Endless coon supply

[Chuck52]

Sweet corn! Next to tomatoes, sweet corn fresh from my garden has been my main gardening goal. I have three plantings, with the most mature now just about ready to pick. I knew I had raccoons to contend with, so I put up an electric fence with the lowest wire just a few inches above ground, the second wire at about two feet and the third, to discourage deer, at about four feet. In the same plot with the corn, I also have okra, three kinds of winter squash, cantaloupe, pumpkins and watermellon. Until the corn tasselled, nothing semed to get into my plot. Then I found obvious coon damage to the corn. The lowest wire was a bit too high in a couple of places, so I added another wire just an inch or two above ground the whole perimeter. I also put out live traps baited with cat food since we knew coon had been getting into the cat's food. In the past week I've caught seven coons. It's beginning to feel like I've opened a drain in the bottom of the ocean. On the other hand, since I improved my fence I haven't had any more damage to the corn. My BIL, who is much closer than I to being a "real" farmer, is sure I'll find all the corn gone on the day I decide to harvest it. That happened to him and is the reason he now buys all his corn. Ah well, at least I bet the okra and maybe some of the winter squash will be left alone.

Chuck

[Stimw]

I had a coon that was tearing up my garbage and my neighbors. The neighbor put 3 bungie cords on the lid and he would just take them off. I set a trap and put 2 old donuts in it. The coon managed to get the donuts without springing the trap. I named him Houdini after that!
I finally managed to catch him and now he has a new zip code about 10 miles away by the river. We joke that he was seen hitchhiking back.

[Pat]

I hauled off 6-7 in part of one gardening season. It temporarily denuded our locale of coons. They filter back in but not immediately. If you have a large enough and concentrated enough populaltion trapping and hauling may not work. I have loads of them but not so bad I can't lower the numbers sufficiently to have a garden. I think a short fence, 2-3 feet tall with a single hot wire on top would be effective for coons and rabbits and maybe quadraplegic deer.

Had a really huge buck in the yard next to the back porch yesterday at 0700 but he beat feet when I went out on the porch and stopped 75 yards away to look back before heading for cover in a copse of trees. bad techique, stopping and looking back, especially if it were hunting season.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Chuck52]

I thought after catching and deporting eight that I had made a real difference.....for one day! Saturday morning I was getting my first cup of coffee and saw a couple of "things" out in the back. When I finally got my eyes focused I realised I was seeing two coons much larger than the ones I had been trapping. I think I've got most of the youngsters, but mom and pop are still out there. They either ignore the traps or manage to clean out the bait without getting caught so far. They go through my electric fence, probably because their fur gives them some insulation. They also got into my one peach tree that was bearing this year and ate or ruined all dozen or so peaches on it, breaking a limb for good measure. My only gun is a semi auto 22. I'm stopping at Wally World on the way home for a brick of ammo. The rabbits are targets, too. They ate all my beets and are probably even now working on some new beans just coming up.

Funny. Until this year my only real animal problem has been with deer. This year the deer haven't been a challenge. My fences work for them.

Chuck

[GregMVT]

I don't believe in "deporting" them and making my problem someone elses. Plus there's the rabies concern around here. I have leg traps and a have a heart trap around my chicken run the last couple of weeks. I caught one medium sized one sunday. I know there are a lot more out there.

Greg

[Pat]

Greg, Maybe all of Vermont (one of my favorite counties in the state of New England) isn't like the postcards... rural farmsteads widely separated from one another. Maybe your population density is a tad higher than many parts of rural Oklahoma and yours may be more uniform than ours. Vermont county (state?) has about 700,000 inhabitants (49th out of 50 states) and the state of Oklahoma has about 3,500,000, 5 times as many folks. Vermont has less than 10,000 sq miles (45th out of 50 states) while Oklahoma has 68,667 sq miles and ranks 20th out of the 50.

Vermont has over 65 people per square mile (on average.) Oklahoma has about 50 but the variability in our density is such that rural areas can have folks very widely scattered. Much of our population is concentrated in a few areas like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Lawton, etc. This allows me to deport coons to "wild" areas and other regions of terrific coon habitat with little risk of a negative impact on other folks.

San Diego county in California is very polarized too. Most of the population is concentrated in the coastal strip and a few communities inland with major tracts of desert and mountains almost uninhabited. Yet, San Diego County California has a significantly higher population total than the whole state of Oklahoma.

Killing coons isn't my first choice and I am willing to go to some effort to find alternatives but if and when alternatives are too resource intensive then alternative solutions, including gunfire, are among the permitted candidate alternatives. I hear they taste like chicken.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Bird]

I wouldn't say they taste a lot like chicken, but they really are quite tasty barbecued. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Adron]

Barbecued and the bones striped out I would say more like pulled pork. Delicious [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

According to the Univ. of Michigan a raccoon has a normal range of 1 to 3 km. Heck, I could release it about anywhere before I got to the main highway and not have to worry about it too much.

[GregMVT]

Pat, I live on the western side of the state near the New York border. Most of the towns around here are about 10 miles apart with a lot of farms in between. I am more concerned about the rabies problems. For the last couple of years Canada has been subsidizing bait drops from aircraft that is laced with a rabies vaccine in the northern part of the state. They are really worried about it getting a foothold in Canada. That doesn't help where we are. They do taste like pork!! Got one years ago before rabies was showing up.

Greg

[Pat]

Greg, Rabies isn't transmitted by eating the cooked meat but care in dressing to avoid cuts or getting contact with sores etc on your body with any bodily fluids would be a wise precaution.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat