a few counties over and the gophers here are notorious for not getting into death traps. They respond better to tunnels with a long spring and a license plate over the top, but still bury traps.
What I would like you to consider is this, there are different gopher species even in the genus. I state this, because I have watched the gophers here and they shoot dirt out of their holes with quite a force. What it breaks down to is, the gophers are not smart, nor avoiding a trap. I believe they just are moving dirt and that is springing the traps or burying them in a number of cases.
To deal with them, get pocket gopher poison, take an electric fence post, probe the indented end of the dirt mound, and when you find it, ream it out, put the poison in, and then cover it using a leaf or rock with dirt on top. Poison several locations and end the problem as I have spent too many hours trying to catch these gophers who blow dirt out of the holes and it always comes back to poison as I have better things to do.