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Ya coon cuffs are money. No accidentally catches, I use them every week, they love marshmallows!
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I thought the raccoons would leave our geese alone, also. I've seen raccoons walk between the young emdens without issue, so I became complacentI live on a LARGE property now. Have Coyotes, and Raccoons at night. Chickens are in a 10 X30 enclosure. When they go to roost was also close up their house. Have a motion detecting camera out there. So far the Dogs when they set it off are moving and not even slowing down. Mated pair of coons that are HUGE and so far have left them alone. There is plenty of food out there so I am live and let live as long as they leave the chickens alone. first time either starts trying to get into the enclosure to eat the chickens they will be assume room temp. I feed the wild rabbits out there so they seem to keep the dogs fed without bothering my dogs or chickens. There is a pair of either Coopers or Sharp Shined hawks come by to take squirrels and rabbits. Other day a very large bird, either brown hawk or an Eagle was hunting. Crows that live there went full on attack mode. The crows harass the little hawks but this one they were openly attacking. Told Wife will have to give them a treat too as that bird was large enough to take one of our dogs if it got the chance.
there are several young ones who will sit with me on the porch and eat cat food
but no longer
I'lll get the live trap out today
sadly, one of the young ones who got used to eating breakfast here is out on the porch right now
I'm having more coffee before I have to deal with him
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my kids didn't bite the heads off baby geese
if one lives in close proximity to wild creatures, you must compromise between them and livestock and pets
the first time we lost a turkey to a raccoon (20 some years ago), my wife called Animal Control for Clark Co.
the officer drove out here, looked at the turkey and asked my wife if she had a firearm
when she said YES, he told her to just shoot the dang raccoon and got back in his truck
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Don't handle the raccoon carcasses either. I disposed of raccoons and other would-be-duck-predator carcasses by picking them up with a pitch fork and moving them to my buzzard feeding station. This was just a patch of ground on the far side of my yard visible from air but out of the normal duck foraging areas. (Ducks and other poultry are upset by large swooping birds and will normally hide out from them. They cant distinguish between buzzards and large aerial predators such as hawks.) Buzzards find carcasses by smell, so don't worry if it takes two or three days for them to find your offerring. For a big carcass, once some buzzards are on it others will see them swooping and also be attracted. Amazing critters, buzzards. The only thing I know that likes skunk carcasses.
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Depends on the size and number and attitude of geese and size of raccoons. However, any adult raccoon is not to be trusted around a gosling or duckling. Familiarity is another factor. Many predators are unfamiliar with ducks and geese, and leave them alone at first. Then they may try a duck or gosling and be put off by the waxy thick layer of feathers. but given further familiarity they are likely to learn to deal with feathers and become waterfowl predators.
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interesting point - over the years, the 2 geese who were killed by raccoons were not eaten, just killed by neck bites and left behind
I don't think the raccoons figgured out how to deal with those feathers
Most of my life we owned 400 acres just south of Salem. We had to deal with coons, possums, skunks, nutria, porcupines, turtles, ferrets, dogs, cats and a variety of birds. All were relatively harmless except the nutria, they loved my brothers ducklings. Oh yea, the cougars got a calf or two until Oregon State University sent a professional hunter to thin them out. I don't ever recall shooting a raccoon, but I do know they'll get the best of a large dog. Have-a heart traps can help.
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I didn't know nutria were this far north
we had them in Louisiana back in the '60s
they used to come into the yard after dog food
back then, one could shoot in your own yard with a .22
nothing but pecan groves behind us
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I was camping at the coast years ago 10 or 15 of them came into camp i made them apple vodka cocktails they where falling down fighting gd times I got a little intoxicated so I went to bed before I got violeted by them theY got thumbs
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I've never heard of osu doing wildlife control? I've helped teach there capture class there. How long ago was this?
coons.. my worst problem with coons was living in a subdivision in a small town ... they'd get into our trash if we werent diligent about locking the lids, but that was easy enough to deal with. they didnt actually become a problem until we adopted an outside formerly stray cat and they started bullying him and stealing all his food. got to the point i had to sit and guard him and his food every night or they'd literally come attack him and chase him away and then battle each other for the cat food.
in the middle of a neighborhood, i couldnt just open fire with powder guns, so i bought the ol' classic pump crossman air rifle and would post up inside the back deck doors waiting for them to come around after the cat ate. it did the trick for the first couple nights, but lo and behold, soon enough, id shoot the little pieces of sht from 15' away pumped up to max pressure and they'd barely flinch! and you know goddamn well those BBs were penetrating - id shoot once, twice, sometimes even three times and find not a single BB rolling around on the patio. they just did NOT fckng care!
i was about to order a .22 cal air rifle claiming something like 700fps... cant remember what it was but it was advertised as being specifically designed for urban pest control.. but then the divorce hit and i was gone. hope that ol' kitty was able to go to a new home... he was the sweetest, most friendly and affectionate cat ive ever known.
fast forward to a couplefew years later, i rented way the fap out in the country from this older gay couple that had some subdivided acreage with an extra house.. lots of coons, but again if i kept my trash can lids locked i didnt have any issues with them. id hear em fight from time to time in the evenings and sometimes see em out across the rear lawn picking low hanging blackberries off my vines. those blackberries tasted like sht anyway. we coexisted fine. but the old couple hated them and had live traps out all over their property 'round the clock. soon enough, a condition of my residency there was that when they'd catch one, theyd drag the trap over to the fence and push it thru for me to go shoot. just couldnt do it themselves.
the first time, id been out for a couple days and when i got home there was a note on my door .. i looked out across the property and spied the cage sitting on my side of the fence.. they'd caught it a day before, and it had been drizzling rain and the poor thing was soaking wet and looked half dead when i walked up to it.. then i gave the trap a nudge w my foot and it thrashed around hissing at me malevolently.. that kinda made it easier for me, so i carried it up to my upper lawn behind the barn where i had my "thinkin' chair" in the middle of the grass, set the cage down, sat in my chair, leaned the rifle against my leg, and me and that coon had a long chat in the drizzle and failing light.
i considered the situation we both found ourselves in. i recalled that once upon a time i, too, had been captured and caged for no crime for which any kind of "guilt" could be attributed. i, too, had been unfairly condemned once. scared, alone, taken from my people, hopeless. but i, too, had fight in me yet - and fight i did, and i was delivered from the hands of my persecutors. oughtn't i, in this position of judge, grant this poor creature clemency, just as the cosmos had done for me?
i poked the cage again at one point and he again reared back and bared fangs and hissed aggressively at me... but then seeing that no assault was forthcoming, he just kind of coughed and lied back down, put his little chin down on the cold wet grass poking thru the wire bottom of the cage and stared at up me. i realized that his apparent nastiness, his hostility, was probably not any kind of malice or indication of fierceness at all- nay, that was nothing more than a reflex response to being terrified. his "fight," his instinctual refusal to accept his surely inevitable fate.
i really couldnt rationalize killing this creature, and after probably an hour or more of sitting there in occasional one-way conversation in the slowly descending gloom, i decided i was not going to shoot it. to do so would be one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy id likely ever committed.
and im not really sure what happened in the following moments... did i think something like, but you arent the judge, you have not passed judgment nor condemned him, you are merely the executioner...? i dont know where my thoughts went.. i just know that i stood up, stuck the barrel of that rifle thru the wire of the trap and held the muzzle about 2 inches from his forehead. he hissed at first, but then stopped and leaned forward and sniffed at the muzzle....
BOOM.
and then the 30 seconds of convulsing characteristic to total CNS destruction, and then garbled out his last breath.
he was the one and only i ever bothered to bury. i dug a nice deep grave in the soft soil way up at the top of the upper lawn, under a walnut tree at the edge of the grass. i laid him in with the last of the light, said a word or two - i dont know what, i probably asked for forgiveness or wished him a swift journey back to the source or something. all the following trapped coons i shot i just popped the cage open, carried em by the tail down to the end of the road that meandered thru my property, and unceremoniously chucked em behind the berm. yotes and ravens and turkey vultures gotta eat too.
anyway, i never hesitated again after that. id wake up and brew my coffee and go out the front door to smoke on the veranda - to find another note written in perfect flowing cursive informing me that another awaited me across the way, thank you so much. id finish my coffee, get dressed, throw on my straw hat and grab the bolt rifle i kept by the front door. they didnt like the sound of gunfire, so i'd hike the animal back up to the upper lawn behind the barn, one-hand the rifle thru the cage so's to be able to stand as far back as possible to keep that ol' backsplatter down to a minimum, wait for the critter to calm back down and then come in for that invariable "sniff" of the muzzle...
BOOM.
anyway, thanks for reading.
in the middle of a neighborhood, i couldnt just open fire with powder guns, so i bought the ol' classic pump crossman air rifle and would post up inside the back deck doors waiting for them to come around after the cat ate. it did the trick for the first couple nights, but lo and behold, soon enough, id shoot the little pieces of sht from 15' away pumped up to max pressure and they'd barely flinch! and you know goddamn well those BBs were penetrating - id shoot once, twice, sometimes even three times and find not a single BB rolling around on the patio. they just did NOT fckng care!
i was about to order a .22 cal air rifle claiming something like 700fps... cant remember what it was but it was advertised as being specifically designed for urban pest control.. but then the divorce hit and i was gone. hope that ol' kitty was able to go to a new home... he was the sweetest, most friendly and affectionate cat ive ever known.
fast forward to a couplefew years later, i rented way the fap out in the country from this older gay couple that had some subdivided acreage with an extra house.. lots of coons, but again if i kept my trash can lids locked i didnt have any issues with them. id hear em fight from time to time in the evenings and sometimes see em out across the rear lawn picking low hanging blackberries off my vines. those blackberries tasted like sht anyway. we coexisted fine. but the old couple hated them and had live traps out all over their property 'round the clock. soon enough, a condition of my residency there was that when they'd catch one, theyd drag the trap over to the fence and push it thru for me to go shoot. just couldnt do it themselves.
the first time, id been out for a couple days and when i got home there was a note on my door .. i looked out across the property and spied the cage sitting on my side of the fence.. they'd caught it a day before, and it had been drizzling rain and the poor thing was soaking wet and looked half dead when i walked up to it.. then i gave the trap a nudge w my foot and it thrashed around hissing at me malevolently.. that kinda made it easier for me, so i carried it up to my upper lawn behind the barn where i had my "thinkin' chair" in the middle of the grass, set the cage down, sat in my chair, leaned the rifle against my leg, and me and that coon had a long chat in the drizzle and failing light.
i considered the situation we both found ourselves in. i recalled that once upon a time i, too, had been captured and caged for no crime for which any kind of "guilt" could be attributed. i, too, had been unfairly condemned once. scared, alone, taken from my people, hopeless. but i, too, had fight in me yet - and fight i did, and i was delivered from the hands of my persecutors. oughtn't i, in this position of judge, grant this poor creature clemency, just as the cosmos had done for me?
i poked the cage again at one point and he again reared back and bared fangs and hissed aggressively at me... but then seeing that no assault was forthcoming, he just kind of coughed and lied back down, put his little chin down on the cold wet grass poking thru the wire bottom of the cage and stared at up me. i realized that his apparent nastiness, his hostility, was probably not any kind of malice or indication of fierceness at all- nay, that was nothing more than a reflex response to being terrified. his "fight," his instinctual refusal to accept his surely inevitable fate.
i really couldnt rationalize killing this creature, and after probably an hour or more of sitting there in occasional one-way conversation in the slowly descending gloom, i decided i was not going to shoot it. to do so would be one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy id likely ever committed.
and im not really sure what happened in the following moments... did i think something like, but you arent the judge, you have not passed judgment nor condemned him, you are merely the executioner...? i dont know where my thoughts went.. i just know that i stood up, stuck the barrel of that rifle thru the wire of the trap and held the muzzle about 2 inches from his forehead. he hissed at first, but then stopped and leaned forward and sniffed at the muzzle....
BOOM.
and then the 30 seconds of convulsing characteristic to total CNS destruction, and then garbled out his last breath.
he was the one and only i ever bothered to bury. i dug a nice deep grave in the soft soil way up at the top of the upper lawn, under a walnut tree at the edge of the grass. i laid him in with the last of the light, said a word or two - i dont know what, i probably asked for forgiveness or wished him a swift journey back to the source or something. all the following trapped coons i shot i just popped the cage open, carried em by the tail down to the end of the road that meandered thru my property, and unceremoniously chucked em behind the berm. yotes and ravens and turkey vultures gotta eat too.
anyway, i never hesitated again after that. id wake up and brew my coffee and go out the front door to smoke on the veranda - to find another note written in perfect flowing cursive informing me that another awaited me across the way, thank you so much. id finish my coffee, get dressed, throw on my straw hat and grab the bolt rifle i kept by the front door. they didnt like the sound of gunfire, so i'd hike the animal back up to the upper lawn behind the barn, one-hand the rifle thru the cage so's to be able to stand as far back as possible to keep that ol' backsplatter down to a minimum, wait for the critter to calm back down and then come in for that invariable "sniff" of the muzzle...
BOOM.
anyway, thanks for reading.
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The Willamette valley is infested with the dam rats! 1 ditch in Stayton I've taken over 70 out in the last 2 weeks
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when I lived in Oregon back in the early '90s, the state sent hunters to our gun club (Tri County) to qualify for Agricultural Hunt permits
they do exist, but I wouldn't consider them Professional Hunters
to qualify, they had to put 10 rnds in a 12" target at 100 yrds with a scoped rifle
our rifle team could do 1.5" groups on the same target with iron sights
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Ya I remember odfw having a master hunter list they could send out to help with problem animals but that hasn't been around for a while
We see one or two when we go to Siltcoos lake every year. no one bothers them there I guess, so you can stand there 30' or so away and watch them. They look exactly like giants rats!
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I read that some idiot brought them to the NW in the '30s for commercial fur farming
a couple breading pair got out and now they are invasive rodents in Oregon and Washington
haven't seen any in our area yet
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