Raccoons!

I live in the suburbs and the raccoon population has invaded the storm sewers. They have established an underground colony and I see them come out every night. A family of five recently took to hanging around my house and they tore up everything in the garage. My next door neighbor has a "Florida Room" and they got underneath it, tearing out the insulation and such.

I got a trap and baited it with peanut butter on a Ritz (as Andy Griffith said - "Mmmmm- good cracker, GOOD cracker!") and caught them one by one. I took them up to the reservoir (State Park territory) and couldn't bring myself to drown them so I let them go. Illegal? Probably.
 
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k22fan said:
I need a little help choosing bait that will draw coons away from my apple crop into a trap. The problem is they love the fruit. Any suggestions?
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I have had great luck with marshmallows. They are like raccoon kryptonite. Get a bag of the large size and use them in a cage trap. Other animals like cats and dogs won't bother with them, but raccoons are another story.

We have a large number of raccoons around here and some of them are very destructive. The destructive ones end up in the cage trap. Then two go for a walk in the woods but only one comes back.
 
STOP feeding and get them off the property by whatever means...dangerous, destructive, expensive. Friend was feeding on back porch; advised strongly to stop. After about 6 months, they went on vacation and, of course, coons got hungry and expected their food. Broke into the house (they can basically get into anything they wish/ie climb straight up a brick wall, pull the eave/vents off, and make themselves to home!) and caused about $27,000 damage inside looking for "their" food before they were done!
 
You all know that is some good stuff written about coons, but it also describes my mother in law to a tee.


Them critters are going to have their own babies in a year or less, that is a lot of mouths to feed. natural predators?
 
Smokin' Iron said:
I have had great luck with marshmallows. They are like raccoon kryptonite. Get a bag of the large size and use them in a cage trap. Other animals like cats and dogs won't bother with them, but raccoons are another story.
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Yep....the marshmallows work great. They aren't messy, don't attract cats or dogs, but Coons can't resist them. I've caught 20 or so Coons over the last couple of years. Most are relocated where they would have to cross a wide river or lake to get back to my house.....some of the more vicious ones get sick from lead poisoning and don't get to make the trip over the river.

Don
 
With the right marinade they're pretty good on the smoker or you can bone them out and make "coon burgers." When they get to be a problem around here, and they do, Junior traps them. They seem to be allergic to .22 LR. He has a list of folks who want them. The old gator was caught in 1957 in the Pascagoula River and brought to Brooklyn, Ms. and put on a chain connected to a cable going over a pond. He was over 8 ft. then and was probably around 13 ft. when he died. The drive way served as a dam for the pond and the gator could sometimes be seen laying there in the sun. "Chopper" died a couple of years ago well over 50 years of age. The man who originally caught him never had any problems with trespassers.
 
Coaltminer said:
Gimme a break people. I want them to be wild, as mother nature intended, I don't pet them, I respect them for what they are, I was raised in the country and wouldn't treat them as tame, have no desire to make pets out of them. Our cats seem to treat them with respect, from a distance, it just happened as circumstance. I'll let them be as they are. I appreciate the dire warnings and all and understand the creatures, but close observation for several months has taught me much about a common animal that I never knew. The little ones mew when mom gets into a fight with intruding members of another family. So human-like. I know about rabies inclanation of the species, have been bitten and undergone the treatment at the ER. Don't tell me stuff I already know. They are God's, not mine, but aren't we all?
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Dude, people made those suggestions because they CARE! I've been dealing with them for the last six years.

If don't do something about it NOW, you WILL be sorry.
 
Kanewpadle said:
Dude, people made those suggestions because they CARE! I've been dealing with them for the last six years.

If don't do something about it NOW, you WILL be sorry.
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Exactly. I don't know if it's making a dent, but the concern is real.

I have neighbors who used to put food out for some gray foxes that lived behind our property. These animal lovers would put hot dogs, left-over cooked foods of all kinds, and cooked chicken bones, under a security light so they could watch the foxes feed. I tried telling them that cooked chicken bones can splinter and kill a fox or dog, and that none of the stuff they were feeding them was healthy for the critters. I added that getting the foxes dependent on their handouts was depriving them of being beautiful, truly wild animals, and that foxes also carry rabies.

Made no impression. Their intentions were mostly kind, but they were all suffering from what I call Disney's Syndrome.
 
shouldazagged said:
Exactly. I don't know if it's making a dent, but the concern is real.

I have neighbors who used to put food out for some gray foxes that lived behind our property. These animal lovers would put hot dogs, left-over cooked foods of all kinds, and cooked chicken bones, under a security light so they could watch the foxes feed. I tried telling them that cooked chicken bones can splinter and kill a fox or dog, and that none of the stuff they were feeding them was healthy for the critters. I added that getting the foxes dependent on their handouts was depriving them of being beautiful, truly wild animals, and that foxes also carry rabies.

Made no impression. Their intentions were mostly kind, but they were all suffering from what I call Disney's Syndrome.
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Same thing around here. People don't get it. They leave their pet food out. Then their pets and the raccoons argue over the food and guess who wins?:rolleyes:

They're incredibly destructive and their droppings can be dangerous to pets.

Last summer a neighbor thought it would be fun to sic his dog on the little invaders. The raccoons hid under some plywood leaned against the side of the garage. The dog stuck his nose in the there and the coon bit it off.

They have tried to kill my little dog when she went outside. They have charged us as we walked down the sidewalk to the front door. I'm sick of them.

I tried trapping them but only caught the neighbors cats. I can't shoot them. I use a slingshot with 3/8 shot. But you have to hit em just right otherwise they just bounce off.

Raccoons have been known to chew through electrical wires. This in itself is an immediate reason to get rid of them.
 
I knew an old coot in the burbs that had a problem with squirrels.He would take the window screen off and plink em with a 22 from inside the house :-0 I would never recommend this.
 
I brung your cat back.

MVC-RACOON_zpsaab03c35.jpg
 
I once had a raccoon try to bite me, but it was stuck in a garbage can- not my doing, by the way. Animal control took care of that one. Sorry, but the only good raccoon is a dead raccoon.
 
I took the picture of this guy raiding my Persimmon tree this morning.
It is early and they are still green I don't know how they can eat them yet. He was low enought that I could bat him around a bit with a long stick, he made a racket growling. I hope that is enough to keep him away, I hate to shoot animals I don't eat, but, I sure enjoy the Persimmons when they get ripe. If he hasn't learned I'm afraid he is going to have to bite the dust.
They love to get into my orange trees too, but they are close enough to the house that I can put up an electric fencer wire that they learn to keep away from the very first night. I may break down ad get a 12V one for the persimmons and give the guy a reprieve if he learns the lesson.
 

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Dear oh dear. This thread certainly has brought out the worst about raccoons. Like most wild mammals if you just don’t feed them then at least in the country they seldom cause a problem. Getting into my apples is the first problem I’ve had with them. I never see the current tribe. I’d have to buy night vision and sit up all night to shoot them. PIA! I appreciate the suggestion to bait them with marshmallows. I was thinking meat but if I used meat I would have had to be around to frequently check the trap for cats and dogs.

Some years ago 3 coons were regularly walking past within 10 feet of me. Very likely they’d been feed by the man down the road. Coons are in the cat family. Once the big one raised his back cat like and hissed and started to snarl at me. Without thinking I told him what his fate would be if he ever did that again. There after the smaller two would walk past close as always while the big one skirted me by 40 to 50 feet. Tone of voice is all it took. I don’t know what happened to that tribe but I’d bet a nickel the big one earned a bullet and seeing him shot turned the smaller pair wild again. In the country mother nature provides more than enough for her coons to eat. That big coon might still be happy in the woods if he hadn’t been fed.
 
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Mule Packer said:
Okay, let's forget about them being wild animals. Here's something we shouldn't minimize however. Sure, raccoons are occasionally carriers of rabies, but just as serious, they are also more common carriers of leptospirosis and baylisascaris. Dogs are especially susceptible to baylisascaris, but it can nail humans, too...and it can be deadly. Just a thought for what it's worth.
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Giardia too.

Raccoons are likely the most dangerous disease vectors in the wild. Even in dried feces baylisascaris is still active and can infect if ingested even by breathing it, which you probably won't even know you've done. It's a roundworm and raccoons are immune and most have it. The short story is that if you are infected your brain rots.

They're bad news and I won't tolerate them around my place.
 
I live on the edge of the 'burbs, backing onto a state park. Never had issues with raccoons until my neighbor plated a fig tree (which is nothing but a vermin magnet, by the way).

One night, I counted (for real) 11 in my yard. I came out the front door pre-dawn to drive for work, and all these beady little eyeballs were pointed at me, lined up along the top of the block wall by that fig tree, telling me plain as day, "You saw nothin.' Just keep moving along & you won't get hurt."

Figs, incidentally, give raccoons the $#**s. How lovely.

I came in one night from working in the garage, to find the back screen door open, the cats freaked out, and muddy paw prints leading from the cat-food in the kitchen back out that open sliding screen door - - which was latched, but had been lifted off its tracks & pushed aside.

Not allowed to shoot them, here. They're cute as hell but anything brainy enough to lift a door off it's tracks to access cat food not visible from the door, and ballsy enough to do it in the face of my huge 19-lb tomcat, is an animal I'd rather not have roaming around the house.
 
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UncaGrunny said:
One night, I counted (for real) 11 in my yard. I came out the front door pre-dawn to drive for work, and all these beady little eyeballs were pointed at me, lined up along the top of the block wall by that fig tree, telling me plain as day, "You saw nothin.' Just keep moving along & you won't get hurt."
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Next they'll come around and say insinuating things like, "Nice place youse got here. Be a shame if anything...happened to it." :D
 
I am in the city limits but my back yard is "unimproved" forest. I feed the wild birds on my back deck. Raccoons like any type of bird food, so I bring all the food in every night. This makes the coons mad so they defecate all over my deck. Then triple S comes into play.

My local pest control guy says he'll trap them and release on the other side of a mile long bridge. I'm sorry... that's just nasty for the people who live there.

This summer I have a vixen with her kits under my back deck. The varmint problem is down near zero! She's even got the squirrels scared off. My cats think they want to go outside so I have to be very alert to stop them. Already lost a cat to coyotes.

When I was a kid, varmints were dealt with summarily, either for food or bounty. Now we're too civilized to kill 'em so they are overrunning us.
 
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