I’m a skeptic, so when I saw a gopher whistle for sale at my sporting goods store, I snorted. But I was intrigued enough by the promise of killing more ground squirrels that I bought it.

Pied Piping
To operate the Varmint Call, a machined aluminum tube made by King Tool of Bozeman, Mont. ($15; ­king-​tool.com), suck air through the brass mouthpiece. It supposedly imitates the “all-clear” call sounded by gophers and Columbia ground squirrels. Really? In my experience, high-pitched whistles remind ground-dwelling rodents of raptors, and the sound sends them scurrying to their burrows. I decided to test its efficacy over the course of several ­gopher-​shooting sessions last spring.