How To KILL A Raccoon That's Raiding Your Garden

Started by tbone0106, August 24, 2011, 06:48:20 PM

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tbone0106

Quote from: taxed on June 12, 2012, 03:50:32 PM
I am a state over from you T, and there is a big coon problem here too.  If one of those little fuckers tries to hiss at me, he'll catch a 3-wood upside his head...
Yeah, I don't know what has caused this massive bumper crop. Last year was horrible -- dead coons splattered all over the roads. I haven't seen that sort of highway toll this year, but clearly my little corner of Heaven is well-populated by raccoons.

And they don't hiss, actually. When I walk up to the trap with rifle in hand, they sort of growl. As if to say, "If you'd just let me out, I'd mess you up really bad."

I never considered a golf club as a weapon, but then it would require releasing the little bastards, now, wouldn't it? But if I had to choose, I believe I'd go with a 4-wood. More lift under the chin.

taxed

Quote from: tbone0106 on June 12, 2012, 06:41:12 PM
Yeah, I don't know what has caused this massive bumper crop. Last year was horrible -- dead coons splattered all over the roads. I haven't seen that sort of highway toll this year, but clearly my little corner of Heaven is well-populated by raccoons.

And they don't hiss, actually. When I walk up to the trap with rifle in hand, they sort of growl. As if to say, "If you'd just let me out, I'd mess you up really bad."

I never considered a golf club as a weapon, but then it would require releasing the little bastards, now, wouldn't it? But if I had to choose, I believe I'd go with a 4-wood. More lift under the chin.

Just be sure to swing through....
#PureBlood #TrumpWon

tbone0106


tbone0106

Latest count:

11 raccoons

3 possums

2 groundhogs

:biggrin:


Sword of Justice

Brand new member here, and thank God for this post! I enjoy having chickens in my backyard and have built a pretty elaborate run and laying house for what had been my 40-50 birds.  I sell the eggs to neighbors for just enough to almost cover the feed, but it's not about the money.  I love having chickens around.  Well, until the last 2-3 weeks.  After 4-5  years of only losing 1 or 2 birds a  year, raccoons have found my chickens and they have utterly decimated my hens.  They are killing 2-3 each night.  I now have only 13 hens and am about a week away from being completely out of my backyard chicken hobby.  I have spent hours securing the pens the last two days only to find two more hens dead and partially eaten this morning.  A small bantam chick with a broken foot was kept in a cage and the cage was opened by one of the vile creatures.  I am at wit's end. I dread getting up in the morning to see the latest carnage.  I harbor no animosity to animals in the wild, but I would kill these particular raccoons with my bare hands if I could.  So I did a search and found this thread.  I will have some Golden Malrin within the hour. I will apply it to some Mtn Dew, Grape soda, whatever it takes.  I plan to put out the mixture at night and take it up before the chickens come off the roost.  I don't want these raccoons relocated.  I want them dead and I want to see them dead, like that marvelous example in your picture.  Because after losing chickens that were more like pets than livestock, it's now personal.

Eyesabide

Sword of Justice, Welcome!
After you kill these raccoons, what is your plan to keep them from coming back? Will you maintain the kill traps or will you do something else to discourage them?
Muskets High!

tbone0106

Quote from: Sword of Justice on July 04, 2012, 06:53:21 AM
Brand new member here, and thank God for this post! I enjoy having chickens in my backyard and have built a pretty elaborate run and laying house for what had been my 40-50 birds.  I sell the eggs to neighbors for just enough to almost cover the feed, but it's not about the money.  I love having chickens around.  Well, until the last 2-3 weeks.  After 4-5  years of only losing 1 or 2 birds a  year, raccoons have found my chickens and they have utterly decimated my hens.  They are killing 2-3 each night.  I now have only 13 hens and am about a week away from being completely out of my backyard chicken hobby.  I have spent hours securing the pens the last two days only to find two more hens dead and partially eaten this morning.  A small bantam chick with a broken foot was kept in a cage and the cage was opened by one of the vile creatures.  I am at wit's end. I dread getting up in the morning to see the latest carnage.  I harbor no animosity to animals in the wild, but I would kill these particular raccoons with my bare hands if I could.  So I did a search and found this thread.  I will have some Golden Malrin within the hour. I will apply it to some Mtn Dew, Grape soda, whatever it takes.  I plan to put out the mixture at night and take it up before the chickens come off the roost.  I don't want these raccoons relocated.  I want them dead and I want to see them dead, like that marvelous example in your picture.  Because after losing chickens that were more like pets than livestock, it's now personal.
Welcome to the board!

Sounds like you have a real problem with your hens, or rather with raccoons that find them tasty. And as you're discovering, once they find something like that, they will come back EVERY night until whatever it is is gone.

My advice: place the stuff where the chickens can't get to it. Cats and dogs don't like it, and neither do chickens actually, but birds can attempt to pick the dead flies out of it, which kills them pretty dead. It doesn't happen often -- here I've lost one robin in two seasons -- but why take the chance?

Also, try placing it in different spots around the chickens. If it's the same coon(s) coming every night (it is, bet on it), it/they will come from the same direction... but you don't know what that direction is -- yet. Remember that the object of the game is interdiction; you have to put the GM where they'll come across it BEFORE they get a belly full of chicken or sweet corn or whatever. Placing a single poison trap east of the henhouse won't stop a coon coming in from the west.

Rain dilutes the stuff after a while. If we get a 1/4" shower, I don't worry about it, but an inch or more of rain weakens it, and you'll have to discard it and make a new batch. Or you may be lucky enough to have a sheltered place to put the stuff; I don't.

If you have an outdoor garbage can or a burn barrel, those can be attractants for coons. I recently noticed muddy pawprints on the outside of my burn barrel, along with several gnawed-up corn cobs on the ground near it. (Mrs. Tbone struggles with determining what burns well and what does not. Cobs from yesterday's sweet corn meal fall in the "not" category.) Guess where I have a dish of the good stuff now...

Good luck, and again, WELCOME to the board!

Sword of Justice

Thank you for the welcome! Seems like a great site with good people!

Well, I was disappointed to find the feed n seed closed for the 4th so no Golden Malrin.  A man who undoubtedly used GM had told me about a product a month ago that was blue and came in a metal can that he used to eradicate feral cats around his property.  He couldn't remember the name and the fellow at the store sold me something else instead.  It's called QuickBayt for flies and the active ingredient is Imclaprodin or something like that.  It has been a huge disappointment.  I've put it all over fish carcasses (I am a part-time guide and have lots of fish parts!), left over fried chicken, etc etc.  Whatever I leave out is completely gone by morning, but I've seen NO dead animals of any kind and the predation on my chickens has only increased since I started.  I've observed two foxes crossing my yard (my son shot one through the eye with the first shot he ever made with a rifle!) and my neighbors reported seeing a coyote crossing the road.  I live in rural Georgia and I've had no issues in the past with predators.  But I've observed the coon with a dying chicken in its mouth twice now in less than a week.  So I made due with the best I could tonight.  I loaded up two aluminum pans with QuickBayt and added some pepsi to both.  I put them in opposite directions from the pen on two trail areas (both of which show recent evidence of slain chickens).  I'm crossing my fingers I will see my first poisoned raccoon soon.  To answer the earlier question, my plan is to keep poisoning until the predation stops or there is some poisoned food remaining in the dishes by morning.  (I take up the poison before sun up to avoid killing my birds.)

We'll see how this goes.  I plan on buying a can of the "good stuff" on my way to work tomorrow morning.  Thanks again for all the advice!

tbone0106

Quote from: Sword of Justice on July 04, 2012, 06:29:46 PM
Thank you for the welcome! Seems like a great site with good people!

Well, I was disappointed to find the feed n seed closed for the 4th so no Golden Malrin.  A man who undoubtedly used GM had told me about a product a month ago that was blue and came in a metal can that he used to eradicate feral cats around his property.  He couldn't remember the name and the fellow at the store sold me something else instead.  It's called QuickBayt for flies and the active ingredient is Imclaprodin or something like that.  It has been a huge disappointment.  I've put it all over fish carcasses (I am a part-time guide and have lots of fish parts!), left over fried chicken, etc etc.  Whatever I leave out is completely gone by morning, but I've seen NO dead animals of any kind and the predation on my chickens has only increased since I started.  I've observed two foxes crossing my yard (my son shot one through the eye with the first shot he ever made with a rifle!) and my neighbors reported seeing a coyote crossing the road.  I live in rural Georgia and I've had no issues in the past with predators.  But I've observed the coon with a dying chicken in its mouth twice now in less than a week.  So I made due with the best I could tonight.  I loaded up two aluminum pans with QuickBayt and added some pepsi to both.  I put them in opposite directions from the pen on two trail areas (both of which show recent evidence of slain chickens).  I'm crossing my fingers I will see my first poisoned raccoon soon.  To answer the earlier question, my plan is to keep poisoning until the predation stops or there is some poisoned food remaining in the dishes by morning.  (I take up the poison before sun up to avoid killing my birds.)

We'll see how this goes.  I plan on buying a can of the "good stuff" on my way to work tomorrow morning.  Thanks again for all the advice!

Good luck. That's not the same stuff at all. The active ingredients in GM are methomyl and (Z)-9-tricosene. The tricosene stuff is a fly attractant, but the methomyl is deadly poisonous, even to humans. Wear gloves when you handle the stuff!

Mixing GM with soda pop makes it unattractive to most animals that you'd like to keep around, especially cats and dogs, but at the same time makes it almost irresistible to raccoons. A 'coon has an insatiable sweet tooth. Mixing it with other baits, such as fish or hamburger, will certainly be effective, even on 'coons, but will also attract lots of new species. For sure, it would be hard to keep the cats and dogs away. And the GM will, of course, kill them where they stand. It is powerful stuff.

Sword of Justice

Success!! Although it was further confirmation that my QuickBayt is utterly useless.  By 11 pm, both aluminum pans of the stuff were licked bone dry.  No dead or sick varmints anywhere as usual, and I really heaped the stuff in.

BUT....at 1:15 am, I decided to take a look down there and spotted that hated raccoon in my pen yet again, feeding on one of my ever diminishing flock.  It climbed to the top of the door of the pen, and a surprisingly well-placed .223 round (I was holding a Q-Beam with the same hand I used to squeeze the trigger!) ended its reign of terror for good.  It was a pretty hefty female.  Maybe it has been the primary problem, or maybe it's just the first of several that will have to be eliminated, but it still felt pretty darn good! (Sorry, tree huggers, but that's just the truth!)

I took the body of my most recently killed chicken (she had been one of my favorites...sigh) and decided to put her to use that same night.  I tied its leg to a tree in the yard with 60 lb test monofilament and left her out in the light.  At 2:15, the chicken had been moved, and this time the Q-Beam illuminated a fox.  Unfortunately I didn't have a good shot and holding a light on an animal while you shoot is a lesson in frustration.  I missed but it will be back no doubt. 

Here's a shot of the proud hunter seconds before I tossed its worthless carcass into the woods.  Hope to show some additional pics of success in the coming weeks as I try to slowly build my chicken flock back to where it once was.

Sword of Justice

Hmmmm....having a bit of trouble getting the picture to upload.  I have the size down to 54 kb but I still get this message:

"The upload folder is full. Please try a smaller file and/or contact an administrator."

If anyone can help, it would be appreciated.  But pictures or not, I just had to report the good news.  Tonight, we'll see how the Pepsi/Golden Malrin fares.

tbone0106

Quote from: Sword of Justice on July 05, 2012, 05:22:23 AM
Hmmmm....having a bit of trouble getting the picture to upload.  I have the size down to 54 kb but I still get this message:

"The upload folder is full. Please try a smaller file and/or contact an administrator."

If anyone can help, it would be appreciated.  But pictures or not, I just had to report the good news.  Tonight, we'll see how the Pepsi/Golden Malrin fares.
Rather than try to upload a photo directly to the board, I use Photobucket. It's free and you can upload your photo there and it'll automatically generate the correct code for an embedded IMG link you can put in your post.

tbone0106

Oh, and congratulations on your coon sow! GM is powerful poison, but so is lead administered in 55-grain doses at high velocity. If she's a big one, you can bet she had a litter of young ones earlier this year, and they get hungry too...

Sword of Justice

Little ones.  That's what I was thinking.  Looks like my work is cut out for me.  Just finished cleaning around 20 perch, refrigerated the fillets, will dust the carcasses well about sundown.  Planning them for coons, but if fox and coyote find them first, it will be good riddance to them as well.  There are no pet dogs and cats around here, thank goodness.  Will try the Pepsi mixture again as well.  The previous fly bait had no apparent effect, as they ate/drank everything I coated in the Quick Bayt.  Expecting a much different outcome this time around.  Even got the local feed/seed man to knock a dollar off the price of a can of GM after I told him I had gotten a bum deal with the previous poison.  For anyone interested, it's $6.99 for 1 lb and $24.99 for 5 lbs at Tractor Supply.  My local small town seed store has it marked way up, to $9 for 1 lb and $40 for 5 lbs.