Duke foot trap?

[MiniMeadows]

Thanks for the thoughts. We have had Coyotes running along the fence line lately.

I did move it to a new location, except where they have raccoon highway it is pretty dense.

Appreciate the time and information.

MM

 

[chickengeorgeto]

.... One of the issues with the spring trap, is that you have to hope that the animal hits the exact spot where the trap is set.

With a live trap, you can put bait inside (with raccoons you need to put your bait inside a can.... and if they come to the bait, they'll be caught.

They are pretty crafty and will just slip their hands through the cage to retrieve the food. When you catch a problem predator in a live trap, you can either release and shoot them, or relocate them to some state land far away....

To better discuss your concerns with "spring" traps everyone should realized that every trap uses some type of spring, either a mechanical spring, the trapped force of gravity, or the target animals own forward momentum. Were do you think the phrase "Spring the Trap" came from?

The fact in favor of the Duke Dog Proof trap is that the chicken owned is not dependent on a problem raccoon randomly stepping on a little two inch spot of ground on the whole big wide Earth. A Duke Dog Poof raccoon trap acts like a live trap in that it is baited with something coons can't resist, marshmallows, and the Duke DP is basically the can that you recommended to hold your coon bait, and when the coon sticks his hand into the DP and tries to steal the bait they are caught. This helps trap those live trap wise coons that may have been trapped and released numerous times, the Duke DP trap plays to the coons weakness.

As far as I know it is currently against the law in every state to release any trapped wildlife, any where, but at the same exact location at which it was trapped. If that means releasing a chicken killing coon inside your chicken coop... well tell it to the judge. There is currently an ongoing and wide hanging federal program designed to eradicate rabies in the raccoon population. This program involves airdropping oral rabies vaccine baits from North to South in about 50 mile wide swaths. Carrying an unvaccinated or an already infected raccoon into or out of these beaten zones violates the bio-security of this program.

When the program started it was touted as having eradicate rabies in raccoons between the Eastern Seaboard and the Allegany Mountains. Thanks now in large part to pain in the you know what animal lovers, millions of raccoons yet unborn are being condemned by the afore mentioned animal lovers to a horrible death from rabies. Irresponsible animal lovers have reintroduced rabies infected coons (and other rabies infected wildlife) back into the areas were rabies was eliminated, and they have even introduced rabies into areas in which it was never present before. Things like this happen when people who don't have a good understanding of wildlife dynamics act on their own ill formed ideas.

They do this by following the terrible advise quoted above to: you can.... relocate them to some state land far away....

I guess some people believe that if they release raccoons on the afore said "state land" long enough, that in a few years that state land will be waste deep in cute furry little raccoons. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, it 'ain't' true. 90% of these relocated coons will starve, be injured in and/or die from fights with the native coon population, incidentally spreading or acquiring rabies in the process. If the relocated coon is rabies infected or if it acquires rabies in one of these skirmishes and makes its way home, then years of rabies eradication work goes out the window and maybe one of your loved ones' life as well. The remaining 10% of the coons will force the native coon population to refugee, fetching these "innocent" coons a horrible death only because these coons did nothing to harm your chickens but your actions released an alpha coon in their territory that killed them. Multiculturalism is as foreign in the animal world as time travel is. There are no animal species that embarrasses diversity or multiculturalism, no matter how hard we push it on the natural world.