Raccoon War

[two_bit_score]

Criminal coons can be retrained. I have a raccoon "rehabilitation center" and the process is as follows; arrest and cuff the perp with a Dukes dog proof trap, to be sure they don't get any unwanted diseases, they are vaccinated with a 22 long rifle' then transported to a holding area (my swamp by the woods) they are checked daily by coyotes,crows,and buzzards. I have no repeat offenders. I have found this to be the most effective method to release them back into the wild.
Billy

:thumbsup:

 

[prof fate]

fly bait is GREAT stuff. They drink it, go about 15 feet and drop dead.

KIlled 4 here in the past month (and shot a ground hog), plus 2 more run over on the road.

fly bait is a poison you get a tractor supply, mix in some coca cola. DO NOT get this on your skin. ANYthing that drinks it (cat, dog, etc) will DIE. So it has it's safety issues, but its the most effective thing I've ever seen.

 

[prof fate]

Possums are ugly and trasnsmit diseases to horses, so they are 'banned' from our farm.
I caught one sleeping in the chicken coop and didn't have a gun handy, but did have a pitch fork and shovel. Poked the living **** out of him -he's dead, I KNOW it. So I pull him out with the fork, go to get the shovel to pick up and dispose and damned, the dead thing woke up and bared it's teach at me. Now that he wasn't under the roost I could get a good hard whack with a shovel I did - 4 times.

Yeah, they play possum all right!

All of my life I had heard about possums, but just recently they started moving into southern Maine. This year I started seeing them laying in or on the side of the road. I always have to wonder; are they dead, or are they just "playing possum"?

 

[CajunRider]

Right around the time I left FLA, there where three gator attacks on people. One was on a canal out in the "Everglades." The first report from the people involved said they were cleaning weeds from the prop. I called Bovine Scat. I had spent many a day patrolling that canal from start to finish, it goes from western Broward county down to Dade county, that there is very little weed in that canal. Eventually, the bozo that was bit by a gator admitted he was trying to wrestle with the gator, which I took to mean he was hand feeding. MORON.

Once had a little chat with a mother and her 5ish year old daughter. They were standing right next to the water edge looking at a large gator. The gator was looking right back at them. That gator was expecting to be fed because that is what people would do even though it is against the law, and for very good reasons. I am guessing that the the gator was a good 8-10 feet long based on its head size and when I told mom how large the gator was, how fast it could move, and her daughter was right size for a gator meal, mom backed both of them away from the water edge.

The other gator attack was on a man who said he slipped off the sea wall and there just happened to be gators where he fell. Turned out he had been feeding the gators and fell off the wall which explains why the gators were down below. He said he escaped by pulling a Marlin Perkins and poking a gator in they eye.

The third attack killed a boy on a river. Just by happenstance we went kayaking down that river shortly after the boy was killed. As we where putting in our kayaks, a trapper was loading up his boat to get the gator. We eventually saw the gator and he was maybe 8 feet long but not real wide. Got a fuzzy photo of that gator. The report said the family had stopped at a sand bar for lunch and the gator killed the kid....

Now, this was on a river. River is a big word and eventually this river does live up to the name river but where the boy was killed the river was a little itty, bitty creek. My kayak is 17 feet long and where the boy was killed the "river" was no wider than my kayak is long. The sand bar was also not very big maybe 10 feet by 20 feet. The water at this point of the river was crystal clear and the sand bank was about 2-3 feet below the grade of the land. We found it hard to understand how the gator could not be seen since we easily saw him where the attack took place. I don't know how one could miss seeing the gator which makes one wonder if the gator was being fed when it killed the boy.

Gators can be territorial, especially during nesting season. My FIL was once in a canoe in a eastern NC. He was on a river or lake and noticed a small water way which he followed. The water way opened up into a large pond/lake which was likely loaded with fish. The problem was the master of that lake was a monster gator sun bathing on the bank. My FIL said the hair went up on the back of his neck and he got the heck out of there as fast as he could go. That gator scared the hoo hoo out of him. :shocked: My FIL was a big man, 6'2 or 6'4", was an avid outdoors man, and part of the first group of Green Berets. Not a man easily scared but that monster gator was something else.

Later,
Dan

True story: My coworker, a chemist who loves to fish, fishes every afternoon from work. BTW, his dress code for fishing is super casual, as in tattered jeans and t-shirt. On a particular afternoon sometime in the summer of 2001, he was fishing in the pond behind the Louisiana visitor center off I-10 East between Louisiana & Texas. Following are his words as I remember, note that Betsy is a big female gator that lived in the pond and my friend named her.

"I saw Betsy in the water and I avoided fishing near her. I didn't want her to take my catch. She's bad about that. Then there was this couple in a fancy car pulling in. The lady opened the door and her itty bitty poodle ran out. I stopped fishing, walked over and told the lady: 'Y'all need to keep the dog away from the water....' I didn't get a chance to finish my warning. The husband came out and asked the lady:'What's going on?'. The lady said: 'Oh nothing. Some bum just tried to talk to me.' I was still standing right there. She practically said that to my face. I decided to back off and went back to my fishing. Well, the dog went to the bank, sniffed the water, and then there was a big splash. Betsy had her dinner and the lady was bawling. I felt bad for the dog but I did warn them."

 

[CajunRider]

Criminal coons can be retrained. I have a raccoon "rehabilitation center" and the process is as follows; arrest and cuff the perp with a Dukes dog proof trap, to be sure they don't get any unwanted diseases, they are vaccinated with a 22 long rifle' then transported to a holding area (my swamp by the woods) they are checked daily by coyotes,crows,and buzzards. I have no repeat offenders. I have found this to be the most effective method to release them back into the wild.
Billy

Zero recidivism.

 

[Jstpssng]

My father had a life long battle on woodchucks, all of the time that I was growing up his 16 gauge single was in the back window of his pickup ready to load and shoot. As he got older and the city limits moved, making the property off limits for shooting he started to trap them and kill them. As more time went on he started live trapping them and dumping them someplace else... making it someone else's problem. Now he's gone, and the last time I was visiting my mother she mentioned that she is seeing a woodchuck around. I told her to leave it alone, it isn't hurting anything.

 

[tjkubota93]

True story: My coworker, a chemist who loves to fish, fishes every afternoon from work. BTW, his dress code for fishing is super casual, as in tattered jeans and t-shirt. On a particular afternoon sometime in the summer of 2001, he was fishing in the pond behind the Louisiana visitor center off I-10 East between Louisiana & Texas. Following are his words as I remember, note that Betsy is a big female gator that lived in the pond and my friend named her.

"I saw Betsy in the water and I avoided fishing near her. I didn't want her to take my catch. She's bad about that. Then there was this couple in a fancy car pulling in. The lady opened the door and her itty bitty poodle ran out. I stopped fishing, walked over and told the lady: 'Y'all need to keep the dog away from the water....' I didn't get a chance to finish my warning. The husband came out and asked the lady:'What's going on?'. The lady said: 'Oh nothing. Some bum just tried to talk to me.' I was still standing right there. She practically said that to my face. I decided to back off and went back to my fishing. Well, the dog went to the bank, sniffed the water, and then there was a big splash. Betsy had her dinner and the lady was bawling. I felt bad for the dog but I did warn them."

He is probably more educated than both of those idiots. If they were smart they could probably tell by talking to him.

 

[dmccarty]

...
"I saw Betsy in the water and I avoided fishing near her. I didn't want her to take my catch. She's bad about that. Then there was this couple in a fancy car pulling in. The lady opened the door and her itty bitty poodle ran out. I stopped fishing, walked over and told the lady: 'Y'all need to keep the dog away from the water....' I didn't get a chance to finish my warning. The husband came out and asked the lady:'What's going on?'. The lady said: 'Oh nothing. Some bum just tried to talk to me.' I was still standing right there. She practically said that to my face. I decided to back off and went back to my fishing. Well, the dog went to the bank, sniffed the water, and then there was a big splash. Betsy had her dinner and the lady was bawling. I felt bad for the dog but I did warn them."

Too funny. I learned a long time ago that one can not judge a book, or a person, based on the cover.

Just ran across this story somehow, Crocodile eats beloved terrier that spent a decade taunting it

A crocodile in Australia has eaten a small dog that had taunted it for a decade and was famous for chasing the eleven-foot reptile into the water.

To the horror of guests at a riverside lodge who had gathered to watch the spectacle, the saltwater crocodile did not scurry towards the water as the dog ran at its head.

Instead, as the dogç—´ owner, Kai Hansen, said, the crocodile "did what crocs do and clenched the dog in its teeth before returning to the water.

Mr Hansen said he was 途eally sad and had not watched the graphic footage of the incident, which was captured by onlookers.

But he said he did not blame the 220-pound crocodile for attacking his 15-pound dog.

çš„t was something that had a high probability of happening sometime, Mr Hansen told ABC News.

"She's not doing something wrong, she's just doing what crocs do. In the early days she actually had a go at me a couple of times. These days I just throw food out from up the top and no-one is allowed to walk down there."

Mr Hansen runs the Goat Island Lodge, a ramshackle lodge on the crocodile-infested Adelaide River, south of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Guests captured footage of the dog being eaten and could be heard gasping and yelling expletives.

A crocodile expert, Adam Britton, said the creature should not be destroyed for eating the dog and may not necessarily attack humans. He said crocodiles which attacked people effectively learnt how to target æ–—arge prey items?

"The dog got right up close to the crocodile's head," Mr Britton told ABC News.

"That basically triggers a reflex reaction, and a crocodile, if you get that close to its head, it doesn't even think about it it will just strike. If a crocodile attacks a person it's a little bit different because that can potentially lead to it getting [another] large prey item, to put it bluntly."

Mr Britton said the incident was a reminder to people to stay away from crocodile habitats, particularly if small dogs were present.

I was working one evening at a boat landing/marina in the FLA Everglades/Waster Management District. Lots of people move through this place and come out to ride tourist boats into the Everglades. There was a mother standing with a 4-5? year old daughter next to the water looking at a large gator. I can't remember the exact multiplier, but if you see the gator head and multiply but something like 2.5 or 3, that will give you a good guestimate of the size of the gator. The gator was 8-9 feet long and looked to be pretty wide. The gator was 3-6 feet from shore, which gradually went into the water....

Told the mother how fast gators can run on land, that they can lunge very quickly a good distance, and that I would move back from the water's edge if that was my kid... The light bulb went on in mom's head and she moved her kid out of the way. I know darn well that gator was waiting to be fed but all it would take is a quick lunge and that kid would have been under water before the mom screamed.

I was in the same place, might have been the same night, when I saw a gator snap at a fish. It wounded the fish, which floated to the surface, and then started swimming in circles. The gator very slowly swam to the fish and got it's dinner. Now, what was scary to watch, is all of the other gators suddenly appear out of the saw grass and move towards the fish. I think they could feel the fish's distressed swimming in the water because they were making a bee line to it. During the day you would be lucky to see a gator. At night, if you beamed a flashlight in the same area you would see dozens and dozens of sets of gator eyes.

Same place, but just down the shore a bit there was a floating dock that was only 6-12 inches above water. Two idiots were fishing on that dock at night and feeding a big gator. I did not see them actually toss something to the gator, I was too far way, but I heard and saw the big, opened, white mouth of the gator and heard it snap shut. The mouth, and thus the head, was well above water for me to see it as far away as I was. Not sure what caught my attention, the sound of the gator lunging out of the water or the man screams/gaps/cusses from the two idiots. The gator could easily have taken either one of them... Idiots.

Later,
Dan

 

[PILOON]

Coons and I are at war.
They yanked the facia off of my house and nested in my roof causing leakage as they nested in the displaced insulation.
I set (illegal leg traps and finished them off by .22 cal)
The young'uns were caught and learned they could not swim when in a sunken cage.

I deplore the urban authorities that live trap and release in the rural areas just to satisfy the tree huggers.
They have introduced skunks, black squirrels, and coons to areas that never had any.
All to satisfy tree huggers that want the problem gone without harming god's little creatures.
If they love the creatures so much then keep them in your home, not mine!

 

[groundcover]

allstate raccoon in attic commercial On YouTube,can’t get link to work but pretty clever.