How do I catch a Raccoon??

The last 4 nights we have been raided by a raccoon. I am afraid to let the pets out. Every time Picabo (the dog) goes out she starts sniffing where it has been. I know she would chase it. She only weight 10 lbs and would get the bad end of that fight. I wouldn't mind it staying around if it wasn't destroying things. I am afraid of what it would do to the dogs.

It has broken two Humming Bird feeders and knocked a couple of Hoyas in hanging baskets to the ground. It is climbing around in all my hanging baskets and planters and digging out plants. I guess looking for what the squirrels have hid there. Any ideas on trapping it and not catching a skunk? It even comes on the deck and looks in the living room window. Brazen little thing! LOL

Betty


This message was edited Jun 27, 2007 7:10 AM

Betty, I'm sure the raccoon would only fight if cornered. He or she will run away from you or your dogs, so I don't think you need to worry about attacks. I've always kept my cats indoors, but our neighbor's three cats are outdoor animals and the raccoons don't bother them. As for the collateral damage: bring your bird feeders in at night, and sprinkle some hot pepper on your potted plants. Then sit back and enjoy watching the raccoon show from your window. We had nine of them scavenging for bugs on our back lawn yesterday evening (three mothers plus babies) and it was quite a circus.

If you want to catch a raccoon, you need a large live trap. Bait with peanut butter on bread, bacon grease on bread or a can of sardines. Put the trap where you think the raccoon travels and remove your feeders if possible for the night. You may have more than one out there. Probably several. I caught more than 30 last year in 60 days. They were not a problem this year until just a couple weeks ago. (Dog seems to like to fight with them).
I see no way to avoid getting a skunk or possum in the trap. They will be unhurt, so you can release them (good luck with a skunk).
Using precaution such as said above can avoid some problems. Our dog has had a few run ins with raccoons, but he is a big guy. I have had success with both the trapping and the above measures.

Thanks for the information They are cute. My dog is so tiny but she thinks that she is 100 pounds. I am sure that she would try to chase it out of the yard. The Hummer feeders are now all broken, might be cheeper to just watch the racoon show and forget the hummers this year.


Betty

Please consider: at this time of year, many female raccoons are raising young. The mother feeds the babies and then leaves them in a safe place while she forages for herself. If you decide to trap and remove the raccoon, and it is a lactating female, please wait until after its babies are old enough to fend for themselves or you will be condemning them to death by slow starvation.

Be wary with racoons. They look cute but can be serious fighters if cornered. Our cat got into a dispute with one in California and we had big vet bills as a result of just one racoon bite on his hind end.

If you have Animal Control in your area, you probably can obtain a free live animal trap from them and then call them to pick up and relocate any captured critter. As June_Ontario said, female racoons may have babies nearby and the Animal Control person will be able to tell if the female is lactating. They will either search for the babies or release the female to avoid starving the pups.

My experience with raccoons has been much the same as that expressed by June_Ontario. I have had as many as 7 adults in my back yard at once, 2 of them males. Contrary to what I had expected, I find them to be exceedingly non-aggressive. That is not to say that they won't defend themselves if absolutely necessary, just that violence seems to be a last resort for them.

I completely understand your concern. My last dog was a 10lb Maltese. She was so determined to chase the raccoons out of "her" yard that she would even sometimes wake me up at night insisting that she had to go out (fenced back yard). As soon as I opened the door she would leap out of it like Secretariat leaving the starting gate at the Belmont. She constantly chased the raccoons over the back fence for years. In the beginning I was terrified for her safety. Eventually I stopped paying any attention. She chased them almost daily for 6yrs and was never harmed in any way.

When she died 2 yrs ago, I got my current dog who is a 4.5lb Maltese. Despite his dimutive size he is even more aggressive in his pursuit of the raccoons - and he started chasing them when he as a 3lb puppy. On several different occasions I actually saw him (with my heart in my hand) back an adult female raccoon up against a 6ft privacy fence. There he was right in her face barking at her like an idiot. She could have batted him across the yard with one paw, but I was amazed to see her bend her body backwards and sideways to avoid him. Another time I watched in terror as he went after one of her babies. In almost 2 years of chasing them he has never gotten a single scratch. They always run away and come back when he leaves.

I've been writing about a female Heidi who comes to my yard. When she 1st showed up I was afraid of her, both for my dog and for myself. I called my local animal control dept., and I considered having her trapped and removed. I asked them what they would do with her and they said because raccoons aren't endangered they would kill her. Thankfully, I didn't go that route - I didn't think she deserved to be executed just for stealing a few bird seeds.

Later I called a wildlife rehabilitator of advice. She told me the raccoon was likely a lactating female with babies nearby and that she was stealing bird seed so that she could get back to her babies before a predator found them. Sure enough a few months later I walked out to find her standing beneath the birdfeeder coaching 4 tiny little furballs on how to raid the feeder. They were all hanging off the thing every which way like kids on a jungle gym, and they were so adorable. My heart melted that day. I started feeding them at the back of the yard. (Not suggesting you do that, but I've enjoyed them ever sinse and they've never harmed anything - except the feeders.)

I bring my feeders in at night. It's a little more work, but it's worth it to me. I've read that you can make a good raccoon baffle by covering the feeder pole with a length of 6" PVC - you can probably find direction on line if you are interested in trying it. I also saw a photo online once where someone had made a feeding platform for cats. They had made a *" or more lip from metal flashing all around the sides. They found that while the cats could still jump up there they raccoons could not, and the metal flashing kept them from getting onto the platform if they climbed up the pole. You might also be able to find the photo/description online by searching for words along the line of "raccoons can't jump" as I believe that was the caption.

Hope this helps. I can only tell you that I am very glad that I didn't remove Heidi from my yard. I enjoy her and her kids.

Hello - I had a young racoon take up residence in the attic space over my master bedroom two springs ago. My landlord was not very attentive to his house and all of the second floor roof soffits were filled with holes, starlings nested in these spaces half the year. Anyway, the racoon moved in and I told the landlord, figuring he would call wildlife control and pay the fee to have someone come out and trap/relocate our guest. Instead, the idiot called an exterminator. The guy showed up with poison and I promptly chased him off of the property, something that made my landlord very unhappy. I threatened to call the authorities, it is not legal to poison racoons in our area. The right thing to do would be to patch up your home so that wildlife doesn't get in, but this guy didn't think that way.

Anyway, after speaking to a wildlife expert for advice, that same day I rented one of those metal traps and that night put a peanut butter sandwhich in it, left it on the second floor deck by the entrance hole i knew he was using, and went to sleep on the couch. It worked! At 3 am I awoke to such a clatter, he was moving the trap all over the place (while in it!) At dawn I put him in my car, he was very calm and solemn looking, and as soon as I started driving, he put his head down on his paws and went to sleep. In spite of all that I had been told - and warned about - he was not a viscious spitting nasty animal. He was actually kind of sweet.

I drove to a local protected wildlife area and let him go, he ran out of the cage and up a tree and then went off into the woods...I hope he made it ok, I was worried about dropping him off in a strange place, a place he did not know - and in the morning when most sensible racoons have already bedded down for the night. Poor thing. I hope he found a place to sleep and wound up liking his new home. What scared me is that he wasn't a "woods" racoon, he was a beach town "neighborhood" racoon, probably born under someone's deck or in the street sewers....how hard would it have been for him to adjust to life out in the big woods?

My point was that they are fairly easy to trap if you have peanut butter! I still think about him though and hope he is ok.

This message was edited Jul 7, 2007 5:54 PM

This message was edited Jul 7, 2007 5:55 PM

Raccoons are the most adaptable animals I have ever worked with in wildlife rehab. I wouldn't worry about him at all, he will be fine. I do however, try to release them near water so they have that within the first few hours, but he will find some reguardless. To anyone who releases a raccoon, make sure that you take him at least 5 miles away. Any closer and he will return. I know this from experience and never, never relocate a raccoon who liks like he is ill. they will spread the illness to all the other coons in the new area, especially parvo and distemper.

Coons are prety easy to trap in a live trap (keeping them in there, is the hard part) I have cought them before, with no more bait than a bowl of water and a few bright marbles in areas where I knew the trap would fill up with cats and skunks first.

Make sure before you trap one that it is not nursing a batch of babies or you will be getting a whole new set of problems. (ie, the sound of crying babies, the smell of dead ones or a batch of them crawling out of the tree or garage and looking for mom.( My rule is that if she has "ninnies" let her go and try again in a few weeks.)

"take them at least 5 miles" This made me smile. We were being over run by racoons and set the traps every night fir a week. The racoons were driven 15 miles and left in an area in the mountains where there was plenty of water ( fork of 2 rivers) and plenty of natural food to scavange.

The second week I noticed that one racoon with a broken tail was in the trap a second time. I was sure it was the same squirrell so I started marking them with paint ball paint because I knew it is vegetable dye and safe. Sure enough, the same ones were being trapped about every 2 days. We drove the next ones over 60 miles into the mountains before releasing them. After a month only two of about 30 we transplanted and marked had made it back.

I never leave pet food outside but the little bandits will tear up my little back yard pond every night in spite of the fact there are no fish left in it and there is a fresh water creek not 20 feet away! Now there is broken glass on the fence railing and they have learned not to come over into the yard. I enjoy watching them in the trees behind the fence but I do not want them in my small yard or pond! If the broken glass on the fence rail continues to keep them out I may even risk a few gold fish again.

They are not stupid and it only took them one night to realize it was not safe on the fence but the cat is not a happy camper since he liked to climb the fence too. But he can still get around it by demanding to be let out the front door and jumping through the side gate area that leads to the fields. MEOOOW! Let me out the door. I refuse to use the pet door to the back yard with that glass there..MEOWW!!!

Oh wow. I would say where I relocated my little guy was only about 3 or 4 miles. I hope he didn't go back, because I moved soon after and was not there to protect him. I have read about their intelligence, they must have remarkable homing skills as well. The funny thing is, if I hadn't been moving out, I probably would have just let him live up there. There was nothing he could hurt. And he probably would have kept all the starlings that nested in the soffits away! (Though I am sure it would not have been wise for alot of reasons).

It crossed my mind that it might be a female with babies, but I have seen adult raccoons before and this guy was about half the size of one. I checked with animal control and a wildlife person before trapping, and by the size of him and what he was doing around my house, they said he was probably a young male, looking for a place to settle in. I heard no other sounds in the attic after he left. Maybe he stayed where I took him, due to the fact that he was young....also, the area I left him in was crisscrossed with both fresh and salt water streams and swamps, it is near where a river empties out into the Atlantic ocean. In fact, after I let him out of the cage, he had to cross over a little streambed to get into the woods. I was happy about that, I had read that they catch and eat frogs and fish.

Oh well, I hope he is ok, I will never forget his pretty little face looking at me so calmly, like he hadn't a fear in the world....I wouldn't have felt that way if some big giant had my butt in a little cage, that's for sure!

He should have been just fine. They scavange in garbage in towns for easy meals but the diet of grubs, frogs, fish and other natural foods would be much healthier for him. A young male should have had no problems finding a nice safe place to rest up and the hunting in a location like that should make it easy for him to survive.

maybe put some corn out for her by the road where she can easily find it and take back with her?or a little bowl of water beside it so she can dine in. then she wouldn't be ransacking everything. eat and go. we feed the birds. give em a bath. why not a coon?
why trap and dump. to me same as dumping a dog.

Len, I only trapped and removed my coon because my @$$&%#! landlord was going to poison it. It was a matter of saving his furry little butt. He wasn't bothering me, I like having animals around.

You should see my yard now- I have a groundhog living under my garden house/shed, deer that visit nightly (and sometimes daily), chipmunks, possums, rabbits, birds of all kinds, and squirrels that cost me about $50 a month in roasted peanuts. And those are just the OUTSIDE animals.

Len, as cute as they are they are wild animals and I treat them as such. They are often rabbies carriers and a terrible nuscience when they overpopulate an area. Relocation is more humane to me than shooting or poisoning them as frequently happens around here if they aren't road killed. Seems to me they are better off in the mountains and woods. Not so with dogs that are domestic animals. So, IMHO, to compare the two seems a bit unfair to them and the dog.

Raccoons are wild animals I agree, and should not be fed. This leads to pet like behavior that is unsafe for animal and humans alike.
It is human reasoning to think that putting out food will keep them from damaging other things. When I was a kid one or two raccoons would come in and eat one bite out of every ear of sweet corn in one night ruining a whole crop that was going to market. We wouldn't of minded if they ate a couple ears fully and ate their full, but no, they had to take one bite out of the center of each ear. This is very common behavior for these animals.
They are cute, but they are wild, and you should be careful. I am surprized by how docile the trapped one above was. I have seen them in a trap, spit, growl like a mountian lion, and try to grap and scratch. They can be VERY mean. Of course they are trying to protect themself.
Keeping animal proof trash cans, not throwing out garbage in the yard, bringing in bird feeders at night etc, can help the situation.

The animal control guy who advised me on how to trap warned me that the racoon might act viscious, and told me that if I was afraid to carry the trap around after trapping him, to call and he would come and get it....but really the little guy was so calm. Of course I didn't stick my fingers in there, but he was far from mean and spitting and nasty. Maybe because he was younger?

Or maybe it was me, maybe it was a case of the wild beast being charmed by my beauty. Happens to me all the time....

If he was that tame he was probably either raised by someone as a pet or he was ill. They learn very young to snarl and his when cornered and being that calm is not a sign of a normal healthy coon!

It is illegal here to keep any wild creature as a pet unless you are a registered liscenced wildlife rehabilitator but people do it all the time when they find a tiny little orphaned coon. Then when it is older they realize it is still a wild animal and turn it loose. Unfortunately they fail as adopted parents and do not teach it to fend on it's own and it has lost all fear of humans. If that was the case the poor thing has slim chances for survival under the best of circumstances.

Get a "Have A Hart" trap large enough to trap a raccoon and relocate it. If it has babies, it will come back. Look for the babies and relocate them along with it mother. The trap will cost you about $50.00.

My racoon looked healthy, and he certainly did throw that trap all around the deck while he was inside it, before I took it out to the car. (that took some strength, he was not very big and that trap was heavy!) It was morning by then and I thought perhaps his calmness also had something to do with it being bedtime. I didn't find the calmness as odd as I found him snoozing in the back seat as I was driving him to the wildlife area. In the area I lived and found him in, it is highly unlikely that someone had raised or tamed him.

Oh well, I hope he was just one of those peaceful, happy go lucky, chilled out, one in a million racoons and not sick or somehow impaired.

Some raccoons are more mellow than others. Some work really, really hard to figure out the trap and are tierd of moving it around. It takes alot of strength to "hop" the trap around with their body in it. I have found the young raccoons or the mothers are the most vocal.

Coons are amazing judges of charecter! I really feel that they know how a person feels twards them. I have gone on coon calls where one is inured and after talking to it and calming it down, been able to ahndle it without much trouble. Young coons are especially easy to calm, especially if they are tired out. This is not to say that I don't have scars to prove me wrong on occasion, but that gives rehabbers something to compaire when we get together.

If they are as bright as I have read they are, then it is concievable that they would be able to judge whether they had something to fear from someone...and of course I did not try to touch him or anything, I covered the trap half way with a towel, cause that can make any animal feel more secure, and took him out to the car immediately. It was dawn and I wanted to get him moved as early as possible so he could find a place to sleep for the night.

I don't know how long he was in the trap before the clanging around woke me, but I do know it was a heavy trap and he was about half the size of some racoons I have seen, so he could have been exhausted. He moved that trap from one side of the deck all the way to the other, and it's a big deck! .....Also, I sang to him in the car on the way to the wildlife area, can anyone guess what i sang?

I kept glancing in the back seat, and he was just staring at me, the last time I looked back, he was snoozing. Poor little guy. I felt bad uprooting him from his home. But if the alternative was rat poison, what could I do?

Was it a Beatles song?

VERY good. Yup, Rocky Racoon. I think he liked it too, even with my horrible voice. Of course, the subject of the song isn't very pleasant, but I doubt he understood English. Or maybe it was my voice that put him to sleep, he just couldn't take anymore...

I hate poisons. I would rather trap a mouse than to use decon and have the dead mouse hiding somewhere around. That is why I love the live trap. If you get a cat or something, you can just release them right there. (and they think twice about coming back into your yard)
If a person has many raccoons they want to remove...another option is contacting a trapper in the fall. Fur has gone up in price and trapping is becoming profitable again. My personal opinion is that trapping helps control the population of many animals. When fur prices went down, the animal/human problems started to increase. Like beaver, muskrat, fox, coyote, and raccoon.

I think maybe the animals should get together and start trapping the humans. We are the ones overpopulating the planet and taking up all the room. I am happy my racoon buddy is off in the woods somewhere, living well, and not a collar around someones neck.

Me too. Good job. >patting you on the back

This is true. Humans have forced many animals out of their homes. And that too is a problem. But, trapping has been done for many, many years. When trapping stopped, then some animals overpopulated and caused many problems. I love wildlife. I love to see the animals in the woods. BUT there are sometimes problems in some areas, like mine. There is over 300 acres of woods, swamp, and river/lake nearby. Some animals do a little too well in this area, and it is mostly the preditor animals. In the last 10 years we have lost almost all our wild rabbits, turkeys, and ruffled grouse. Deer are over grazing and eating many natural plants and trees. I do not want to see these animals gone, I just would like to see some of the numbers down a little, here.
Most areas are fine and the animals do quite well, some areas the animals need help. But in our area they are doing far too well.

I understand what you are saying, but in the area I live in, it is the opposite..a few hundred years ago we had numerous black bear, coyotes, bobcats, and way back when, wolves and mountain lions of some sort. Now we have just a few bears and coyotes, rumors of bobcats.....all of the above predated on young deer, fawns, or the weak and injured deer - now the predators are gone or in very low numbers and we are so over run with deer that I almost tripped over a family of three (mama, daddy and baby) in my backyard last week, in the middle of the afternoon, AND I live in a neighborhood, not in the woods. We have some small wooded areas around, but we are far from being in the "country."

So you can see, different areas call for different management. I thought that I grew up in the country, until I moved here. What a difference. I should not even feed birds, but I love to watch them. I have learned to remove feeders at night. That saves many headaches and run ins with wild animals, that I do not want in the yard.
Once squirrels and bunnies find that food is around houses, they move in and do well. Soon all the "food" for coyotes, bobcat, etc is around the houses. The preditors move in and humans do not like it, because now "fluffy" and "fido" are considered food.
I feel, we need as humans to see our effects on wildlife and try to keep wildlife where they belong, in the woods. We enjoy our woods, but try to keep areas that they will feel safe from humans. Even with this sometimes there are too many of an animal, example deer, and hunting and trapping help control these issues. We have many preditors here in our woods, yet are over run with squirrels, chipmunk, raccoon, and deer. Though I would never want to live in a world without any of these animals.
I am happy to be able to converse with so many people here, that care so much about wildlife and realize that there needs to be a balance for there to be healthy groups of every animal.

We had a pesky little bandit a couple of years ago that would raid the cat food I set out for my cat. Finally I put out a live trap and got him with the cat food. Took him to the local wildlife preserve and released him. He was hoppin mad, threw a big towel over the cage to calm him. Stood way back when I opened the door. He just saundered off.