Coons? Believe it!

[chickengeorgeto]

...
... Buzzards gotta eat too.......same as the worms.

OK Mr Jose Wales !!!

 

[Howard E]

It turns out Mr. Wales had additional insight to offer as to how to deal with coons, rats and other persistent varmints........

 

[chickengeorgeto]

The first nursery rhyme I remember my granny and mother singing to me started like this. "Oh, the Dirty little coward who shot Mr Howard and laid Jesse James in his grave...."

The movie The Outlaw Josey Wales is based on the life and times of Jesse James. Frank James was tried in the Federal Court in Huntsville, Alabama for the robbery of the Federal paymaster at the Muscle Shoals canal project on the Tennessee River. But that is a different story.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

To anyone contemplating the use of chicken wire under the hope it will protect your birds from coons and other varmints, perhaps my recent find will convince you otherwise.

Last year, in an attempt to determine which varmints were getting into the cat food, I setup a game camera. These showed up:



So I go out yesterday and find this:



That was a coon attempting to rip the remnants of a 30 pound sack of cat foot through a 1 inch hole. He got a whole bunch of it through. Laughing, I tried to get it out. Tried harder......tried really, really hard and with some effort, finally managed to pry it back out.

The good news is if you have one hanging around, their willingness and tendency to reach into things like this is their weakness. They can be caught using the dog proof traps. They stick their hand in for the bait and get nabbed and they it's up to you to snuff em. Buzzards gotta eat too.......same as the worms.

That is why the best coon medicine going is a Dog Proof Coon Trap or a DPCT.

 

[Howard E]

The notion that the movie "Outlaw Josey Wales" was based on the Frank and Jesse James is a common held belief. But more likely it was someone else.....someone who would have also ridden with Bloody Bill Anderson. If you go the the link below, flip down to the segment on Bloody Bill's Death......last paragraph, and Legacy below that. That pretty much fits the narrative of the movie....someone who had been riding with Bloody Bill who then moved on to Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Anderson

I grew up in an area that was nearly ground zero for all this. During the civil war it was common to have roving bands of these confederate guerrillas and Union soldiers riding through and if they suspected you were on the other side, they would kill you. As one guy in the movie put it, if you wanted to survive, you had to learn to whistle Dixie and the Battle Hymn of the Republic with equal enthusiasm.

It got pretty bad with one side riding into Lawrence KS to burn the town down, followed by Order #11, which meant nearly every home and farm building in a 4 county area of MO was burned to the ground and people living there rounded up or shot. As such, both sides made enemies of folks who would have preferred to sit the whole thing out and not take sides.

Good example of this from my ancestors, who had settled in that area in the 1840's. One of my ancestors had married the daughter of a large estate owner.....one who had slaves. So the wife's family more or less had sided with the south. Yet living only a mile away, my ancestor signed up with the Union and was an officer for them. A border rift within a border state. When they claim it was brother fighting brother, they are not kidding. It was that bad.

So one day, pregnant wife left all alone by Union officer is home alone (except for farm hands), and none other than Bloody Bill and his gang rides into the yard. Hangs out, steals food, harasses the young mother while resting the horses. But one of the hired hands who had seen them coming and had taken horses into a nearby corn field lost control of the draft horses, who went running back to the barn. Hearing some horses coming, Bloody Bill and his bunch fear the worst and ride on leaving young mother shaken but unharmed.

To anyone reading this who might be wondering what it has to do with coons, well in true "Six Degrees of Separation" form, this one isn't even hard.

The picture of this chicken house is one that still exists today on one of the building sites from the old estate farm........

And beyond that, the old farmhouse where the mother event happened is still standing. The field next to that is where my sister and father would dump the dead coons they trapped out of the sweet corn. After several days of that, they had buzzards sitting in the trees waiting for their daily dose of breakfast.

"Buzzards gotta eat, same as the worms".

 

[Garyoutlaw]

DP traps are great at preventing non target catches but I've learned to only bait with sweet bait flavors after catching a few barn cats - Also I have became super loyal to the Bridger T3 traps because the round trigger & drain port in the bottom

 

[Howard E]

To give one an idea of how many companies make these......each with it's own loyal following........

https://www.schmittent.com/product-category/dog-proof-coon-traps

http://www.pcsoutdoors.com/dogproofcategorypage.aspx

And even these may not be all of them.........point being the concept works, so the original concept has been duplicated and imitated by a lot of folks.

In a general way, the main difference in them is if they have pull only (one way) trigger or push / pull (two way). The latter is much more sensitive and will catch more stuff, but could nab a dog or cat if they were to use it. So not so dog proof as the one way triggers.

BTW, I have two brands of these......the Duke and Coon Dagger. In my eyes.....the coon dagger is far and away better than the Duke. So many subtle little things.......

Some shown here.......does not show the "ring" shaped trigger vs. the single lever trigger of the Duke.

I believe all the coon daggers are made by the guy in the video, who runs a shop near St. Louis. Mine and the ones in his videos are bare steel.......assumption is trappers will boil them in wax to coat them anyway. I see he now offers them with black powder coat too.

I also believe he has modified his trigger to not only include a safety setting, but it can be set as both push/pull or pull only.

If I was going to order a dozen of them, I would be getting coon daggers.

 

[Howard E]

Two more videos on trapping coons, since youtube deleted some of the better ones.

Another option instead of the dog proofs is the use of conibear or body grip traps. This may be an option for those of you who don't know what to do with a live trapped coon. Be advised, body grip traps are kill traps. That is both a blessing and perhaps a curse, as they will also kill anything else that wanders in......like a cat or dog. So while perhaps this is an option to consider, it is not one to be taken lightly.

Also, out of all the trap options I know of, body grips are the most dangerous to work with. Both for non target animals and YOU. They are powerful traps that will break a finger if you mess up when setting them. For traps large enough to kill a coon, you will need a trap setting tool.

Two ways of setting these up. One is in a travel trail set..........the other is a bucket set.

First video explains use of both body grips and dog proofs. How and where to set them. Second......bucket sets. You could use a bucket set right next to your coop. If they stick in their head......they are dead.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

...

Two ways of setting these up. One is in a travel trail set..........the other is a bucket set.

First video explains use of both body grips and dog proofs. How and where to set them. Second......bucket sets. You could use a bucket set right next to your coop. If they stick in their head......they are dead.

I just saw this post and wanted to point out that using a body grip trap for dry land trails and/or a bucket set with a trap larger than 5" jaw spread would be illegal in Missouri unless the bucket is set in a building at least 6' off the ground...

And more importantly these traps are risky everywhere if there are domestic pets that could roam by.

Please do not set these traps where there is any chance of catching a cat or someone's beagle, etc. Trappers get a bad rap on this sort of stuff, and often it is due to an inexperienced homeowner dealing with varmints, or a young person with a passing interest in trapping who sets the trap in a place or in a manner that they should not have set it, that ends up killing a pet and then it makes the news as "these horrible trappers are..."

Also ALWAYS wear gloves when handling those body grip traps... from experience!

 

[Howard E]

And update in the ongoing battle for cat food........

Following the skirmish referenced in the original post, I replaced the garbage can in the photo with a taller can, one with a locking lid, with locking handles held together with a rubber tarp strap. That worked for two years.....until recently.

Coons got more aggressive with the can and had nearly chewed their way in.....



So I moved the can to a more secure room......an enclosed shop. The next two days......found the door to the shop open......and can tipped over. No clue how they got the door open, but they did.

So replaced the garbage can above (which I only used because I had it and it wasn't being used for anything else) with a 30 gallon metal trash can. Still used the rubber tarp strap to hold it on. That lasted about one week. Went out to find it had been chewed through....



So that will get replaced with baling wire or a metal cable, held on with a metal spring. They will be defeated!

Moral to the story is that coons are incredibly strong.....and incredibly persistent. Half measures will not deter them. Be thinking 1/2" hardware cloth at the minimum (something stronger is suggested......all my stuff has 1/2" x 1" - 16 gauge cage wire) and it had best be secured in some way that is as strong as the cloth is. The other thing that comes to mind is to a coon, dry cat food.....even the cheap "barn kitty" stuff from the farm and home.........must be more addictive that crystal meth. If you are going to trap, use that as your bait.

Also agree with Ozark biddies........for most of us, using a body grip style trap, while effective, was bad advice. And for the reasons given. Don't do that.

Coon kills really spike this time of year, both in attempts and they kill a lot of birds when they do. Parents feeding kids, plus parents teaching kids how to hunt, so parents kill a bird and kids do too. Everybody gets one.

Point being the strategy of using single live traps that catch only one of a whole pack is not as effective as some form of multiple catch setup. Like setting up a cluster of DP's on one area. Anchor your traps, bait em up.....but don't set them for a few days. Get them used to cleaning out the traps........then set them....with the goal of nabbing the whole crew the first night. (on a previous post, I linked to a youtube that showed exactly how to do this......except youtube deleted it).

And again, you can get half a dozen DP's for the price of one live trap. This should also come with the caveat that if you decide to go the DP route there is a learning curve associated with actually using one. There are subtle, but significant differences in the traps themselves, plus you have to devise a way to anchor them.

What do I do? I have the chicken house fixed so I don't have to worry about coons. That is the best solution of all. The ongoing battle in the barn is merely an amusing sideshow.