Another coon goes for a ''ride''

[Sunny Side Up]

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Do you relocate trapped rats & mice too? How about roaches & flies? Raccoons are like rats with bushy striped tails. Their populations have increased along with development, and the same goes for opossums & skunks. Their natural predators are fewer in number, but their available food (pet dishes, garbage cans, people who feed them intentionally) has increased. They are not shy about making their homes and raising their young next to human habitation. Being better fed helps them to have larger healthier litters.

It is wrong to relocate animals trapped in your yard. Leave that to professionals. There is potential for harm to you while handling the traps with the animal inside, especially upon release.

It also is cruel to the animal, spending a length of time in the trap, being transported in a moving vehicle, being let out into unfamiliar territory. It has to reestablish itself there amongst strange animals, find new sources of food, water, & shelter. It may try to cross busy roads or highways in order to return to its home habitat and become road kill.

Furthermore, it's not always obvious whether a trapped animal is harboring some disease like rabies or distemper, or carrying some other virus or parasite. Releasing a trapped animal can put other populations of animals at risk from a new disease or parasite the released animal is carrying.

Finally, unless you have carefully studied up-to-date aerial maps of the area in which you intend to release your trapped animal, you cannot be certain that you're not putting some other person's poultry or animals at risk. What may look like "the middle of nowhere" to you may be the edge of someone else's property.

MMTillman, I

you! It takes a person of exceptional character to admit their error, and the wisest people are the most teachable ones.

 

[queenbeezz]

Olive Hill
Today 8:31 amIt's very honorable of you to come back and post as you did. It's hard to admit wrongs. Now, would you mind calling my FIL and having a talk? I've offered to come do the dispatching FOR HIM and he still insists on relocating... and get this, he only moves them a whopping mile, mile and a half. I think his is "age related softness" too.

Olive, your friend is probably trapping the same ones over and over. Maybe they like car rides!

I hate racoons, we trap and dispatch. Relocation only gives them to someone else.

As for the rabies question, my Dad ran a rabies control dept for the local health dept. With racoons you cannot tell if they are rabid just be looking at them. Testing has to be done in a lab after the animal is dead (they test the brain). Even the babies can be rabid because they are born to a rabid mother. Don't take the chance.

 

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

All animals, wild and domestic have a sovereign right to exist regardless of the benefits or threats they may pose to human kind. Raccoons are one of the most familiar suburban wild creatures. They are highly intelligent and resourceful, especially when searching for food. These animals are notorious garbage can raiders, and they can create quite a mess to be cleaned up the next morning.
Federal law allows property owners to control raccoons that are causing damage or injury on their property. They may control these animals without a trapping license or permit. If the animal is killed, it must be reported to the local DNR Conservation Officer within 24 hours. people should be made aware that survival rates for relocated animals are not particularly good if the animal is unhealthy, or particularly old or young, because of competition from existing animals, and the stress of learning a new habitat. BUT an active healthy raccoon in its prime will survive nicely. Bring very young animals to a state licensed wildlife rehabilitator

 

[woodmort]

BigDaddy'sGurl :

Federal law allows property owners to control raccoons that are causing damage or injury on their property. They may control these animals without a trapping license or permit. If the animal is killed, it must be reported to the local DNR Conservation Officer within 24 hours. people should be made aware that survival rates for relocated animals are not particularly good if the animal is unhealthy, or particularly old or young, because of competition from existing animals, and the stress of learning a new habitat. BUT an active healthy raccoon in its prime will survive nicely. Bring very young animals to a state licensed wildlife rehabilitator

I don't think federal law has anything to do with it. Raccoons are fur bearers and, as such, may be regulated by state law with seasons and certain restrictions on trapping and shooting. Federal laws only cover migratory birds, endangered species or those in national parks,​

 

[desertdarlene]

Don't worry, you're not the first person who immediately thinks about relocating nuisance animals when they're caught in a trap. I had a boss who was Native American who would go out of her way to treat animals with kindness and respect and wouldn't hesitate to relocate rats, coons, etc, that we would trap at work not thinking that the same rat would be back in the building within a few days. A lot of people think this way, automatically, because they can't bear the thought of killing an animal.

I know with me, I would be worried if someone relocated a coon or a rat to a new area where a duck or a killdeer may have set up a nest not thinking she would have trouble with these predators because she never saw one in that area before she built the nest. These ground nesting birds set up their nests with regard to the predators they know they will be dealing with. They would not have been on guard for a strange predator that showed up all of a sudden.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

BigDaddy'sGurl :

All animals, wild and domestic have a sovereign right to exist regardless of the benefits or threats they may pose to human kind. ...

So you are saying that other creatures have more rights to exist than do humans? We are not to protect the animals we own if it involves danger or death to another animal? Sorry, I disagree. Humans, and our interests and perogeratives are just as important to nature as are those of any other animal, wild or domestic, and we have as much right to live as we choose as they do. Meaning that if we see the need to dispatch a predator, it is no different than if a wild animal predator dispatches anotehr wild animal predator.​

 

[halo]

Just for information sake, our raccoon population around here has nearly been decimated this past summer. Distemper went thru the local population, and killled many many MANY of them. We were picking them off the road and from around the farm where I work by the dozens. Old ones, young ones, babies. How they got it, I dont know; we havent had an outbreak like this since I moved here 10 years ago. In relocating wildlife, you may be plunking them in the middle of sickness and disease. Or if they are sick, infecting an entire population somewhere else.

 

[nzpouter]

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now that's a thought....

 

[aprophet]

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one way they can get it is from being in a fight with a canine or feline, they can cary both types at the same time they can also get it from another relocated coon that they have fought with . the coon I have seen with distemper appear quite disoriented or drunk. unable to stand up almost.

 

[MMPoultryFarms]

I am one of those soft hearted people who relocate racoons as well. Mhmm yup sure do I relocate them right to pet cemetary. and to make it even better thats located around alotof coyote dens ahh the circle of life I giveth and I taketh away