Wildlife division · Groundhogs
Groundhogs under the shed.
A round hole and a fan of fresh dirt against a shed, a porch or a foundation corner. The animal is only half the problem — what it has taken out from underneath is the other half. We deal with the burrow, then set a steel barrier so it cannot simply be re-dug.
1–3 hours on site · Photos and a written estimate · Any fee confirmed up front
What a groundhog problem actually looks like
Groundhogs do not get into attics, which is why nothing on the rest of this site quite describes them. They are a ground-level structural problem, and the signs are all at ankle height.
- A round entrance hole, roughly ten to twelve inches across, with a mound of excavated soil beside it
- The hole tucked against a shed skirt, a deck, a concrete stoop, a sidewalk edge or a foundation corner — they like a roof over the entrance
- A second, smaller hole some distance away with no mound at all — that is the bolt hole, dug from below
- Worn runs through grass between the burrow and whatever it is eating
- A slab, step or shed that has started to sit unevenly, or a gap opening under a threshold
- Vegetable beds and young plantings cropped off cleanly at a low height
Not certain what dug it? Send a photo to (826) 203-0343 and we can usually tell you what you are looking at without a visit.
Why it matters
The damage is the tunnel, not the animal.
A groundhog burrow is not a hole. It is a system — a main chamber, a nesting chamber, usually more than one exit, and enough connecting tunnel that a single adult can move a surprising volume of soil out from under whatever it has chosen to dig beneath.
That is the part people underestimate. The animal itself is a nuisance in a vegetable garden and not much more. The excavation is what costs money, because the soil it removes is the soil your shed, stoop or porch pier was bearing on. By the time something visibly settles, the tunnelling has been going on for a while.
Where they choose to dig
Almost always against something solid, with cover overhead. Shed skirts and deck edges are the most common, followed by concrete — a stoop, a walkway, a driveway apron — because the slab makes a ready-made ceiling that will not collapse on them.
Foundation corners and crawlspace vents are the ones worth taking seriously fastest. A burrow that runs along a footing can open a path for water where there was not one before, and a crawlspace that a groundhog can reach is a crawlspace other things can reach too.
Why filling it in does not work
Because you have just given a professional digger some loose soil. A filled burrow is easier to re-open than the original ground was, and groundhogs return to a known site. This is the single most common reason people call us having already “dealt with it” twice.
How we handle it
We establish what is down there first
Whether the burrow is active, and whether there is more than one animal in it. Young are the reason timing matters — closing a burrow with a litter in it is both inhumane and a guarantee of a smell you will be chasing for weeks.
The animal is dealt with before anything is closed
How depends on the situation, the season and where the burrow runs. Trapping is a real part of the work here in a way it is not with an attic animal, because there is no one-way door you can hang on a hole in the ground. Where we can resolve it without trapping we do; where we cannot, we tell you that plainly rather than after the fact.
What we will not do is promise to relocate it. Virginia does not permit releasing a trapped nuisance animal elsewhere, and any quote that says otherwise is describing something that cannot legally happen.
Then the ground stops being diggable
This is the half that lasts, and it is the reason to call someone who also does the carpentry. We set a stainless steel dig barrier roughly twelve inches into the ground along the structure — shed, porch, walkway, driveway edge — so there is no soft line to re-excavate. Once the ground settles over it you cannot see it.
The burrow itself gets closed behind that, and the disturbed ground made good. Our exclusion work carries a 1-year warranty unless we have discussed otherwise.
The hardware this job is made of
Dig defense is fabricated and installed by us rather than bought in, which is why it can follow an awkward shed line or a curved walkway instead of forcing the job to fit a stock panel. The full hardware list covers what else an exclusion job uses.
Groundhog questions we get asked
How do I know it's a groundhog and not something else?
Size and the hole. A groundhog burrow entrance is round, roughly ten to twelve inches across, with a fan of excavated soil beside it — far bigger than anything a rat or chipmunk makes, and rarely more than a few feet from cover. If the hole is that size and there is a mound of fresh dirt next to it, it is almost certainly a groundhog.
Is it actually doing damage, or is it just ugly?
It depends entirely on what it has dug under. A burrow in an open field is somebody else's problem. A burrow under a shed, a porch, a concrete stoop or a foundation corner is removing the soil those things are bearing on, and that is how you end up with a settling slab or a shed that no longer closes square. We would rather look at it than guess for you.
Can you trap it and move it somewhere else?
No, and neither can anyone else in Virginia — relocating a trapped nuisance animal is not legal here, whatever a competitor's website says about trap-and-release. That is the reason our default is to make the burrow unusable and keep it that way, rather than to sell you a trapping programme that ends the same way every summer.
Will it come back after you fill in the hole?
If all you do is fill the hole, yes — usually within days, and often through the same soft ground. Groundhogs dig for a living. What stops the cycle is a steel barrier set into the ground along the structure, so there is nothing to re-excavate. That is what dig defense is for.
What about the burrow that's already under my shed?
We deal with what is in there first — the same principle as any other job. Sealing an animal under a structure it cannot get out of is how you end up with a smell you cannot find. Once we are confident it is empty, the barrier goes in and the burrow gets closed behind it.
Do you use poison or gas cartridges?
No. Both are indiscriminate, both leave you with a dead animal under a structure you cannot reach, and neither does anything about the reason it dug there. The ground stays exactly as diggable as it was.
Related
Something is digging under the shed.
The longer a burrow runs, the more soil comes out from under whatever is sitting on it.
1–3 hours on site · Photos and a written estimate · Any fee confirmed up front