Corn Hunt, 2022

[meadow]

It certainly makes me wonder how raccoons overpopulate as they do; usually populations of any animal are kept under control by factors in their environment. I can't help wonder if access to human refuse is part of it. Where I live you'd never think there are any of them around, you only get a glimpse on a rare occasion. They are nearly as invisible as the wolves. Seems urban areas are more affected.

Cat food.

At various times we've taken pity on feral cats and have provided shelter for them in our barn. Since our neighbor has taken up feeding all of the feral cats in the area (and the squirrels!), we no longer offer food but do give them access to the barn for shelter. In any case, the raccoons eat pet food.

 

[ducks4you]

..OR livestock feed, like horse sweet feed, or corn or oats,
You spill it, your Horse spills it, possums and raccoons come into the barn crumbin...
I once had 3 adult raccoons in my small grain room--4' x 8'.
Couldn't persuade them to leave, so DH spoke to them with a shotgun,
S. S. S.

 

[Jack Holloway]

Also the lack of predators isn't helping.

 

[ducks4you]

We have Plenty of predators. Owls, redtail hawks, coywolves...
The occasional dog that kills them.
Mine won't, but Eva Did steal a rabbit from the cats last summer.

 

[Jack Holloway]

We have Plenty of predators. Owls, redtail hawks, coywolves...
The occasional dog that kills them.
Mine won't, but Eva Did steal a rabbit from the cats last summer.

Not sure how many predators on in towns/cities. Or if there just aren't enough of them to keep the rascals in check based on the rascals available food.

 

[flowerbug]

It certainly makes me wonder how raccoons overpopulate as they do; usually populations of any animal are kept under control by factors in their environment. I can't help wonder if access to human refuse is part of it.

they are very successful omnivores. they will rapidly replace their population if hunted so it's pretty much useless to try to trap or hunt them out. they just come in from all around. i can trap one a day for weeks and still have more come along.

we don't provide any outdoors or animal foods at all here yet there are plenty of them around.

Where I live you'd never think there are any of them around, you only get a glimpse on a rare occasion. They are nearly as invisible as the wolves. Seems urban areas are more affected.

the biggest predator of them around here is the vehicles on the roads.

 

[Jack Holloway]

we don't provide any outdoors or animal foods at all here yet there are plenty of them around.

My neighbor feeds them. The raccoons are so fat they waddle. They don't even hiss at the cats. I've tried to talk her out if it for years. No luck.

And Great Odin, have we taken this thread real far away from a corn hunt. Apologizes @Pulsegleaner . My bad. I'll shut up now.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It's always a delicate balance. You need a decent number of predators to keep the population of prey animals down, but the flip side of that is that those predators are going to see our livestock and pets as equally viable prey (often more viable, in fact, since the pampering we give them makes them tend to be fatter and less likely to be able to defend themselves than wild prey.) It's sort of the same problem with pest animals, we basically are filling areas with high quality food, removing a lot of their native food areas in the process, and so it is only logical for them to try and utilize the resources presented to them. They're not evil, they're simply practicing good survival techniques. Same as our pet's ancestors, some of them realized that, if they hung around us, they would have better access to food, and if they behaved a certain way around us, we'd simply GIVE them food and shelter.

Kind of makes one wonder what the world would be like if ALL animals were intelligent enough to see the advantages of association with humans. Imagine a world where EVERYTHING was domesticated.