I'm not sure if those are vole holes or not. I battled pine/woodland voles for 11+ years at my previous house. I believe you only have meadow voles in Ohio, but I'm not sure. Pine vole holes aren't quite that large, but again, I'm not as familiar with meadow voles. I do know they have above ground runs in the grass that are noticeable as well as some underground runs.
Here's what I do know about pine voles.
1. They breed year round and are active day and night.
2. They eat roots of lots of different vegetation. I could not grow green beans one year they were so numerous. They would eat the roots off the young bean plants and pull the plant half way down into their run. I also lost hosta to the little devils. The hosta would be fine one day and the next I'd walk past and see the hosta leaves flat on the ground but still in the same shape as it originally would be. I scooped up the leaves and that's all that was there....leaves....the roots had been completely eaten.
3. Their numbers will spike every 3-4 years or so. I could control their numbers but I never got rid of them.
I tried all kinds of tricks and products, and here's what worked best for me to control the spike in populations:
1. Purchase the old fashioned wooden mouse traps and load them up with peanut butter. Place them right by the hole and then cover it and hole with a large bucket. Place a rock on top of the bucket. Check trap every morning.
You will catch several this way, BUT the little boogers are smart and will catch on and stop using that hole. Keep looking for active holes and repeat the above.
2. As stated above, they LOVE peanut butter. I didn't want to use mouse/rat poison because of what it could do to a vole predator if it eats a poisoned vole, so I researched and found that small rodents cannot tolerate high doses of vitamin D. It kills them. Purchase some cheap peanut butter and capsules of powdered vitamin D. Mix a quarter cup of peanut butter with LOTS of the vitamin D. You will need to open the capsules and mix the powder in with the peanut butter, and I mean mix a lot of D in. Roll the peanut butter into small balls of about a quarter inch in diameter.
Drop several of these balls into the holes every few days.
These two methods really kept the numbers low at my place and I didn't see much damage after that. Best wishes in your battle if you do find out that they are voles. :-) Perhaps others will also have some useful suggestions.
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