I guess it depends on your gopher. The ones we have almost never poke their heads above ground, they fill in the hole from inside. So unless you get the trap really far into the tunnel (i.e. after the fork) you probably won't get the critter. Last year we had a whole new crop of holes pop up over night and not enough traps. So dh set one trap in each hole. He got about 2/3 of the gophers.