Very Bad Year For Racoons.
waltermoe
Member Posts: 2,298 ✭✭✭✭
Don’t know if it’s the drought we are having or what. We always put in a garden and lots of flowers every year. But this year it’s as if we are under attack. I’ve had to send eight of them on ahead here this year already. Talked to the neighbor down the road and he has got rid of just as many he said. They’re like rats anymore, no one traps or hunts them anymore, and I can understand why. To trap, skin, fletch and stretch the hide for $3 a hide, to much work. Back starting around 1973 to 1980 use to get $15 to $25 a hide, and the person I took the hides too didn’t want you to skin them, he had this machine that he built that did it. And in the 70s $15 was worth about four times what it is today.
Anyone else been having problems with them?
Comments
I think you mean that it's a banner year for raccoons, but a terrible year for homeowners.
Raccoons aren't native to Utah, but we have them. I'm hoping that the very harsh winter we had will thin them out a lot.
Not seeing many around our place, but every time I drive somewhere I see a lot of fresh roadkill ones. That must be what is somewhat controlling the population. Last year we had quite a few but they must have had stupid babies that didn't fear cars. Bob
* are thick here. We had one break in the other night; he pushed a window screen in and jumped through.
Back in the late '70s they got to $25-$35 here. In Dec. 1976 I bought a Colt Huntsman for $119.95 at a Pamida Discount store in Iowa. The next night I took our dog and in a big cottonwood tree 1/4 mile from the house I got 4 * which averaged $28 each. Almost paid for the gun! There was good money in furs back then; in '78 I got $75 for a fox.
I have dead chickens to attest to their overabundance. Caught one climbing the coop during evening while still light outside. The chickens were very happy I sent him to the buzzard feeding pile. That is the sixth one caught so far this spring.
On average we have about 15-30 of them that wind up as buzzard food every year. This year I've had more groundhogs pass away than raccoons.
Joe
I have had to dispatch 2 raccoons that were sick and acting strange in the last month.
Yep..........my stepdad lived in a suburban neighborhood and used to trap and release them far away from his house. Never could convince him to dunk those live catch cages in a barrel of water.........he was a real softie.
Racoons are like rats in Central Texas...............as are the deer. Deer around here are hardly worth the hunt.....they top out about the size of a St. Bernard....or great pyrenese.......so unless you're hunting a rack...........the meat just isn't worth the hunt.
Pamida...there's a blast from the past.
Well to add insult to misery one of the dern vermin Racoons got my rooster last night. Got the coop sealed tight tonight with a live trap baited with cat food and a arm trap with marshmallows. One or the other should get him so I can test out some 22 ammo on him.
Practice the 3 S's
Shoot, Shovel Shut up.
They are vermin.
I admire them but the damage that they cause at the farm........
When i was a kid, $25+ for a hide. now not worth the trouble of skinning.
Sure, uh huh.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBv-qIAtW5A
I just came in from one of nightly walks around the place about 11:30 pm checking on the wild life and stretching my legs and back .
three large racoons and three young ones I ran across, I think there is a few more large ones as they have different shades of fur I have come to know. any way I cornered one of the young ones it was busy calling for mom and trying to act aggressive to me .. too funny like a democrat with his hand in the cookie jar
I was going to reduce the population by one . but thinking about my wife and her love for them and knowing she was home and would hear a shot I give him a pass for now at least till she is not home 🤐 . I had it cornered and it no where to go after a short time of letting, it sniff my hand and playing with it, rubbing its back and head ( basic scaring it ) I chased him on out to look for mom
and of course I came across the yard skimmer skunks 4 maybe 5 wondering around looking for goodies '
I was looking for the feral cats I keep putting off trapping they had moved back to out shooting range back stop a buch of RR ties and huge dirt pile . I think th eskunks and racoons have chased them back there
and I put out cat food for the cats and the rest of the democrats eat it also its free its for me motto . but it keeps them from th ehouse and chickens free easy meals better the working for one
I use to trap and release but Ohio has a rule if you live trap a wild animal it you have to let it go on your property or kill it no other options
About time for another good Davy Crockett movie to come out! Movies have a way of making many things popular!
as a young kid I would have been the envy of the other boys 😉in the neighborhood but never got one 😥
even though I was called " crocket" as a kid you would have thought some one would have gotten me one .
but now I know if I got one my wife would toss me and it out 😁 but man I could go styling in wally world 😎 LOL
I GOT HIM! he did not trigger the arm trap, however he ate all the marshmallows out of it. The live trap got him. He was a little feller, amazing he was able to be so deadly to chickens. He will never have the chance to do it again.
"They’re like rats anymore, no one traps or hunts them anymore, and I can understand why. To trap, skin, fletch and stretch the hide for $3 a hide, to much work. "
Not just the work but the cost of setting/running traps and hauling the hides to someplace that will actually buy them.
A few years back, I was making grocery money with 3-4 dozen dog-proof * traps. I didn't skin the * but I'd take half pickup load of on the carcass to a buyer twice weekly. The last load I sold left me with $20 after buying the gas to haul them to the buyer. I sold most of my traps and only trap nuisance critters since.
I was asked to trap or call and shoot */coyote/bobcat on a hunting tract about 5 miles away. When I told the operator I couldn't work for free he sort of offered a bounty but didn't get specific. That's the only way to break even.
@bpost Got two more yesterday thought I was good for last night, I was wrong, hit again last night. I’ve got some foot traps but what I’ve been using is a motion sensor door bell. I’ve got it mounted on a stool I can move to different locations, and then wait until I hear ding dong, ding dong.
@Chief Shaway I agree it was a way to make a little spending money, the guy I took them too back then would even take road kill, $10 if not real bad. I have my own theory on what happened to prices. Starting in the early 80s is when the anti fur movement started, they would say man made fur was just as good. I’ll bet if you could follow the money trail of who was funding this movement back then, it would lead to someone like DuPont or some other chemical manufacturer that produced the fake fur products.
@Ditch-Runner I can sympathize, my wife is the same way, but after this last week and destroying her flowers her attitude has changed more too, KILL THEM ALL!!
Can’t remember who said it, I think it was Grasshopper, he said that their cuteness was their defense, that I believe is true.
I will keep the coop locked tight at night for the foreseeable future. I am going to set both arm and live traps every night until the issue resolves itself. Strangely, I am seeing ungodly numbers of splattered raccoons on the road. In a short 1/4 mile section there are four dead ones that got hit just last night.
Why Raccoons are so plentiful all at once is very confusing. We used to have one or two now and then. Now, it is a constant stream of the little devils of death and destruction.
We always lock up the coop at night but one rooster and his chicken sometimes two how ever many he can convince lol get in a apple tree and hide out at night
Back in the day I did alot of * hunting with hounds at night. Across fields, timber and streams! And every once in awhile they got on a deer's track-OBOY. Used to come back the next day to hopefully get them!
when I was a kid c hunting was big had a old neighbor who loved to go and many class mates who hunted and trapped for the extra money and sport of it
I seem to recall they did well on selling the pelts but like most when the bottom fell out of the fur market and not worth the effort most all quit I know some still did just to be in the woods and work the dogs as a fun night out
Yesterday was a good day. I trapped a young raccoon and also a young groundhog. I had 3 traps set out, but one of them was molested by a huge raccoon. He was on the outside and reached in to get the cat food, pulled it out then took off into the woods holding the cat food in his left hand while he ran. It was just by chance that I saw him doing it.
It's raining now, but if the rain stops, I'll reset the traps this evening. The buzzards haven't smelled the fresh kills yet, but they will.
Joe
@waltermoe I use a similar method which was poofed several years ago. It involved a HF driveway alert, peaches & CB Longs. 5-4-3-2-1-oops
MDNR just added them to the varmint list.
AND
https://forums.gunbroker.com/discussion/1911737/carnage-in-the-coop#latest
@Okie743 You are absolutely spot on. I would also like to add. That people that don’t understand wildlife always talk about it as if it was the natural way of animals, it is not. You have heard the saying that during the winter the sick one’s die off, that is a myth. It was that the strong survived when it cam to competition for food. Over the last hundred years we have set up such a food chain for wild animals with our corn and bean fields that they all make it through winter now. This causes over population. There is also the lack of grass fields anymore being turned into corn and bean fields in part to produce alcohol for gas and beans for bio diesel fuel. This leaves the quail only the grass to build a nest in along fence lines and such, soon quail hunting will be come a thing of the past.
My initial thought was that if it was a bad year for raccoons, then it must be a great year otherwise.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Imagine this; I got another big boar Raccoon last night at 2:30 AM. The .410 worked magic in settling him down. He was also caught in the arm trap baited with marshmallows.
I hear tell that .222 does wonders on ground hogs.................like "red mist"
I think the proliferation of varmints, hawks, owls, and stray house cats are more responsible for quail decline than farming .In my youth almost everyone farmed / lived in the country. All had chickens. Any varmint were swiftly dealt with . Quail abounded . Now no chickens and increase in varmint equals no quail
@pulsarnc I agree with you. Hawks and feral cats I think take just a big a toll on game as do coyotes and raccoons anymore, there are way too many. Not sure where you live, but around here land will go for $12.000 to $14.000 an acre for tillable land, so a lot of grass land has been tilled under to plant corn or beans. Can’t blame anyone for that, at those prices you got to make it pay for it self. My self, I think they should put bounty on coyotes and raccoons.
"I think the proliferation of varmints, hawks, owls, and stray house cats are more responsible for quail decline than farming"
BINGO, we have a winner. I've lived on the same land since I was born and seen the good and bad but honestly modern 'game management' is a FAILURE.
Grew up farming the family land and still live on the farm. In truth there is about as much cover for birds as there was 50 years ago ,just no quail. What we do have now that we didn't then are bald eagles ,coyote,and an overabundance of hawks ..We also have no quail .