The raccoons keep on coming...

[OhZark Biddies]

Course you know that will never happen....not completely.

nope... you can manage it, if you stay after it, and take a significant number out... but if there is food, water, and habitat more will move in.

I've removed about a dozen in the last 2 months or so, plus a possum, so I'm good for a bit ....

but just had a young groundhog move in and start burrowing into the run.... guessing it's after the water

 

[True Patriot]

I totally understand it being an uphill battle. I'll never be able to rid my area of raccoons. The county waste transfer station (read as landfill) is 2 miles from me. Always have something wandering the yard. The bright side is I'm upwind, and the constant food source seems to keep most of them occupied. The dark side is they look like bears after being so well fed. Good luck to you on your removal project. Hopefully it goes better than mine

 

[OhZark Biddies]

... you can manage it, if you stay after it....

The county waste transfer station (read as landfill) is 2 miles from me...

oh, good point. Something like that or living next to agricultural fields might not be manageable no matter how much you stay after it!

 

[aart]

Course you know that will never happen....not completely.

nope... you can manage it, if you stay after it, and take a significant number out

Right, but not completely. ...and my post was mostly tongue in cheek and kidding @techbsmith.

 

[lazy gardener]

nope... you can manage it, if you stay after it, and take a significant number out... but if there is food, water, and habitat more will move in.

I've removed about a dozen in the last 2 months or so, plus a possum, so I'm good for a bit ....

but just had a young groundhog move in and start burrowing into the run.... guessing it's after the water

Groundhogs just LOVE chicken feed. Just ask @bruceha2000 . He'll tell you how much fun he's been having with groundhogs.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Right, but not completely. ...and my post was mostly tongue in cheek and kidding @techbsmith.

Right! My early 'nope', was meant to be in agreement with your thought that you can't ever completely remove them.

I've done some crop depredation work and have trapped farms to lower the number of "nest robbers" that impact wild fowl populations, and the numbers taken out each fall can be surprising... and then they just move in from the surrounding farms in the spring, raise young'ins in the summer.... and then next fall it's amazing again how many are there.... it just takes staying after it to keep the numbers low, but it can turn into work for sure!

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Groundhogs just LOVE chicken feed.

Ahhh, I was curious about that!

 

[bruceha2000]

but just had a young groundhog move in and start burrowing into the run.... guessing it's after the water

You want to get on that quick before it becomes 4 or 5 or 6 groundhogs.

Groundhogs just LOVE chicken feed. Just ask @bruceha2000 . He'll tell you how much fun he's been having with groundhogs.

Until this year. And the one(s) this year don't like peas, peanuts or cantaloupe (though the chickens like cantaloupe, oops) even those are "known" "can't miss". But all stock sweet feed was

 

[lazy gardener]

So, did you get your whistle pigs with the sweet feed? I used to chow down on the sweetened oats (for horses) when I was a kid.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

You want to get on that quick before it becomes 4 or 5 or 6 groundhogs.

I've been trying since Friday, thought it was going to be a slam dunk... long story, but I've been getting schooled.

The old guy down the road from me tore down his old barn a few weeks ago and displaced a bunch of varmints. I know he had pack rats (aka wood rats) and ground hogs in there, because I helped him trap a bunch of the pack rats last fall, and I'd see groundhogs run under the tack shed when I was checking traps... or feeding his horses while he was out of town.

Anyway, I ended up with at least one of the ground hogs and so far at least one pack rat (that I caught the other day) in my shed/coop.

Here is a picture of the little fella' mocking me, looking at the pile of "junk" ( aka potentially useful stuff that collects in a shed) that I stacked on it's burrow after I filled it in.

I know some of you are looking at this picture and saying "not sure that's a groundhog, it looks more like a woodchuck to me"... and to you I say "i'm pretty sure it's a 'dirt squirrel' either way you look at it"!

Any way, I'm sure I'll get him here right quick, but for all the critters I've trapped over the years I've never even tried to trap one of these... dealing with them in the past, has always been more of a "marksmanship activity" if you know what I mean, but this one is coming in from the back of the shed out of the woods where there is no open view.

Anyway, I've hijacked this raccoon thread, so my apologies to @techbsmith ...but maybe some of this info will help in a few months when the raccoon invasion lets up and the groundhogs starting pouring over the wall