We got a Rodentator gopher blaster when they first came out in 2000, I think. I used it for a year or so, then loaned it out to some neighbors. We have it back in the shop, where it sits, mostly unused.

The issues in dealing with it might be unique to Nevada, so judge for yourself.

1. It does work as advertised. If you have a clear hole down to the pest you want to kill, and you fill the hole with the gases in the right proportion, you will kill the critter. You might even cave in their burrow/hole/tunnel.

I've killed everything from gophers to badgers with it. So it does work.

2. You need to adjust the mixture of gases before you go trying to kill stuff. My recommendation would be to find about a 3 to 4" diameter pipe, say heavy PVC conduit or pipe, about 10' long; lay this on the ground, away from windows and confined areas.

Get your eye and ear protection on. Always wear eye and ear protection when using these rodent blasters. And heavy clothes, especially heavy boots. You guys know I'm hardly a subscriber to the nanny-state "pad every corner" ideal, but you're creating an explosion here, and it is not easy to predict where stuff is about to fly. You might want to wear a broad-brimmed hat to keep dirt from getting in your scalp and down your collar.

You use this as a test blast chamber. The way I tend to do it is get the propane valve open first, then keep adding more and more oxygen until you start to get a "whop!", then a "pop!" and then you'll start getting a "wham!" out of test shots in the pipe. When you get it right in the 3 to 4" pipe, about 10' long, it will sound like a small cannon going off. 

When you shut off the valves on the blaster handle, make a mark on each of the gas valves and record how many turns it took to shut the valve from your ideal setting. Tweeking the mixture in a pest den hole is possible, but setting the gross mixture is very difficult in a non-ideal hole. 

3. Now you're ready to kill sumthin'. Go to your woodchuck, gopher, etc hole. Start out by putting in about 10 seconds flow of gases. Hit the igniter. You will have one of three results if you had the gas mixtures right:

- too little gas - you get this entirely unsatisfactory "pop" and you know darn well the critter isn't dead.

- just about right - you got a very satisfactory explosion that shakes the ground and leaves you standing upright.

- too much gas - you're covered in earth, your hide is hurting like you've been wihpped, your feet hurt like hell. Oh, and the ground under your feet disappeared into a cloud of flying dirt.

As you learn more about your particular pest, you'll start having a better idea of how much gas to start with. When we first bought the blaster, the manufacture recommended "oh, about 30 seconds" of fuel for a ground squirrel hole. I am here to tell you that 30 seconds of propane+oxygen down a squirrel hole will cause you, the operator, nearly as much pain as you're trying to cause to the squirrel. It is way, way too much gas for our squirrel holes. Remember what I said about study boots? If you're wearing sneakers or skimpy shoes and you put in way too much gas into a gopher or squirrel hole, you will regret not wearing solid shoes for the rest of the day. 

4. These things can start fires. Here in Nevada, we have lots of fine-stemmed fuels in the form of grasses. Our local ground squirrels pack quite a bit of cheatgrass and other fine seeds and chaff down into their holes. When I've used the blaster, especially near the edges of our farm, I've seen tufts of flaming cheat come flying out of the ground 30+ feet away, across a fenceline, and land in sagebrush and weeds. The last thing I need here is a bill from the NDF or BLM for fighting a wildland fire I started, so we don't use the blaster that much any more. Most of y'all live in areas where you don't have our particular fire issues, so use your own judgement in your local area.