What Time of Day Are Gophers Most Active?

Unlike many animals with clear daily activity patterns — deer that feed at dawn and dusk, ground squirrels that are active only during daylight — pocket gophers do not have a strong time-of-day preference for their activity. Understanding this helps set realistic expectations about when you will see new mounds and why treatment does not need to be timed to specific windows.

Gophers Have Polyphasic Activity Patterns

Botta's pocket gophers — the species responsible for virtually all Southern California residential gopher problems — are polyphasic, meaning they have multiple short active and resting periods spread throughout the 24-hour day. Research has documented activity occurring across all hours with no consistent peak period that holds across seasons and individuals. A gopher may have three to five active periods per day, each lasting 30 minutes to a few hours, with resting periods in between. These active periods can occur at any time.

What Does Affect Activity Level

Soil temperature is the most significant factor affecting when gophers are active within a day. In Southern California's warm summers, gophers tend to be more active during cooler periods — early morning, evening, and nighttime — simply because deeper, cooler tunnel sections are more comfortable during peak heat. In winter and mild weather, activity is more evenly distributed across the day.

Irrigation timing affects activity. Gophers respond to soil moisture — fresh irrigation softens soil and stimulates feeding and tunneling behavior. If your irrigation runs in the early morning, you may see more new mound activity in the hours following irrigation than at other times. This is one reason that maintaining normal irrigation during active gopher treatment helps speed resolution — it keeps gophers moving through the tunnel system actively.

Breeding season increases overall activity levels. In late winter and spring, gophers are more active overall regardless of time of day as breeding behavior and territory expansion drive increased movement through tunnel systems.

Why Timing Does Not Affect Treatment

Because gophers traverse their tunnel systems multiple times per day at irregular intervals, a professionally placed trap in an active primary tunnel will be encountered by the gopher on its own schedule. There is no benefit to placing traps at a specific time of day — a trap set at 9am and one set at 9pm have equal probability of being triggered, because the gopher will travel that tunnel section whenever its next active period begins. This is why professional gopher control involves setting traps and returning 24-48 hours later rather than timing placement to a specific activity window.

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