Raccoons eating my corn-where are you experts

[catjac1975]

I am thinking of tying the meatballs to the back of the cage so he will have to fight with it and maybe trip the cage when doing so. But they sure do look smart in the video. But he did not get the bait in the video.

 

[catjac1975]

Remember; Raccoons are a good fit in chili!
Sounds like you got the makings for a fine feed, Coon chili, rosen-ears and corn bread!

You got any watermelons to go with that? Sorry for the distraction.

Oh I was confused. You think I should eat it!

 

[seedcorn]

Check laws, re homing wild animals in some states is illegal. Coons will beat u back home unless u move them MILES from home. In which case they will kill or be killed by other of their own species. Just dispatch them is the humane thing to do. As far as eating, they have to be dressed correctly to make them palatable. I don’t know how.

 

[farmerjan]

My son has gone to getting the cheap cans of sardines at the dollar store... has a can now wired in the center just past the trip pan and dumps more in it when he sets it.
CATCH 'EM and KILL THEM. We have trouble with them tearing the plastic "bags" of silage and it causes it to spoil...
Also, hard boiled eggs work sometimes.

Run electric around the patch... 1 wire 6 inches and the second wire 12-18 inches above it. Keeps coons, possums, groundhogs out of the patch... run another wire about 3 ft to help to keep deer out... but they can be really tough... There has been some studies done to run 2 fences around a garden... 2-3 ft. apart... deer have a perception problem and cannot manage to jump 2 fences like that or jump in and out of the space between....

 

[Ridgerunner]

I wired a piece of plywood to the bottom of the trap, a few inches larger than the bottom. That stabilizes it and keeps anything from getting to the bait from the bottom. I built a box that fits over the trap and sets on that bottom plywood. The only opening is from the front, they can only come in or get to the bait through the front door. If they steal the bait they have to come in from the front. I put the bait all the way at the back.

With the trap totally enclosed I'll admit your heart can get to pumping when you are trying to peak in there to see what you got. If it happens to be black and white it will not spray while it is enclosed like that.

 

[catjac1975]

Check laws, re homing wild animals in some states is illegal. Coons will beat u back home unless u move them MILES from home. In which case they will kill or be killed by other of their own species. Just dispatch them is the humane thing to do. As far as eating, they have to be dressed correctly to make them palatable. I don’t know how.

Yes illegal to relocate here.

 

[flowerbug]

good fence with a hot wire.

i don't even bother trying to grow sweet corn here with how many raccoons are around and how bad our fence is.

today i had to harvest tomatoes and some of them had been damaged by some chewing animal (ground hog or raccoon or ?). i wouldn't mind sharing some of the harvest with them, but when they just go around and take a bite out of this and that and don't even finish the one they've started that just irks my sense of not wasting things. i did pick them all to cut around the bites and to discard any that were too damaged but i sure hope this isn't going to be a habit for the rest of the season because we still have a fair amount of tomatoes out there and it would not be any fun at all to lose a lot more to wasteful and destructive creatures.

up until the past few years, it's not been common for anything to bother the tomatoes except for the tomato worms.

 

[Carol Dee]

My son has gone to getting the cheap cans of sardines at the dollar store... has a can now wired in the center just past the trip pan and dumps more in it when he sets it.
CATCH 'EM and KILL THEM. We have trouble with them tearing the plastic "bags" of silage and it causes it to spoil...
Also, hard boiled eggs work sometimes.

Run electric around the patch... 1 wire 6 inches and the second wire 12-18 inches above it. Keeps coons, possums, groundhogs out of the patch... run another wire about 3 ft to help to keep deer out... but they can be really tough... There has been some studies done to run 2 fences around a garden... 2-3 ft. apart... deer have a perception problem and cannot manage to jump 2 fences like that or jump in and out of the space between....

We hotwired our corn patch. Seemed to be working. Checked patch one night and decided to pick in the morning. DANG coons got in that night and took 1/2 the corn.

 

[Carol Dee]

good fence with a hot wire.

i don't even bother trying to grow sweet corn here with how many raccoons are around and how bad our fence is.

today i had to harvest tomatoes and some of them had been damaged by some chewing animal (ground hog or raccoon or ?). i wouldn't mind sharing some of the harvest with them, but when they just go around and take a bite out of this and that and don't even finish the one they've started that just irks my sense of not wasting things. i did pick them all to cut around the bites and to discard any that were too damaged but i sure hope this isn't going to be a habit for the rest of the season because we still have a fair amount of tomatoes out there and it would not be any fun at all to lose a lot more to wasteful and destructive creatures.

up until the past few years, it's not been common for anything to bother the tomatoes except for the tomato worms.

We had this problem with ground hogs. A bite of this and that until the ruined a LOT of produce. We had driven them off for a few years. But this summer they have returned.

 

[flowerbug]

We had this problem with ground hogs. A bite of this and that until the ruined a LOT of produce. We had driven them off for a few years. But this summer they have returned.

i have to hunt them every year. they have a lot of dens around and the babies have to go someplace to find their own den. this would not be as much of a problem had Mom bought the right kind of fence (which would keep groundhogs out of the main vegetable gardens area), but she bought this stuff they can climb through. at least it does usually keep the rabbits and the 2nd layer we put up top keeps the deer out. nothing reliably keeps the raccoons out. i'd need a lot different setup for that.

i heard animals outside fighting last night so it was probably raccoons that have done this chewing.