Raccoon - no deaths yet

[clembone]

I have a four-ten that makes little noise and can be used inside a coop without causing collateral damage. Works a treat.

And I find young raccoon to be a tasty treat, plain baked, just rubbed with your favorite fat and sprinkled with garlic salt and black pepper, medium slow oven, covered, until tender.

[all the raccoons round here are as fat as soybeans and corn, crawdads and persimmons, can make them]

See Foxfire Books for details.

 

[cmom]

I have at least one I see occasionally but so far it hasn't bothered the birds. I do have electric wire around my coops and pens, concrete under the gates to the pens and heavy duty netting covering all of the pens. There are other neighbors in our area that have birds and loose them to predators. A coon passing by.

 

[Echilde]

I secured the hole in the coop with hardware cloth. He got in the next mornin and actually ate one of the smaller chickens, however he will not be bothering anyone again. I have since added another lock and a 2x4 to the small poop door in the back, because this is the only place that I could find that he could have possibly gotten in the second time.

Apparently he was just very trap smart . Someone could have even released him out here from somewhere else, which would explain his ability to not get trapped.

 

[Folly's place]

Good catch! Too bad he killed a bird first, but now your coop is in better shape, excellent!
I'd have to be HUNGRY to eat raccoon, opossum, or whatever...
Mary

 

[Echilde]

Agreed. I'm not sure I'd eat raccoon unless I was desperate lol.

 

[GC-Raptor]

My friend used to have a coon dog in the last century. We would go out after sunset in the state forest. Bag a coon or two. He would keep the meat and sell the fur.
Coon meat's not bad when you make a stew. Carrots, potatoes, onions.
I wouldn't eat daily (a gamey taste), but one or two meals a month.. Tastes like free range chicken.
I haven't ate any since last century, but I believe I caught one on my cameras this morning. GC

 

[GC-Raptor]

I agree with others. A secure coop. I had two Raccoons try to get in my coop several nights last year. Fortunately they didn't succeed. GC

 

[Biddybot]

So you got your rotten raccoon? In a bigger trap? I probably just missed it, but couldn't offhand find the reason why your problem 'won't be bothering anyone anymore'. I'm only asking because I'm always eager to pick up some tips when it comes to catching those smarty-pants raccoons who've picked up a few tricks themselves...

For raccoons, I always use those Hav-a-hart type live traps with a single entrance and always bait them with open tins of stinky, fish-based wet cat food. I've found that some raccoons are smart enough to learn to lean over the trip-pedal and lift out the tins without springing the trap, and of course the evidence for this is always plain to see the next morning...an unsprung trap and nearby, the cat food tin, licked clean. I foil these smart ones by simply boring a hole high up on the side of the tins and wiring them into a corner of the trap so they can't be pulled out. Works every time!

As for my overall ongoing battle with them, it has turned out to be a big raccoon year here after all. I just dispatched number ten (10!)... First I caught that very sad maimed animal I wrote about in an earlier post, earlier this spring while the frogs were still singing. But then the flood started...basically the makings of a new colony looking to take over. An adult female with four youngsters, two two-year-olds, two yearlings no doubt recently dumped by their mom and traveling together, and then this last one, which I think was a coming three-year-old. He was interesting because he was slightly leucistic...instead of black pigmentation, it was all dark brown, and his pelt as a whole was quite light-coloured. I've caught raccoons before who had brownish tails, but this guy's was REALLY brown and so was his mask. Probably evidence of some local in-breeding going on. It tends to bring out the recessive traits in local populations, whether for good or for bad.