How funny - we get moles and you get gophers. Perhaps there are gadgets that deter gophers like the ones we have for moles which emit a sonic noise that only moles or gophers can hear. Or get yourself a Jack Russell terrier!

Southcreek - post your question on the gardening and landscape section of Stackexchange (you'll need to join first, but it's free). That site has international members, with most of them in the USA and Canada, and they will have experience of gophers. You may need to give more detail in your question though, such as exactly where you are in the States and what your garden situation is in terms of size, etc.

In my experience, the most reliable way, and also the most gruesome and labor intensive, is to find the main run, dig into it and set a pair of Mcabee gopher traps, facing one each way, anchor the traps to a stake outside the hole, so they can't steal them, and cover the hole with a board and soil so they can't see light. Check the traps after a few days, to get the dead body(s), and reset them in a different run. Among ornamentals only, you could spray the soil with a commercially available castor bean extract product--often labelled primarily for moles, but they work on gophers, too--and that usually repels them from an area for a month or more. Poison baits are almost as effective as traps, but are risky among veggies and with pets. Smoke bombs drive them temporarily out, but they are usually back within days.

Oh, hallelujah, you've logged on Tug - we've had a lot of US questions lately, some of which we really can't answer...

I've been away from the 'Net, lately, but I think that I've found a way to get on more regularly--better keep my fingers crossed! So, I'll do what I can.