If you are like me with a number of pens scattered over multiple acres, then managing raccoon numbers is sound. Same goes for opossums. This is especially true when their are broody hens on the ground after dark. I can protect most of the latter from foxes pretty easily at night, but culling raccoons back is easier than bunching up broody hens into one location or making a bunch of heavy duty coops.
Raccoons are THE only animal I will kill with, as they say, 'extreme prejudice'. Before we moved...and this was a big city...we lot our little, elderly, deaf dog to one, in his own backyard. The neighbor's cat was mauled and had to be put down. On the next block, a pretty well-made rabbit cage was ripped into and the little girl's pet bunny was torn apart and eaten. We had two of them trying to get into our enclosed front porch where I stored cat food. All this, mind you with NO pet food outside and no pets fed outside. When I went out with a broom to run then off, rather than run, the largest stood up on his hind legs and growled and huffed at me, daring me to come closer.
We had a groundhog terrorizing our pot mum greenhouse. It ate flower buds off the mums every night. Quite a few nights of trapping got us nothing, until someone thought to put pot mum flower buds in the trap. It worked! It was humbling, though, that the groundhog outsmarted us for those several nights.
