How to Get Rid of Moles in Your Yard and Which Remedies Don’t Work

The reliable way to get rid of moles in your yard is trapping in an active main tunnel. Moles eat earthworms, not grass roots or grain, so grub killers, poison peanuts, vibrating stakes, and folk remedies like chewing gum leave them digging. Find the tunnel the mole reuses every day and focus your effort there.

Mole season brings a steady stream of calls every spring and fall across Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, usually from homeowners who have already tried two or three home remedies. The frustration makes sense. A single mole can raise ridges across a large part of a lawn in a matter of days, which makes it look like an army is at work. The upside is that a yard full of damage is often the work of just one or two moles, since moles are solitary animals that defend their own tunnel systems, and once you understand how they tunnel, the problem gets far more manageable.

Signs of Moles in Your Yard

Moles leave two kinds of evidence, and both tell you something about where to set a trap.

• Raised ridges are shallow feeding tunnels that a mole pushes along just under the turf while hunting earthworms and insects. They wander across the lawn in curving, squiggly lines, and many are used once and abandoned.
• Molehills are cone-shaped mounds of loose soil pushed up from deeper tunnels, which run roughly 6 to 12 inches below the surface and hold the mole’s nest and resting chambers.

The eastern mole, the species behind most lawn damage in our service area, is about 5 to 7 inches long with velvety gray fur, a pointed hairless snout, tiny eyes, and huge, paddle-like front feet built for digging. You will rarely see one, since moles spend about 90 percent of their lives underground. In wet soils in Wisconsin, the star-nosed mole, with its ring of fleshy tentacles around the nose, occasionally turns up as well.

Mole vs. Vole Damage

Moles and voles get confused constantly, but their damage looks nothing alike. Moles tunnel underground and leave raised ridges and mounds. Voles are small rodents that travel on the surface, leaving narrow, matted runways through the grass about the width of a garden hose, along with small open burrow holes that have no mound of soil around them. Voles also eat plants, chewing grass, roots, and the bark at the base of shrubs and young trees, which moles never do. In our northern states, vole runways often appear in spring when melting snow reveals the paths they made under it all winter. If that sounds like your yard, our vole pest control page covers that problem.

Pocket gophers cause a third kind of damage. Their mounds are fan or crescent shaped with a plugged hole off to one side, while mole mounds are round and centered over the tunnel.

Why Moles Picked Your Yard

Moles go where the food is, and their main food is earthworms. They also eat white grubs, beetle larvae, ants, cutworms, and other soil insects, and they will paralyze earthworms with a bite and store them alive in underground chambers to eat later. Moist, loose, well-drained soil full of earthworms is ideal mole habitat, which is why healthy, well-watered lawns and garden beds rich in organic matter often get the most activity. A mole in your yard is, in a backhanded way, a sign of healthy soil, and earthworms themselves do far more good than harm, as we explain in our post on whether worms are pests.

Moles dig quickly, up to about 18 feet per hour in loose soil, and they stay active year-round instead of hibernating. In hot, dry summers and freezing winters they follow earthworms deeper into the soil, which is why surface damage tends to show up most in spring and fall, when the soil is moist and worms are near the surface.

Are Moles Bad for Your Yard?

The damage is mostly cosmetic, but it is real. Raised tunnels lift turf away from the soil so grass roots dry out and brown, mounds smother the grass underneath them, and soft ridges make mowing rough and uneven. Moles are often blamed for eating plant roots, which they do not do, and they eat grubs and other insects that damage turf. In a vegetable garden or a carefully kept lawn, though, the disruption is enough that most homeowners want them gone.

Do Grubs Cause Moles?

Not really, and this is where we see the most wasted effort. Moles do eat grubs, but earthworms make up most of their diet, and moles persist in lawns that have no grubs at all. Applying a grub control product will not get rid of moles, and in some cases moles simply tunnel more as they search harder for food. Treat grubs if they are damaging your turf on their own, but do not expect it to solve a mole problem.

How to Get Rid of Moles in Your Yard

Trapping is the method most wildlife experts agree works best, and success comes down to setting the trap in the right tunnel.

1. Find the main runways. Look for straight tunnels rather than squiggly ones, especially those that run along driveways, sidewalks, fences, foundations, and the edge of a lawn, or that connect two areas of activity. Straight runs are travel lanes a mole uses daily, while squiggly ridges are usually one-time foraging paths.
2. Test which tunnels are active. Step on short sections of several tunnels to flatten them, mark each spot, and check back the next day. Sections that have been pushed back up within 24 hours are in active use.
3. Choose the right trap. Harpoon-style traps are the easiest to set over shallow surface runs, while scissor and choker-loop traps work better on deeper tunnels.
4. Set the trap carefully. Flatten the tunnel where the trigger will sit, anchor the trap firmly in the soil, and make sure the mechanism moves freely without hitting rocks or roots. Follow the manufacturer’s directions exactly.
5. Check traps every day. If a trap has not been triggered within about three days, move it to another active tunnel.

Should You Stomp Down Mole Tunnels?

Yes, for two reasons. Flattening a section of tunnel is the simplest way to learn whether a mole is still using it, since an active run gets pushed back up within a day. Pressing ridges back down also reconnects the grass roots with the soil, which helps the lawn recover. Stomping alone will not drive a mole away, but it tells you exactly where to put your trap.

Do Mole Repellents and Home Remedies Work?

Most do not. Chewing gum, mothballs, human hair, razor blades, pinwheels, and vibrating or ultrasonic stakes have not held up in testing, and mothballs are not labeled for use in the soil in the first place. Castor oil repellents have the most support, though results are mixed, and they mainly push moles to a different part of the yard for a while before washing out after heavy rain, especially in sandy soil. Repellents can buy a little time around a garden bed, but they do not remove the mole.

Do Poison Baits Work on Moles?

Grain-based rodent baits, poison peanuts, and pellets do not work, because moles are not rodents and do not eat seeds or grain. The only baits with a track record are worm-shaped baits designed to mimic a mole’s natural food, and like any pesticide they have to be placed inside active tunnels exactly as the label directs. Bait scattered on the surface is both ineffective and a violation of the label.

Repairing Mole Damage and Preventing Repeat Visits

Once the mole is gone, press raised ridges back down with your feet or a lawn roller while the soil is moist, so the grass roots reconnect with the soil before they dry out. Rake molehills flat and reseed any bare spots. For a vegetable garden or flower bed you need to protect long term, a buried barrier of galvanized hardware cloth works well. University of Florida wildlife guidance calls for extending it at least 2 feet below ground and 6 inches above, with the bottom edge bent outward a few inches. Keep an eye on lawn edges and fence lines afterward, since a new mole can move into an empty tunnel system.

When to Call a Professional for Moles

Call in help when the damage keeps spreading after a few weeks of trapping, or when you would rather not handle traps yourself. Fenix Pest Control offers mole inspections and mole services for homes across Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Florida, including our Omaha pest control service area, and we can identify whether moles, voles, or gophers are behind the damage before anything else happens. Learn more on our mole pest library page, or send us a message through the form below and a Fenix rep will be in touch within minutes.

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