Raccoons

 
Think of the game bird population you are helping by trapping them coons. Skin a few and get them tanned and sell them.

I’m still killing and skinning coyotes and finishing coyotes this year. Probably won’t get but a $15-$20 average at most on a finished coyote but keeps me busy through the winter, is the only hobby that pays back that I have, and the mule deer can use every break they can get because fwp isn’t giving them it so I figured I’d do what I can for them. I’ll tan a few and sell them as well
 
I drove ~80 miles this morning. I counter 24 raccoons, 3 opossum, and 2 skunks dead along the road.

That many dead on the highway says just how many are in the area. They gotta be borderline thick enough for a distemper outbreak.
 
Omfg ❤️ everyone needs to watch this.
Raccoons might be better than cats.
 
What do you guys do with them when nobody will even buy them? I usually wouldn’t trap them with fur buyers not even interested, but we are absolutely overrun with them. I’m not solely blaming them for our turkey population plummeting, but they don’t help.

My son is 9 and enjoys trapping like I did as a kid, so I’m gonna try to thin them out. I just hate killing critters that there is no purpose for. I did get an offer of $1 for sny XXL or bigger raccoon skulls. Burn $10 in propane to get $1. Sounds s out as profitable as most my business ventures.


I’ve never seen raccoons like this. When I was in HS I ran a trap line before school of about 20 traps. I’d catch 6-8 every night. Back then I’d get $5-$15 for them so I was doing pretty good. I bet if we ran 10 traps now we’d catch 9-10 a night for a solid month.


My wife wanted a new sheet/comforter set for our bed. I told her I could skin all the coons out, tan them and sew them together.


That idea got shot down pretty quickly. She’s no mountain woman.🤣


So other than skinning them and keeping them in a freezer for eternity in hopes future prices go up, or throwing them in a ditch what do you guys do with them?
Not sure your regulations on baiting but I would imagine they would make good coyote bait.
 
As a kid I use to get confused when my friends dad would keep the skins. My dad and I would go up in the barn couple times a week and have a firefight with those little buggers. Dad would sneak up stairs then yell FLIP ON THE LIGHT POWPOWPOWPOWPOW GOT YOU SUM B#$*H and I would run as fast as I could to the back of the barn as they came running out the back door and light em up. We had a landscaping tree farm so we would just dump the bodies in the holes and dump dirt on them and call it a day.

henry lever action .22 and the 22mag revolver would wreck shop.
 
Not sure your regulations on baiting but I would imagine they would make good coyote bait.
Coyotes are considered a varmint here. I don’t think there is any way illegal of taking them. You’re not supposed to shoot them from a moving vehicle or airplane but I see both done on a regular basis. 🤣

If I’m gonna derail another thread may as well be my own. As a kid my closest neighbor was a retired crop duster. He helped us on the farm and was 9/10 crazy so him and I got along well. Him and his buddy used to hunt coyotes from his Cub. One day he told his buddy to fly the plane so he could shoot, well said buddy got so distracted following the coyote he crashed the plane. How both them old timers walked away I’ll never know. The same neighbor crashed my dads last plane trying to show off for a gal he was taking for a ride. She seemed real impressed when my dad and I got there to undo their seatbelts while they hung upside down. The guy crashed 8 planes and 2 helicopters and died of old age. Quite the guy.
 
Coyotes are considered a varmint here. I don’t think there is any way illegal of taking them. You’re not supposed to shoot them from a moving vehicle or airplane but I see both done on a regular basis. 🤣

If I’m gonna derail another thread may as well be my own. As a kid my closest neighbor was a retired crop duster. He helped us on the farm and was 9/10 crazy so him and I got along well. Him and his buddy used to hunt coyotes from his Cub. One day he told his buddy to fly the plane so he could shoot, well said buddy got so distracted following the coyote he crashed the plane. How both them old timers walked away I’ll never know. The same neighbor crashed my dads last plane trying to show off for a gal he was taking for a ride. She seemed real impressed when my dad and I got there to undo their seatbelts while they hung upside down. The guy crashed 8 planes and 2 helicopters and died of old age. Quite the guy.
Dude sounds awesome
 
I miss the old guy. He was absolutely up for anything even when he was getting real old.
Reminds me of my grandpa and his best friend JR. Never knew his real name but grandpa always called him Jr, he was a fighter pilot. Actually died via a heart attack while flying. I had never seen grandpa so sad, but also pretty happy about the way he went out doing what he loved to do.

That crazy old dude would fly over grandpas farm couple times a week doing acrobatics an yell out the window 50 feet off the Deck "HELLO BOB".

I learned how to weld from that guy. Had an insane shop full of antique farm equipment that he was "restoring", I think he just didnt want to be around his wife.
 
The funniest story I have about my neighbor was his brother Ole. This is before cell phones were widespread or we had much service where we live, Ole comes tearing into the farm in a panic. Asks dad if he has an extra deer tag. Dad says he does. Ole doesn’t explain to us what happened so we’re assuming he’s spotted a giant buck or something. We follow him around the section and pull into the field. He then tells us he shot a buck in a grass waterway. He explains he shot it, it dropped, he turned to walk back to his truck and seen the same buck standing in the same spot so he shot it and it went down again. We’re still perplexed, we know he has a deer tag. He walked us down there and there lays 2 identical 4x4 bucks 5 feet apart. The odds of that weren’t good, even back then when we had a ton of deer.
 
After crashing a plane I think most people would give up flying... That's persistence!

Everyone needs a friend like that, doesn't matter how crazy your idea is, he's in!

As for the coons, it's unfortunate that prices are so low, but I would skin them and put them in the freezer. You can fit quite a few pelts in the freezer! Or just toss them. Like any population, they need to be kept in check. I'm running a beaver line right now and they're hardly worth anything either. I can get $16/piece for the whole beaver which isn't bad, but still isn't great.
 
My great grandmother used to make tamales out of em…very good
I made chorizo w em….no body at the firehouse had a clue what it was, made into chorizo/egg breakfast tacos!!!!!
 
KmDbu2C.png


They make pretty good "props" for photos.

ya!

GWB
 

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