Thread: Damn raccoons - what to do?

Several years ago while living in Concord, ~35 miles from San Francisco, we had families of racoons using the backyard fences as highways. They would climb up patio overhang posts and claw the window screens on the scond floor. Scared the kids and wife. Off to the Local ACE hardware store to see if I could wrap the posts with flashing or something to keep them from climbing. A woman who worked there said why go to the trouble? Buy coyote urine, which they sold in bottles, cut a rag into little squares drip some coyote urine onto the cloth and place around the area where you don't want the racoons. Stapled little squares onto the fences where the racoons came onto the property... no more troubles. Refreshed periodically they stayed away. Friends in Sacramento had them under their house, used the coyote urine and evicted them there also. I don't know and don't want to know how the bottles were filled.
Good luck.

It also makes a great aftershave......I haven't been bothered by raccoons in YEARS!!!



















.....women either, for that matter.

-whatever

-Lou

Let us know how they well they do as knock off badger hair brushes. They must look pretty close.

LOL! This thread reminds me of the time I worked in Animal Control here in Dallas. This lady lived by a creek which ran behind her house along a small ravine. She had a problem with raccons coming up from the creek bottoms to get into her house so she calls us. We set out a humane trap (like a large cage) and were steadily trapping raccoons for 3 days. One night I get a call to go to her house and pick up a trapped raccoon. She knew us by now and left the back light on for us as she slept. I use my flashlight and make my way to the back.
There I see the trap, raccoon inside and 3 of his buddies beside the trap. As I approach, the 3 raccoons stand up to look at me and the poor fellow inside the trap begins to pull and kick at the cage frantically. I get closer and begin to try to shooo the 3 raccoons away. They begin to rock the cage to help their buddy. I get just a few feet away and the raccoons "kick" the trap down into the creek bottoms with the little guy screaming all the way down.
The trap hits bottom, bounces twice and busts open and the 4 scamper off into the darkness. I left the trap there for the morning watch to pick up. It was too dark for me to go down. Raccoons:1, me:0 that night.
Ernest

Raccoons love bananas. Don’t know why, but it works great for bait. A raccoon once broke into my cousin’s house just to eat the bananas, and then left.

On another note, drowning small varmints was mentioned earlier. While I personally prefer more humane methods of terminating unwanted disease carrying pests, if anyone has a problem w/ chipmunks or similar small creatures devouring their garden, I have a simple and effective solution to propose, which I learned from watching a neighbor’s struggles:

This neighbor was loosing all the strawberries in his garden to chipmunks. He borrowed every live catch trap in the neighborhood, paid my brothers a bounty for each on the plinked off w/ the pellet rifles (they would have been happy for the excuse to hunt free, and where just ticked pink), and yet chipmunks still devoured his harvest.

He then tried a new technique. He filled a 5 gallon bucket w/ water up to about 3 or 4 inches from the top. Placed a plank for a ramp to the top of the bucket. Covered the surface of the water with sunflower seeds, so that it looked like a large bucket of sunflower seeds had been left for the chipmunks to devour.

Like most rodents, chipmunks can swim surprisingly well.



















But not forever.

15 went down in the first two days. The remaining strawberries tasted quite delicious.

- Michael

Raccoon problems often develop where there are legal obstacles to trappers, or when pelts go way down in value and its not worth the trappers time.

Originally Posted by sensei_kyle

Boot to the head!

"who disturbs our meditation, as a pebble disturbs the water."

I haven't thought about that skit for a long time!!!

Cat excrement should also do the trick according to Toronto's humane society. I didn't get to test that additional use for the fruits of my cat's daily labours as the raccoon died of natural causes the following day. On a side-note, my cat is about as big and looks like a raccoon, so he makes me wonder about his bloodline

Originally Posted by ohlookaneagle

This neighbor was loosing all the strawberries in his garden to chipmunks. He borrowed every live catch trap in the neighborhood, paid my brothers a bounty for each on the plinked off w/ the pellet rifles (they would have been happy for the excuse to hunt free, and where just ticked pink), and yet chipmunks still devoured his harvest.

He then tried a new technique. He filled a 5 gallon bucket w/ water up to about 3 or 4 inches from the top. Placed a plank for a ramp to the top of the bucket. Covered the surface of the water with sunflower seeds, so that it looked like a large bucket of sunflower seeds had been left for the chipmunks to devour.

Like most rodents, chipmunks can swim surprisingly well.



















But not forever.

15 went down in the first two days. The remaining strawberries tasted quite delicious.

- Michael

I've used this also with squirrels and mice.
can't recommend it enough!