Dispatched My first racoon

SS

In the Brooder
10 Years
Jun 8, 2009
48
0
32
Springfield, MO
Yesterday afternoon After a very long day I remembered I hadn't checked my trap I had set out in hopes of catching whatever had killed one of my roo's A week previously. It had been 27 hours since I had last checked it but when I came to the place where it had been set IT WAS GONE!!!! Luckily my new Faithful puppy dog Daisy was hot on its trail. ten minutes later we find it 50 yards away down a hill in a dried up stream bed. Inside was A big'ole mangy coon. Feeling no pity for this would-be Chicken murderer I got the 22. and was ready to deal with him........ Unfortunately The Hava-heart trap doesn't have to many spaces the Business end of my 22. could fit in. But not wanting to risk letting him out and maybe missing him I found a few spots just big enough. after 5 minutes of waiting for him to move his head at just the right angle I got my shot, and took it. the first shot went a little more to the right of in between his eyes than I had planned so I popped two more into him to try and make it as painless as possible. never the less after the deed was done the trap looked as if it was painted red from the inside. and I was on the verge of vomiting. Being a hunter since the age of 12 I was used to killing animals but something about killing a caged creature just rubbed me the wrong way... but as my dad said "its just part of it."
 
Glad you got rid of it, but that doesn't sound like very much fun
hmm.png


At least you can rest easy knowing your chickens will be safe from this predator.
 
glad you got it....that gives me hope that whatever has been hitting my animals for the last 3 nites including tonite....maybe will be the nite I trap him.....We set electric fence up this evening thinking it was a raccoon, which could still be. But, I had 6 week old silkies and my first duck i hatched out on top of my frizzle pen and something climbed up there a pulled one of the silkies out of the pen, with no trace. Then tried to pull my duck through and did not succeed. It was still dead though. Thinking it might have been a mink, that crawled in there, killed them and then tried pulling it through. HARDWARE cloth is going up tomorrow.....across all of the chain linked fence
sad.png
sad.png
I won't say what I'm gonna do, when I do catch them!!!
 
Living in a very rural area, raccoons are a part of life for us. I had always just dealt with it, until.... a raccoon actually broke into our house! It wound up in a closed off room that I have a 20 year old cat in... Kuma is a "city cat" and too old to learn new ways to be turned outside. After the 'coon broke into Kuma's room I set our trap and caught 2 of them. My DH has been a hunter since he was a kid, but killing the little guys was tough on him. So.... I understand your feelings. You did what you had to do to protect your chickens.

I've come to terms with processing meat chickens, and am raising turkeys that we'll process later this year. Maybe someday I'll have the strength to do what you did.

Now, if I could only catch whatever's picked off 2 of our fawns this past week. I know they're wild creatures and not really "mine", but I hate knowing that they've been picked off. My llamas sent out their alarm call the other night, and I heard one of the fawns screaming. In the morning there was one less in the herd.
 
I do understand the problem with killing a caged creature. Not exactly sporting. You just have to put it in perspective. There are a lot more coons than there is good territory available for them. Yes, people have created this situation, but you and I cannot fix that today. The species will not benefit from letting them overpopulate the territory they have left.

I would much rather see deer hunting opening up even more around here, than deer being killed on highways. Don't mean I have any problem with hunting; not the case. The problem is too many people, not too many animals, and there won't be an open season on people any time soon. No easy solutions.
 
Well that was the smart thing to do. We caught an opossum a couple months back. We took it out back on an old road. We had it all planned out. My DH would open the trap door then I would shoot it with the shotgun. Well he opened the door and I took aim and the shotgun went "CLICK". Not boom, click. He got away, needless to say. So hard lesson learned.
 
I had one a few years ago that kept robbing my trap and escaping. I sat up one night to see how he was doing it and he was just so big that the door wouldn't close. I made a makeshift trap out of a plastic pet carrier that he would definitely fit in. About 1am I got him and within a couple minutes I realized he was going to tear the carrier apart and be free in no time. I live in a suburban area so I couldn't shoot him at 1am without angering some neighbors. I decided to put a broadhead arrow in him since it would be much quieter. The arrow went clean through him and into a tire on my garden tractor. Not only was the whole thing almost as loud as it would have been to shoot him but it didn't kill him and he was really po'd now. Now I had to shoot him at 1am. None of the neighbors ever said anything about the noise. I felt bad for a long time for not killing him with the first shot AND for doing it while he was caged. He had to go though. He was getting too brave... trying to get into the humans house and not even afraid of us any more.
 
Well done. I know it is hard to kill something that is trapped or caged. However, that is the safest method for you and often the critter. It also makes is quicker because you can get "the shot".

Just be glad it is gone and know that is one chicken killer out of the way...there will be more.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom