Raccoons are ridiculous

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A raccoon got into my mom and dad's attic. He was a bad tenant - he'd stay out all hours of the night, and make a loud entrance in the wee hours of the morning. I wanted to just shoot him, but it's against the law.

So I bought a $75 double door trap and a 44¢ can of Friskies salmon falvored cat food at Farm & Fleet. Caught him tonight around midnight.

I will say those thing are super smart. After he saw me pick the cage up by the handles, he tried to reach around the top to grab the handles too.

I could have spent a lot less on one or two bullets.

Plus instead of just digging a hole and burying it, I have to haul him to a forest preserve to let him go.
 
I had problems with raccoons getting in the wife's bird feeders and tearing everything up. I baited a medium size Hav-A-Hart trap under the feeders with a pork chop bone and over a period of two years or so, caught about ten of the little buggers. A .22 in the head finished them off. (I suppose 'Hav-A-Hart is a misnomer in my case) :) The same trap also caught a number of 'possums' and feral cats along the way. The trap eliminates the possibility of wounding the animal just to have it crawl off and suffer. Personally I have no tender feelings toward these animals. They are pests in the same category as rats and mice as far as I'm concerned. I very seldom catch one these days. Apparently I've thinned the herd.
 
Raccoons love marshmallows so put some corn and a few marshmallows in the trap and it will keep you from catching the neighbours cat or hungry Chihuahua.
 
I got the Hav-A-Hart trap also. Not because of any good will on my part but because when I looked at the other traps, the cheaper ones had a single door and a single latch.

I have no doubt a raccoon could unlatch a single latch with his grubby little fingers and escape. The cheaper traps had a picture of a racoon on the box but a single latch without a second door to keep them from getting at the latch is not going to keep a racoon in.

Even the one I caught last night tries to reach for the latches, the inner door keeps the latches out of reach. I put a metal twist tie around the outer door for good measure.

This fricken coon has a lot to be thankfull for today. Thankfull that I don't shoot him.

But if I got caught shooting him, I'd lose my gun, my FOID card, any chance of ever being able to CC in Illinois if we ever do get a law, not to mention the fines and the felony conviction.

Rocky Racoon can thank the gun control advocates of yester-year for his life.

I looked into possibly getting a fur license - but it's too expensive. I thought maybe for $10 I could get a trapper license and turn Rocky into a coonskin hat - but it's more complicated than that.

I'd like to eat him, but I don't know how to dress the carcass.
 
It's funny that you mentioned a Chihuahua. I saw one last night after I took the coon out of the attic, running around on the street, but he wouldn't come to me. It is cold in Illinois, I'm not sure a Chihuahua can survive the night. He wouldn't come to me and I was thinking "dumb dog - even if he doesn't freeze, coyotes will eat him tonight."
 
Most of the raccoons that I have trapped figgure out what's keeping the trap closed and are working on trying to get the mechanism to open. I have a.mix of traps most of them i built myself....I have some store bought traps but they usually require some repair or adjustment after each raccoon catch. That's why I build my own. Havaheart are good but expensive.
 
Anything sweet!

They can't resist donuts. Must be related to some of the LEO's I know.:D

I usually bait my traps with stale donuts a friend of mine brings me from his bakery. He brings me a bag every so often and I throw them in the freezer. Get em out as needed.

Secret is, is not to put a big donut in trap. Just a few golf ball size, clear at the back of trap.
 
I agree a large bait they can reach over the trip pan easier. If the trap has enough space you van secure an old rabbit feeder in the back that makes sure the raccoon crosses the trip. Some of the smart ones will flip the trap over trying to dislodge the bait. I usually put something to hold the trap down bit make sure it doesn't interfere with mechanisms.


BTW, a pygmy goat can be fully contained in a raccoon trap. Just in case you have some of those around. LOL
 
C0untZer0 "..But if I got caught shooting him, I'd lose my gun, my FOID card, any chance of ever being able to CC in Illinois if we ever do get a law, not to mention the fines and the felony conviction…"
That's tough stuff! My sympathies. Coons are indeed smart. My cage is one that has a wire cable running from the trip pad to the door trip. I have to straighten all the kinks out of the cable every time I catch one. They seemed to know that that cable had something to do with
them being trapped.
 
wcar - it's funny that you mention that cable.

The Hav-A-Hart trap has a bar from the pad to the door trip, and the racoon was grabbing it over and over.

My kids talked me into letting him have a can of sardines before letting him go.

My mom told me a story about the barber who cut my hair when I was a kid. A racoon was eating his tomatoes - so he waited up one night and shot the invader. The neighbors reported him and the police came. They asked if he had discharged a weapon. he said yes - he'd discharged a weapon - he killed the racoon that was eating his tomatoes. He had a southern accent I remember but I don't know where he was from before he came to Illinois. He was ignorant of Illinois gun laws and was truely shocked that it was illegal for him to shoot one of the tomato theiving bastards.
 
C0untZer0 "...He had a southern accent I remember but I don't know where he was from before he came to Illinois. He was ignorant of Illinois gun laws and was truely shocked that it was illegal for him to shoot one of the tomato theiving bastards…" That wasn't me, but it could have been.:) Interesting how different states have different laws. Here raccoons aren't on the nuisance list but they have a liking for wild turkey eggs so they aren't on the 'most-favored' list, by any means.
 
We had a pet raccoon when I was a kid. She was only friendly with me and my parents. She would keep away from other people and the dogs would watch her but give her distance. They are remarkably intelligent animals. I wish I had a picture of my dad walking that 'coon on a leash. :p


but if the claim of non-discriminate killing is true, it is one apparently missed by the biologists and mammalogists as it is a trait not mentioned in the raccoon literature.
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This is something I have seen for myself. I found a large raccoon in the chicken barn one night around midnight. It had killed four of our game cocks, each kept in their own pens. The raccoon had dug under the side of each pen to get to the cock and kill it. If it was killing for food, there would be no reason for it to have go to the effort to dig it's way into four separate pens and kill more birds when the first would provide plenty of food.

Now that I think about it, it may have been a mother killing the cocks to feed her little ones. Oh well, that was years ago and my .44 mag put an end to that nonsense.

Side note: If you use a .44 magnum to dispatch a wild animal that is inside your barn, double hearing protection is a good idea. I don't think the muffs I used that night were enough.
 
Native animals that stay out of certain areas are allowed to keep on living as far as I am concerned, I won't go to any isolated places within my area to hunt varmints. So if raccoons stay in raccoon land I am cool with it.

While a lot of raccoons are aggressive, I have met some that seem docile with emphasis on seem.
 
I shot a 20+lb opossum 5 shots .38 and it crawled off. Its all I had on me or I would have done more. I have no issue with people killing them just do it humanely.

Iowa coons can get big. Large dog big 50+ lb ones I have personally seen. They can do a tremendous amount of damage to people or animals.
 
It seems after some earlier discussions, that a pistol will just pass through a small animal without much damage and won't kill as efficiently as a larger animal. I had the same problem with a 9mm. Never had too many problems with rifles.
 
Coons in Boulder, Colorado

As some of you may know, Boulder, Colorado is the center of the liberal universe. Folks that live there think killing prairie dogs is one of the seven deadly sins.

A few weeks back, there were some college kids living in a rented house in Boulder, that were getting ticked off because coons kept getting into their trash and scattering it out in the ally. Well, one night they ambushed a coon and they were armed to the teeth :D:D One of them had a hocky stick and the other two kids had ball bats. They waylaid a coon in their trash and proceeded to try and beat the damned thing to death. Some of the neighbors heard the ruckus and called the cops. The kids have been charged with cruelty to animals, a felony, and the public outcry has been deafening. And in a sick sort of way, amusing.

When I read about that, it was easy to recall having done things that make that sound pretty tame. City folks are getting so far removed from real life, it is worrying.:confused:
 
We had a pet raccoon when I was a kid...
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Had a pet squirrel, many pet snakes and a groundhog but never a coon.

Buddy of mine had the pet coon. Got coon when it was a kid. It was the same as yours Willie. Wouldn't befriend anyone but my buddy. He would get that coon out of the cage and play with it like a dog. Taught it to do tricks for treats.
He taught it to stand on its back legs, put its front paws together and put its head down for a treat. Coon looked like it was praying. :D

Well, one day Rocky(my buddy) showed up for school looking as though a bengal tiger had got ahold of him. As usual, he went out to the cage, opened the top and for a reason they never figured out, the coon turned on Rocky latching onto his arms and biting him all over. Rocky was wearing a T-shirt so some of the gashs on his arms,stomach and chest were rather severe and required stitchs.

Coon had gotten abit older. Maybe got grouchy, don't know. Sure know he flew into Rocky like a buzz-saw.:eek:
 
You're not allowed to kill raccoons? What the heck? Are the rules made by complete morons? I mean, more complete than usual? What are they going to do when the wild pigs make it up there? Tell you to trap them and drop them off somewhere? Good grief.

Some days I just can't wait for civilization to collapse so I can watch the liberals die out when they meet the real world... the cities have just become cesspools, it's mindboggling.
 
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