About 2008 I emptied my S&W 30-1 into a strange acting raccoon that was stumbling around the carport of our mountain house. Several torso shots failed to kill it; so I put the last few into it's head. This was a mixture of various LRN and WC .32 S&W and Long ammo. In all fairness, this animal was nearly the size of a first grader. I was less than impressed.
Mag Tech and Buffalo Bore make modern SD loads in .32 S&W Long that work better than the ammo I used that day. That said, I love .32 handguns for their accuracy and light recoil. I have seven around here now.
I put 4, 22 LR Hi Power HPs from a S&W M41 in a big old momma Raccoon that was staring me down in my porch. It stovepiped on the 5th round (M41 doesn't like anything but standard velocity). It was about the size of a medium-large dog. I had to buy a special LARGE size live trap (it was too big for the standard size raccoon trap that works on every other raccoon that ever walked into it. One time i caught 3 youngsters in the same, regular size, trip.
When I first saw that big old momma raccoon it at a distance, she put her paws up on the top rail of a 3 rail horse fence (with chicken wire stapled to it to try to keep them out). She was as tall as the top rail on the fence when on her hind legs and seemed to just float over the top rail.
Then I caught a few of them hiding out in the coconut palm trees, too. That's when I went on a full scale varmint war. No more calling the trapper to take them away after I caught them at $50 a pop. One of my buddies got fairly well cut up by a raccoon when he tried to chase it out from under his car. Then my medium size pit bull (a real sweet girl) just hates raccoons and cats. She was a rescue dog at about 2 years old when I got her years back. She was sliced up pretty well which I figured was a swipe from an animal's paw during a fight, figured later it was likely a raccoon because of the instinctive hatred she had for raccoons. She would play with cats before she'd kill them if I didn't catch her in the act but she'd take a raccoon to its final breath no matter how bad she got hurt in the process. I was forever bringing her to the vet to get checked for rabies, just in case. I wasn't sure if the required rabies shots prevented her from getting rabies or what it did but I didn't want her to catch it. This dog, till today, is as sweet and kind as can be UNLESS she sees a raccoon !
My children used to think they were so cute calling them the hamburglars (like McDonalds) when they are nasty buggers, especially when cornered.
Only way to kill a raccoon without making a mess of chopped meat out of it is a nice .22 LR HP behind either ear facing forward toward the eyes. They go right down with a almost no after twitching.
About 10 years ago I was overrun by raccoons on my 5 acre ranch. They would raid the porch almost every morning at about 5 AM. They love the twilight hour. Some opossums, too. But other than being gawd ugly the opossums don't bother anybody or anything around the ranch.
Like a good citizen I purchased 4 traps. I was trapping them and PAYING to have them taken away at $50 each until I figured the trapper was likely letting the same raccoons I just caught, loose again right up the block instead of 50 miles out west like he was supposed to.
Once dispatched, I had been burying them a few feet deep only to find something had been digging them up and eating them. Since then I just tossed them into the heavily wooded area, between my back fence and the canal that borders it. The next morning, without fail, there was only a ball of fur and some odds and end bones but no stink from decaying body rot ... just GONE !
Unless they eat each others' flesh I don't know what type of varmint eats the whole raccoon. I figured a snake would leave NO trace of it. Yes, I have those too, but only smaller pygmie rattlers and cottonmouths. The body is way to narrow to swallow an entire raccoon, I think.
Your .32 should have been more than enough to dispatch a raccoon, if bullet placement was correct. No matter how big or small, body shots don't seem to effect raccoons with a .22 LR. County ordinance here states I cannot use anything larger than a .22 for varmint hunting on my own property.
Try the .32 H&R Magnum if you're in love with .32s. I have a ported .32 H&R magnum lite-weight, the same size of a J-frame S&W. The only Taurus I own. It fires .32 S&W long as well as the .32 H&R Magnum. Both rounds are getting hard to find, the H&R mags a bit harder than the .32 long.
