Groundhog Removal in Delaware

What the burrow does

A groundhog burrow is not a hole. It is a system — commonly ten to thirty feet of tunnel with chambers, running two to four feet down, and it displaces a great deal of soil. Put that under a shed, a deck footing, a set of concrete steps, a patio slab or an outbuilding foundation and the consequences show up as settling, cracking and eventual movement of whatever is above it.

The same applies to what you walk and drive on. Burrow systems under a lawn, a paddock or a field edge create collapse risk, and around Delaware's older farm outbuildings they are a routine cause of sill and foundation problems that get blamed on age.

The entrance you find and the one you do not

The obvious entrance is the main one, and it announces itself: a hole four to twelve inches across with a substantial mound of excavated soil fanned out in front of it, usually against a structure or a bank.

Almost every established burrow also has at least one spoil-free bolt hole, dug from the inside out so there is no mound to give it away. It is often some distance from the main entrance and is easy to miss entirely in long grass or a bed.

This matters practically. Exclusion work planned around the entrance you found, without locating the others, does not solve anything — and closing a burrow with an animal inside is the same mistake as sealing an attic with a squirrel in it.

How exclusion is actually built

A fence or a skirt that simply meets the ground fails, because a groundhog digs. What works is a barrier that continues below grade and then turns outward, so an animal following the base of the structure meets buried mesh before it finds soft ground.

That means trenching along the structure, running heavy galvanised mesh down and then out in an L away from the building, and backfilling over it. It is more work than screwing a lattice panel to the deck skirt, and it is the difference between a repair that holds and one that gets tunnelled under in a fortnight.

Where this comes up most

• Sheds and outbuildings sitting on skids or blocks
• Decks and porches with open or lattice skirting
• Concrete steps, stoops and patio slabs
• Barn and garage foundations, particularly older ones
• Retaining walls and graded banks

Season and timing

Groundhogs are true hibernators. They go below ground for the cold months and emerge in late winter, which is when the year's first complaints usually start — a burrow that was quiet all winter suddenly has an animal using it again.

Young are born in spring and stay in the burrow for several weeks before dispersing. As with every other animal on this list, that changes what can responsibly be done and when, and it is worth establishing before work is planned rather than after.

The garden question

Plenty of calls start with vegetables rather than foundations. Groundhogs are grazers and they will clear a vegetable bed methodically, and unlike deer they do it from ground level and from a burrow they have already established nearby.

That usually means the fix is the same fix. Fencing a garden against a groundhog needs the same buried L-footer as excluding one from under a shed, plus enough height and a loose unsupported top section, because they climb better than people expect.