Need help catching a raccoon

[John Shuk]

I love how he threw the change at it.

Another not quite so useful video on raccoons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WmIo1eRaaM

[Myk Rian]

We had a Coon problem last year. Set the trap with an apple in it.
Got a big ole' Possum instead.
Took him for a few mile road trip.

Reset the trap and waited. Got him!!!!
Took him for the same road trip.
Big bastard crapped all over the place on the way to his freedom.

[paul cottingham]

It's funny. We lived on a small farm for thirty or so years, and my we had a cat who probably weighed around 8 pounds or so. She lived outside, and every now and then we would hear a hellacious racket coming from the lawn. None of us wanted to look in the am, cause we were sure the lawn would be covered with bits of cat. Instead there would be raccoon fur everywhere, and one very smug looking cat on the porch. This went on for a long time.
Finally, the raccoons and the cat came to some sort of peace, they would come and steal some of her food at night, but leave any that was too close to where she slept. That old cat lived for 22 years.

[David G Baker]

I haven't read all of the posts but have been very successful at catching critters (over 300) alive and transported them to state forest land. I use black sunflower seeds for every critter and they work very well. For raccoons I close the trap in the early morning and open it in the evening, this way I don't catch critters that I don't want. The trap needs to be anchored so that the raccoon can not reach anything outside of the trap or it may hurt its self or break the trap. I use a metal can the size of a tuna or cat food can and use rare earth magnets to hold the can in place in an area where the raccoon can't reach it from out side of the trap. I use the large trap for raccoons and ground hogs and two different smaller sizes for small critters. When I transport them I put the trap in a cardboard box to keep the critters from messing up my trunk. For skunks I use the bed of my pick-up for transport. Some states do not allow transporting live wild critters so check your local laws or be very secretive about what you are doing. Some require you to kill the critters and do not allow live transports.

[David H. Mitchell]

The thing they can't resist is Tuna, just open a can and put inside of trap.


Dave

[Keith Outten]

Geez I despise ground hogs.
I transplant them to the woods with a shovel after I put them to sleep with a rifle.
We have racoons around here as well but they don't seem to be interested in coming close to the house or the trash cans.
.

[Belinda Barfield]

Powdered sugar coated donuts. . . seriously. Cats won't touch them. Our business neighbor (up until last week) was a bread depot. They also handled lots of snack cakes/foods. They threw the goodies past their expiration date in a dumpster at the end of the building. I can't tell you how many times I've watched a raccoon go into the dumpster and come out with a bag of powdered sugar donuts in his mouth.

[Tom Green]

I wouldn't worry about catching the cats, they learn fast. I caught 2 of my cats last summer, just one time each. I also caught four racoons and two possums, all on the back patio.

[Pat Barry]

Live and let live!

[Joe Pelonio]

I have never seen cats go after live fish, they hate water.

[Larry Frank]

I served my raccoon a small lump of lead from an air rifle. He and his friends have not been back for seconds. I have absolutely no use for them as they carry disease and are very dangerous. They are also pretty smart and fast but not quite as fast as as the small lump of lead.

[David Keller NC]

Scott - If you do manage to trap the racoon, be extremely cautious around it. Racoons in the VA/NC region have a very high positivity rate for Rabies. This is a disease that may take months to actually kill the animal, and if you're exposed to saliva (or far worse, a bite), you're in for a very expensive course of Rabies IgG and Vaccine. Depending on your state's public health program, you're looking at about $12k - $15k for the treatment, and it's dang near mandatory - Rabies in humans is 99.99% fatal, and once you actually develop the symptoms, there's little that can be done.

[Jason Roehl]

Raccoons are responsible for roughly 40% of human rabies cases. They're not "cute little critters". They're nasty, mean pests. I'm almost of the mindset that, after shooting the vermin, it should be lawful to shoot the idiotic neighbors who feed them.

Not long after I moved to my current location, I dispensed with 5 of the beasts (a mama and 4 young--mama was 25-30 pounds). Thankfully, that was BEFORE talking to a local DNR officer at a gun safety class for my boys. Apparently, I was a little outside the law...I'm outside city limits, but there's a season for raccoons, and I'm in a neighborhood. I used a .22 rifle loaded with subsonic rounds (no powder, only the primer drives the bullet). Quieter than my BB/pellet guns.

[Jim Koepke]

They make lousy pets, but nice hats.

jtk

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks for all the tips. I'll try some of the food items in the next few days. I think a live fish, sardines, powdered doughnut, honeybun, sunflower seed, apple treat might just do the trick

I don't have an air rifle, and if I were to discharge anything I might have here, I'd end up in jail, which I'd like to avoid

I don't want to kill it, I just want it gone from here. Mainly because of what I had read about the disease they carry, which several have mentioned here too. They apparently have a really really really nasty ability to carry some really bad diseases and pass them to pets and humans.

Releasing the squirrel I caught really made me worry about the logistics of releasing a raccoon. The fact that I have to reach down and open the door it'll be leaving through doesn't make me too happy. Calling animal control will probably just get it killed once I catch it, so I'm trying to figure out an easy way to release it and stay safe, along with not exposing myself to anything it may "leave behind".

Maybe I can call PETA to release it