Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Bait for trapping racoon

I have the same trap, I wired the back door closed, permanently, I have caught hundreds of coons with it , they are great traps and well worth the money, mine also has a ten inch cement block setting on top of it so they can not roll it over, the only damage to it is the wire that I have shot off killing the damn things, they catch cats as well as skunks so placement is important, marshmallows seem to limit the skunk catches.

A racoon caught trying to walk through a 220 conibear is dead in a minute or so,. I have seen box traps get round (shaped) after having a coon in it for a length of time.

We have caught 10 coon out of the yard so far with a live trap and the best bait so far has been a soup can with nothing in it. No kidding. They can't stand not knowing what it is. Next is SMALL marshmallows

I use a 220 Conibear in a 5 gallon bucket set with dry dog food as bait. (I tried Live traps and the coons destroyed 2 different makes!)
Works like a champ. Dead coon almost every morning in the fall. It's nothing for me to get a couple 35-40 pounders every year.
This is next to my house in the far suburbs of Chicago!

I have a squirrel problem this year and have been trapping them in a cheap Harbor Freight live trap. I relocated 31 (so far) of them since I started trapping them in early May. I use a saltine cracker with a good dollop of peanut butter. I usually spring the trap at sundown, but sometimes I forget. When I do forget and leave them set overnight I catch raccoons. I've caught 5 or so this year and the cheap HF trap holds them. Peanut butter gets them every time for me, even though I don't want them.

Caught 20 coons, 14 skunks and a feral cat this month with DP cuff traps. I just use fish food (pellets) because that’s what I have on hand. I think we’ve got them thinned out, haven’t caught any for a couple of days now.

These DP traps are the schizzle compared to the have a hearts or ordinary leg holds. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to get on top of the coon population around the farm.

Cheap cat 🥘 food

Don’t buy a haveaheart trap. I would suggest if wanting a live animal trap… Wickenkamp. Made in Martinsburg, IA and you will not be disappointed. The coons will not tear them up. 2-3 adult men can stand on the trap and move it around and it won’t go off…lightly touch pan and boom the door is down. Head shots of n the trap are easy. The guy who makes them essentially started the live trap theme with his dad 50 years ago. Leon Wickenkamp. Best trap you ever should have bought.

Liver sausage and a swift, humane end.

Fruit cups to avoid feral and house cats.

I've found them especially fond of M&M's, but I think near anything edible should work.

Hang a plastic spoon or tin foil from the top of the trap. (Reusable) Then a few squirts of fish oil in and around the trap.

Just got through setting my dog-proof traps. I used dry cat food this time. Have used marshmellows, added jelly to them. used canned cat food, and sardines. I've also put a few drops of vanilla on the bait, and that works good too.

Most anything will catch a coon, but will also catch a possum and the occasional skunk. Since they all destroy turkey nests, and will eat my chickens, I'm just glad to get rid of them.

I had my son pull the traps last week when I was too sick to run them, and now that I'm over that crap, I'm ready to go back to catching something. Since Thanksgiving, I've caught about 6 or 7 coons, and a few possums.

I tried sardines and peanut butter, but found they simply cannot resist dog food kibbles. Make a trail leading up to the trap and hang a handful in a window screen bag just behind the treadle. Traps baited this way always had a coon inside in the morning.

The very first coon I caught was in a small leg hold trap that had the pan wrapped in tinfoil and set under a bridge in shallow water.
I was too young to have a gun so I tried to kill the coon by dropping a rock on it from the bridge above. I had wired the trap to a log and it gave the coon quite a range of motion, it scared me as it would lunge at me if I got too close. After several failed attempts with rocks, I decided to walk to my cousins about a mile away and borrow a gun to finish the job. I remember it like it was yesterday.

for a box trap I used lucky charms
worked great they get greedy eating all that sugar and forget about where they are placing their feet
spread a little on the outside to tease them and a handful inside