Thread: Damn raccoons - what to do?

I'd go with the airgun suggestion before any crossbow, especially a pistol type. There are just a lot less legal hassles. If you already have a .22 you should look for some sub-sonic rounds for it they are specifically made for your situation. Thats of course if they are legal in SF CA.

Another .22 option is to use .22 Short in a .22 Long Rifle firearm. It won't cycle the bolt on an auto, but it's real quiet!

Ray

P.S. Look at the GAMO Whisper if you just want a new "toy". I just saw a spot on them, and it's noticeably quieter than a "regular" air rifle.

a desert eagle will do the trick

I feel your pain, man! Shortly after I got married to my Thai wife, we heard something under our house - it turned out that a whole family (a mother and three kits) of raccoons had taken up residence. Every evening they would be out in the front yard under the tree, cooing and playing, and just being real cute little raccoons.

My first effort was kind of a home-grown thing.....I went out to the shed and got a real long handled fishing net and thought that I could just ease up on one of them and kind of slip the net over it. My wife, who had never seen a raccoon and is quite adventurous, wanted to do the honors....so, yeah, sure....no problem, right?

She takes the net (it's got this really long, aluminum handle - maybe 10 feet or so) and creeps up on this raccoon, and it's just sitting there chirping and cooing at her, and she slowly slips the net along the ground until it's right next to this cuddly little moist-eyed bundle of love, cooing and chirping at her........she then quick as lightning just flipped the net up and over the raccoon just as neat as you please.......




.....and that little creature just EXPLODED into this snarling, biting, yelping blur of fur, thrashing around and fighting and got itself ALL tangled up in the net...... and there's my wife, holding this thing that is just THRASHING around....I can't begin to describe the amount of fury on the other end of that aluminum handle...so, Jumpee (my wife), barely holding onto the handle of the net, turns around and hands it to ME and says "Here, my love!".....we were both laughing so hard and yet our eyes must have been as big as saucers..... I told her to grab a garbage can and I manhandled that snarling ball of fury into the can, and we slapped the lid on it, threw it in the back of the pickup, and took it up into the woods on the way to Schweitzer Mountain, our local downhill ski area and released him in the woods.

One down....three to go.....and I wasn't going to try THAT again.

So, for my next effort, I got in touch with the local Fish & Game, and they loaned me a live trap and told me to bait it with either peanut butter or sardines. No problem....piece of cake, right? So we bait the thing up with some sardines, set it out under the tree and went to bed.
when we got up the next morning, my wife ran out to check the trap, and I was following some ways behind her....as soon as she opened the door she said "We got raccoon, my love!" and ran out. I got to the door before she made it to the trap, and was able to stop her JUST in time.........because we didn't have a raccoon.........






......we had a skunk. So, I am like going BALLISTIC, yelling at my wife to GET AWAY FROM THE TRAP.....NOW!!!! and she can't figure out why I'm so upset (the don't HAVE skunks in Thailand....after I explained the deal with skunks, she just couldn't believe it).

So, me bein' the engineer and all, I come up with this grand scheme of covering the trap with a tarp, and then just taking the whole kit and kaboodle up the mountain.....and Jumpee decides SHE wants to do it!....FINE BY ME!....so I put her up in a rain slicker outfit that we used to wear out on the North Sea....you know, those bright yellow raincoats and bib overalls and hood.....right...I dress her all up in that (figuring that when the skunk sprayed (not if....when), at least it wouldn'g get on her clothes....she had gloves, ski goggles and a scarf wrapped around her lower face so you couldn't see ANY skin, and then I gave here a blue plastic tarp, and she held it in front of her and just walked up to the trap and draped it over....it actually worked pretty well.

We then loaded it up in the truck and off to the mountains with it....after the skunk, the remaining three raccoons were pretty uneventful (we even got two of the at one time....no idea how that happened.

So, my recomendation........just shoot the buggers, and be done with it.


...life is fun....


-whatever

-Lou

Originally Posted by mhailey

a desert eagle will do the trick

That's great!

Hey! There's a fly in my room...can anyone loan me a sledgehammer?

Great story, Lou, and I love its moral!

Lou, the visual is priceless! She must love you very much....

Greg

Great story Lou. If only there was an instructional video to go with it!

Cheers
M.

My last house was near a river and there were tons of critters that wanted to eat the stock of our garden. We trapped raccoons, opossums, and groundhogs in a live trap. The raccoons would go in the thing even without bait because they're so curious. Then we'd pick up the live trap cage and put the whole thing in a barrel of water. Later we'd bag up the soggy carcass and call animal control and they'd pick up the bag. Simple and effective.

My problem is not only raccoons, but deer, turkeys, fox. I don't hunt but I considered starting. Every time we plant a garden, Something comes along to eat it.


Phil