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Keep Raccoons Away from Your Crops
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Use a Have a Heart trap with tuna fish for bait. Since it’s illegal to trap and relocate, you can easily shoot them once they have been caged. No worries that they’ll be returning unless you have really poor aim.
After coming home one evening to find a raccoon in the process of killing my chickens, I don't find them to be cute at all. I tried lights but they still came around. So I moved on to other measures. I find that the most sure for way to get rid of them is to trap and kill. I live in the country so I dispose of them by leaving them for the buzzards.
this part of the article is wrong:
Plant enough corn for man and beast alike.
it doesn't matter how much you plant, they don't even eat much of it it they just enjoy stepping it into the mud and they can wreck a whole field of it in no time. planting more will not help.
I agree, it does not matter how much you grow they will destroy it. I planted 3000 plants last year and didn’t get one ear of corn. I used live traps and relocated to no avail. I will trap and kill this year. I had to pay last year to get rid of most of critters and totally makes you not want to grow your own food! Not a fan of raccoons or groundhogs!
I agree
they are cute and all and i have one myself that eats my piles i put out for my rabbits. he don't bother me so i don't bother him. but they carry racoon round worm in their feces. it can be deadly and the eggs get in you not just by eating them by your pet aka dog sniffing the feces it sniffs in the eggs. read this. it can be very deadly. google racoon roundworm
Before I take my trash outside.
I sprinkle a 1/8 cup of baking soda with a little splash of white vinegar, on top of.my trash.
Seal up the bag and toss in my outside bin.
No more raccoons in my outside trash.
* I do not know of any animal that can tolerate vinegar with or w/o baking soda.
Relocating animals is a very bad habit, especially if they are not being destructive, are not dangerous, or are not creating a health hazard. When you relocate you run the risk of 1) leaving baby animals without a mother, 2) causing the mother to find it's way home via a street or other dangerous path, 3) diminishing the gene pool. If you find that an animal has invaded your home, chances are that it wants/needs a safe place to make a nest. We have been very successful in creating habitats for our neighborhood critters, to where our house is not] longer appealing. We also use locking handle trash receptacles, and clean the recyclables before putting them out, so as to not attract critters in places we don't want them. Good habits = living in harmony with nature.
I have found a Have-A-Heart trap to be the most effective. I caught all the raccoons in my neighborhood last summer, 5 total. Relocated them about 5 miles away in a rural area. On second-guess it would have been better to release them across the river from my county.
Almost anything can be used for bait. Raccoons have an especial appetite for Marshmallows. In fact that is printed on the box which contained the trap. I can verify that the raccoons in my area loved marshmallows.
Some have complained that the Have-A -Heart does not work. The bait was gone but the trap was not sprung. Reason for that is probably the animal was too light to spring the trap. If you are careful the trap can be set to a more sensitive setting. Also if that doesn't work a weight can be taped to the tripping platform. Use some any kind of metal such as bolts, nuts or whatever you have.
Hope you don't live in Ohio. It is illegal to relocate raccoons to anywhere other than your property. Which kind of defeats the purpose. The reason is that raccoons can carry rabies and that would spread of the disease through relocation. As a person who lives in a wooded area I'd like to thank those who bring us the gifts of more raccoons, cats, dogs etc.