Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Great Texas Coon War!

if someone is gonna do hand-to-paw, one-on-one combat with a coon they better bring someone to run the video camera cause i wanna see this

Here's a live trap strory from just recently.

We've had a very rough chicken year. We generally, for 15 years or so, have let them range at will over a couple acres. We lose 1-2 birds a year; an acceptable tax to pay to the wildlife. They'd usually get some daffy bird that was foraging at dusk in the ferns at the edge of the woods... I kill about 1-2 raccoons or possums a year on average.

But this year, something changed, and something started grabbing them very boldly. As in, right up near the house in broad daylight. You'd find a pile of feathers, and I'd always grab a gun and my Lab and run out and try to get it... over the years I've gotten a few coons that way, they'd tree up and I'd spot them by their eyes and shoot them out of the tree. Good times. But this critter wasn't doing that.

Set out a live trap, Harbor Freight version of the Have-A-Heart, and didn't catch anything but a big grey squirrel. Still, it was worth a try so I left it out and checked it every day.

So a couple weeks ago I go out there (into my woods) to check it and from a distance I can see it was sprung shut. Whoopee! Like a kid at Christmas I approach. As I get closer, I'm like, what the heck?! No critter! Closer still and I begin to pick out color in the dim woodsy light... red. Uh oh.

Get there and it's appalling. There's blood EVERYWHERE. It's all over the inside of the mesh, all over the trip panel... It's unbelievable. My first though was that something had chewed it's leg off but soon I realized that was a Very Dumb Thought. Finally I realized that I'd caught something, and something ELSE had somehow reached through the mesh and taken out the poor trapped critter in very small pieces!.

Brought the live trap in.

Oh- we figured out our predator. Busted him one late afternoon in plain sight in our back "yard" (field) trying to get our little chicks, which we'd bought in July (which is not how you normally do it) to get our flock back up to a dozen or so hens. They were in a "chicken tractor" so he couldn't get them. I didn't shoot it.

It was hard to capture the gore inside that trap in a photo; if you zoom in you might be able to see it on the mesh:

Major,
Ye got to pick yer shots son.
So far no short has overpenetrated.
If you line it up just right you can open the door and the little buggers will dance right out without spilling a drop on the cage.
They will also cut a buck and wing on the ground for a bit.

Cornpone

You's guys is luck, they are 300-400 lbs around here, no funny striped tails, tend to be black or brown all over.

Savage 72 their 1970's remake of the Stevens Favorite, I re-chambered it to .22 WMR. They called it the Crackshot CRACKSHOT Mfg. 1972-89.

In the immortal words of Jerry Clower; "Somebody shoot up here amongst us, one of us has got to have some relief!"

Ed

Gen. Cornpone,

See! They done put on disguises! Crafty Bastids! I bet they wear snow camo up north, whatcha think?

Maj. Malfunction

Golden Malirin fly bait in a bird feeder BOLTED DOWN in the center of a picnic table. Takes care of the coons & the small pets can't get to it.



Scott

What was your varmint Jeff?

Got that right, I might even pay admission for a long version!

Major we may have to go to long rifle cartridges. I'll notify the arsenal.

I have a friend up near prescott that is raising "range" chickens.
This means they are in pens that are moved dailey in an irrigated field. Wire mesh sides. They have been having trouble with coons, that basically live in some big cottonwoods near the field. The coons will come in and grab part of a chicken through the mesh and just chew off a wing/ leg/ whatever.
It is a problem that needs to be fixed. Keep meaning to ask him about helping with the solution.

Har, har, har. Yea, there's a coo n in Washingtoon

I have already been forced to go to magnums, they knew the rang of the shorts & longs. Sniping is the only way anymore.


Your Obt Svt.
Gen. B. Neu Sance

i suggest general, that you should be using that great cartridge the 7mm/08. Assuming it would penetrate enough, that is.

Bobcat

Stand ready Sir,
A call for the artilery may come your way.

Double shot the guns and give them hell Genl. B

Cornpone

General, SIR! Permission requested to break out the .45Gov't Model 1895, SIR! I already know that ANY pizzant 7mm anything will just bounce offen them critters!

Maj. Malfunction

I wish i had 57 fat squirrels cleaned and in the freezer.

Perhaps I could beg the use of the fine sharpshooter that recently ended the career of Union Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick Sir. If you could spare him that is.

Ever Your Obt Svnt.
Gen. Neu Sance