Caught One....Now What?!

[Sunny Side Up]

What you did was very considerate, towards both the raccoon and your neighbors. How fortunate for that raccoon that you had the time & resources & gas to spare on its behalf. And your neighbors, their pets & their poultry are also fortunate that you made the effort to follow legal procedures for releasing that raccoon.

I wouldn't mind if folks released their trapped raccoons in someone else's 100-acre woods with their permission. But I'd be awfully angry if someone 50 or so miles away from my property drove here and decided my road was a good "random location" to release their trapped raccoons. Especially if they spread their diseases around here or if they killed my poultry or pets.

 

[ILoveJoe]

Quote:
Thank you.

I recently lost 2 cats (out of 5) that I had just spent an entire paycheck getting spayed and shots, and I read that coons do kill cats. He was a nuisance in my barn, eating the cats food, tearing up the feed bag, washing his 'fowl' little hands in their automatic waterer and the worse thing was the defecating on my beams up in my hay!! I had to relocate my cats to a shed for safety after the male (neutered) got torn up overnight by something.

I have a german shepherd mix and a min-pin in addition to the 3 cats, 2 horses and 22 chickens. He could have done some serious damage to my dogs.

SO far I haven't caught anything else, but there is an oppossum that will get the same treatment.

 

[sandymart]

ummm....my Min Pin is the loudest animal on the face of the earth. It scares away more critters with his incessent barking than either my lab or my Rotti ever did. The deer have left us alone all summer and I have Nipper to thank.

We have been discussing our raccoon problem too. My husband wants to trap them too but then where on earth do we release them?? In traffic???

 

[AnthonyT]

The reason the have "silly laws" about wildlfe relocation is simple. Unless the animal has been worked over by a vet, blood tested, etc. you have no clue what the heck it could have. Raccoon rabies made its in road to the central US partly due to illegal releases. Same for some really nasty tapeworms canines can carry. There range is greatly expanded by the intential and illegal release of, if you can believe it, coyotes. These were not done by fish and wildlife, the feds or any other prodfessional wildlife agency but by people who thought they knew better and it would be OK. Why are tapeworms a big deal? Because when little Johnny is playing outside and gets canine feces on his hands and goes to eat lunch without watching he gets them. And then they go straight to his liver and cause hydatic cysts that can kill you.
If you have chickens and don't have the heart to shoot a coon, possum, coyote, fox, feral cat and eventually dogs, then invest in a good eletric fence system, a welded wire perimeter fence with barbed wire top and bottom strands, and build a predator proof house to lock them in at night. Even with all three the predators will eventually breech it and you will be right back at the start. Forget chicken wire. A determined coon will either rip it open or chew through it. Ditto for coyotes (they can chew a 2/0 twist link chain open). Chickens are the #1 food item for everything, big slow and tasty, so if you have chickens the preds will come.

And about min pins scaring off everything, a min pin would be no match for a 25 pound boar coon and not even a worry to a yote or large fox, and unless it physically attacks a possum they generally don't care if a dog is barking.

 

[Ugly Cowboy]

Quote:
Thank you!

 

[nautical_bouy]

Finally, some of the few speak up...

 

[playchickenman]

Club it in the head and walk away...

 

[Ugly Cowboy]

Quote:
Dont just leave it! They taste great! Trust me!

 

[cmom]

Quote:
I agree.

 

[I*Eat*Chickens*Yum]

Quote:
Dont just leave it! They taste great! Trust me!

In all seriousness thats why when I caught one in a Hav-A-Heart trap I put a bullet between its beady little eyes and they immediately cleaned in and threw it on the barbi......it was pretty tasty.