How to Identify an Animals Holes in Your Yard

Determine Critter by Shape, Size, Location

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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Key Takeaways

  • Homeowners often face damage from animals digging up their yards, creating safety hazards and costly problems.
  • Identifying the animal digging holes involves checking hole size, shape, soil pattern, time of day, and location.
  • Common culprits include moles, groundhogs, gophers, voles, skunks, and raccoons, each leaving distinct signs.
  • To stop animals from digging, eliminate food sources, install barriers, and maintain proper lawn care.
  • For persistent issues, contact professionals like Critter Control to prevent further damage to your lawn and foundation.

For most homeowners, our lawns are more than just grass. It’s a point of pride. It’s a backdrop for family gatherings and a place for our kids to play. And, our lawn also speaks to the value of our home. Curb appeal plays a big role in how others perceive our home, whether it’s for sale or not.

Yet, at one point or another, almost every homeowner asks, “What’s digging up my yard?!” Lawn damage is more than just an eyesore. Holes and uneven ground become a safety hazard for you, your family, guests, kids, and even pets. And, it can damage lawn mowers.

Burrowing animals can weaken your soil structure, damage root systems, and even compromise the stability of walkways, driveways, sheds, and patios. Holes in your yard cannot be left unaddressed, as even small ones can grow into larger, more expensive problems over time.

Why There Are Holes in Your Yard

Unfortunately, the animals we live amongst do not recognize the value of our lawns in the same way we do. To wildlife, our lawns are an ideal habitat, one in which they can find food, shelter, safety, and a place to raise their young. Some animals dig to search for food beneath the soil, and others live in underground tunnel systems that can become quite extensive. During spring and summer, animals dig to prepare nesting sites and to find food for their young. In fall and winter, they’re looking to stay warm, store food, or find a place to hibernate until the following spring.

How to Identify What’s Digging in Your Yard

Discovering what animal is digging up your lawn is key to fixing the problem. It takes good detective work to do so because you may not be seeing the animal in action. If you want to know what animal is digging holes in my yard, here’s a checklist to help you know how to identify holes in your yard:

Hole Size

  • Small hole: 1–3 inches (rodents, chipmunks, or voles)
  • Medium: 3–6 inches (skunk or raccoons)
  • Large: 6 inches or more (groundhog, gopher, or large burrower)

Hole Shape & Depth

  • Round (burrowing animals)
  • Cone-shaped and shallow (skunks or raccoons foraging for food)
  • Volcano mounds (moles)
  • Torn turf (raccoons, skunks, or crows foraging for food)

Soil Pattern

  • Mound (groundhog, gophers, or moles)
  • Nothing is surrounding the hole (chipmunks or voles)
  • Scattered dirt (raccoons or skunks foraging for food)

Time of Day

  • Daytime (chipmunks or groundhogs)
  • Overnight (raccoons or skunks)
  • Voles and moles are active year-round, day and night.

Location

  • Lawn (voles, moles, skunks, or raccoons)
  • Garden bed (chipmunk or vole)
  • Along decks or sheds (groundhogs, raccoons, skunks, or rats)

Common Animals That Dig Holes in Yards

Moles

Moles live almost entirely underground. Although they do make holes, they plug their entryways to protect themselves from predators and regulate the temperature in their tunnels. So, you’ll find volcano-like shaped mounds. They create raised ridges in your lawn as they forage for insects just below the surface.

Groundhogs

Gophers and groundhogs are burrowing animals that can dig some of the largest holes you’ll find in lawns. They differ in that gophers do not leave visible holes as groundhogs do. Gophers plug their holes, leaving a covered mound, often with a surrounding mound.

Gophers

Gophers live much of their life underground. They will create multiple mounds as they eat their way underground across your lawn. Groundhogs build extensive underground tunnel systems in which they sleep and raise their young. They come out during the day to eat garden plants, crops, and other plants. They have multiple entrances and exits through which they can escape.

Voles

These creatures make holes that are flush with the ground and connected to a visible snake-like path weaving through the lawn. Voles reproduce quickly, so a few small trails can quickly turn into widespread damage overnight! Their trails are often found along the edges of gardens or near shrubbery as they eat roots and bulbs.

Skunks

Skunks will create small, shallow holes only a few inches deep, scattered across an area of lawn. They do not live on the lawn, but are digging for grubs and worms. The telltale sign is that you’ll wake up in the morning to see a section of your lawn peppered with holes.

Raccoons

Raccoons are messy. They don’t really make holes as much as they tear into the lawn, peeling and flipping back the grass. Like skunks, the damage will appear overnight as they hunt for grubs, beetles, and other insects.

Chipmunks

Chipmunks build burrowing systems in which they live, so there are often multiple holes clustered within an area. Mostly near foundations and patios, you can sometimes find seeds or nuts.

Squirrel holes are shallower. They dig mostly in spring and fall to hide and then dig up nuts. Squirrels will even dig holes as decoys to deflect from where their cache is buried.

Insects That Cause Small Holes

Sometimes the holes we see in lawns are not created by small mammals, but by insects.

  • Birds looking for grubs and worms peck holes in the ground to eat them. Grubs are beetle larvae that look like big C-shaped caterpillars. While they don’t make holes, they attract animals that do make holes.
  • Ground-nesting bees and cicada killer wasps make small holes in lawns. They are mostly solitary insects that do no harm to the grass. You will see them as they hover next to the ground.
  • Ants create quite small pinhole entrances in sunny, dry areas of your lawn. Known as soil-nesting ants, they dig tunnels. Fire ants, harvester ants, pavement, and field ants are a few examples.
  • Cicadas will make exit holes in the ground when they are ready to emerge as adults.

How to Stop Animals From Digging Holes

Animals that dig holes in lawns are frustrating. Whether living in the holes they make or not, the majority of animals that create holes in lawns are there because your lawn and yard are feeding them. If you eliminate the food source or create a barrier that prevents them from reaching it, they will find a new lawn to dig in.

  • Treat your lawn for grubs, which are the primary cause of raccoons and skunks digging.
  • Eliminate bird seed.
  • Install fencing to keep critters out of your garden. Use galvanized steel mesh instead of chicken wire, as it is resistant to chewing. Bury the fence 12–24 inches deep. At the bottom of the fence, bend the mesh outward in an L shape. This stops animals from digging any deeper. The fence should be 4 feet high.
  • Proper lawn care deters digging animals. Water deeply instead of frequently. Avoid overwatering your lawn, as that attracts insects. Keep grass at 3–4 inches. Aerate compacted soil and feed your lawn properly.
  • Introduce beneficial nematodes into your soil. These are predatory, insect-eating worms used to kill lawn and garden pests such as grubs, beetles, and fleas.

When to Call a Professional

If you have a persistent problem with critters digging in your lawn, it is best to call a professional company, such as Critter Control, to help you before your whole lawn and foundation incur costly damage. Critter Control has over forty years of experience in the effective and humane eradication of nuisance animals. Contact Critter Control for a free inspection and plan for getting rid of animals that dig holes in lawns.