Bubbadillo,

Cute little guy in the corn patch! I came across one of his relatives while harvesting corn earlier this summer.

I actually BEAT the raccoons to the corn this year, for the first time in quite a few years. Some years they've gotten it all, some years they've only gotten part of it, but this is the first year I harvested ripe corn before they got to it at all. Of course, about 25% of it wasn't ripe "yet" and they got that after we've harvested all the ripe stuff, but I still put over 100 ears in the freezer even after we'd eaten it night after night.

I've never tasted raccoon....do you think it would taste like chicken? (Well, raccoons will kill and eat chicks, so it would be poetic justice if they tasted like chicken!)

I DO have a recipe for possum from the wonderful southern "Whistlestop Cafe' Cookbook" (a companion cookbook to the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistestop Cafe"). I bet the recipe would work as well for raccoon as for possum. If you want the recipe, let me know!

Do the raccoons always get your corn? I surely do have to fight them for mine, and you and I are only a few miles from one another, so I suspect the coons plague you as much as they do us.

Dawn

The Racoons didn't bother the first planting this spring. The garden is fenced and close to the house but that didn't stop them this time. Princess, the garden cat, helps with rats mice and large grasshoppers but thr Racoons were bigger than she was.
This is the first year for this garden so it still has room for improvement. I need LOTS more organic material. The soil is sandy loam and has the usual problems with wilts and foliar diseases. It will take me a few seasons to build up a really healthy soil.

Princess The Garden Cat.

Princess is a beautiful cat!

My dogs will chase off raccoons in the late afternoon IF the coons are so bold as to come up to the house/garden area during daylight hours, but all my dogs are securely locked up by twilight because of the large number of large predators here along the Red River bottomlands.

Raccoons have managed to climb every fence I've ever had, even this year's new 7' tall deer fence, which has kept the deer out (finally!). To keep the coons out, I think we will have to add 2' more of fencing and leave it loose so it "flops" outward as they try to scale it. And, I'll still have to remove the two gates and the cedar arbor that serves as an "entry" to the veggie garden, because the coons can climb the arbor.

I've had about 10 deer a day in the yard this weekend (not all at once, but up to 5 at once) but they haven't managed to get into the veggie garden, so the new fence continues to work. Some people told me that I'd need 8' or 9' of fencing to keep out the largest deer, but so far, 7' works.

I used to think raccoons were "cute", but after living here for 10 years, I now think they are a cute nuisance and I know they are viciously mean.

And, keep working on the soil and it will get better. I have mostly clay, and only one narrow band of almost pure sand/silt, and have improved the heck out of them for 10 years. In the beginning, I didn't think I'd ever get it into the good shape I wanted, but I think it is about where I want it now.....although the improving, of course, goes on forever.

I don't think we'll ever win the "war" with the raccoons. Our raccoons are rather bold, often looking in the french patio door, knocking at the windows, or attempting to make entry through the dog door (it is duct-taped shut for that very reason, which makes it pretty ineffective as a dog door).

A friend of ours who lives fairly close to McGeehee's trapped (and then shot) 18 raccoons a couple of years ago. I think it was 2006--the year the two airplanes crashed at McGeehee's exactly one month apart. Even after he disposed of those 18 raccoons, the remaining ones STILL got every single bit of his corn.

Another neighbor, who lives between us and the Red River (and, consequently takes a worse "hit" in his veggie garden from the deer and raccoons and other critters) has tried just about every raccoon remedy known to mankind, and his only success has been to use electric fence very, very close to the corn. You have to have at least 2 low strands--about 4" and 12" above the ground to keep the racoons out, and you have to have several higher strands to keep the deer out (if deer are a problem for you).

You know, gardening here in Love County would be pretty easy if it wasn't for the soil, the general lack of rainfall and the creatures and critters, large and small, who want to eat everything in the garden!

Coon is a very dark meat. It's closest, I suppose to... woodchuck. I've eaten a good deal of raccoon in the past. But I don't fix it much any more: for two reasons:

1) It's not our favorite

2) Due to diseases which raccoon can carry, I wouldn't want to handle the meat without latex gloves. Once cooked, it would be safe.

I spoke with someone from a local animal shelter once, who told me that raccoon carry a virus which is both deadly and incurable for people. When they received a raccoon, they would wait until the person left and pass it directly to the gas chamber. Raccoon are also quite prone to rabies.

My native state of NJ banned steel traps back in the 80s and experienced the highest level of rabies in history. Since that time the raccoon population has been in a wild roller coaster pattern of hitting extreme highs, followed by rabies and mange epidemics, during which the critters nearly die out; only to start over again. Trapping really was for the good. But they wouldn't listen.

George

George,

Well, I probably wouldn't eat any type of game animal! Too much of a city girl to even appreciate venison, even though I have quite a lot of it in the freezer. (I guess I'll make chili or something with it this winter, but that doesn't mean I'll eat it myself. DH does like it though.) Actually, as a native Texan, beef is my favorite.....but I eat more chicken and fish nowadays than beef.

I THINK that the possum recipe in my cookbook is more of a joke than not, because in parentheses it says you can substitute pork for the possum.

We only trap wild animals in a live trap and release them, but where to release them is always the issue. Mostly we try to co-exist with them, but it is not always easy. We have some neighbors (not immediately "next door" in any direction) who shoot every wild animal that ventures onto their land, but most of us only shoot skunks that are out in the daytime (or who are trying to live under a porch or shed or something), venomous snakes or any kind of predator animal that is persistently trying to kill our animals. Mostly, though, we just try to "run off" the coons and armadillos and possums and bobcats and such.

For me, one of the hardest things of trying to peacefully coexist is the dogs that ignorant people "dump" in the country. The poor things, of course, have to learn to "hunt" for their meals, and they tend to go after chickens, goats, calves and foals. The only solution for most ranchers and farmers it so shoot them. (Everyone here who is inclined to adopt and take in these animals already has a half-dozen dogs or so, and you can only adopt and feed so many.) I understand why they have to shoot these now-feral dogs, but I don't like it. The ONLY animal shelter in our area charges $50 to take in an animal, and no one I know is going to pay that to dispose of a dumped animal.

I'm not surprised to hear that raccoons carry viral diseases that are harmful to humans....most wild animals do! I know that one of our local ranchers told me once that he tried to tolerate possums on his land because they are known to kill and eat venomous snakes, BUT he said they also carry some sort of virus that can live on the grasses in the pasture after they defecate, and that virus was a danger to either his horses or cows--I can't remember which. So, more times than not, he'll shoot the possums to keep them off land where his animals graze.

I love living surrounded by wildlife, and most of the time, the more the merrier. However, there are times that it is a real struggle to peacefully coexist.

Dawn