Coon up a tree

[mold maker]

I had never seen a coon except on the ground, and since I have no hunting interests, I didn't realize they climbed.
I was startled as much as Mrs Coon when I stepped outside. I'm sure she must have little ones close by. As soon as I stepped outside she scampered up the trunk of a 32" pin oak. She attempted to climb down, head first, but my curiosity made me move for a better look, and back up she went. When I left she was on the top limb, about the size of a garden hose, and looking for more height.
I knew possums climbed, but had just never thought about coons.

[white eagle]

just saw one yesterday myself in our back yard
my pooch chased it up a tree

[montana_charlie]

I had never seen a coon except on the ground, and since I have no hunting interests, I didn't realize they climbed.
They can do a universe of little 'tricks' that you have never thought of.

CM

[Mtnfolk75]

They are sneaky & destructive little SOB's for sure, they are the Gangbangers of the animal world ...... [smilie=s:

[GoodOlBoy]

to be honest I rarely seen one on the ground unless it was shot outa a tree, but then again I grew up coon huntin with my great grandad and his hounds.

GoodOlBoy

[nagantguy]

Did you know they can use door latches/knobs, put chickens on the other side and they can. And I had a pair of them one time would pry push and pull dig and squeeze under the garage door. Couldn't figure how they got in caught them at it one night. Dog food and potatoes was what the were after.

[farmerjim]

I will see the work of them in 3 weeks when my earliest crop of sweet corn is ready. I bait live traps with cheep canned tuna. They come out of the trap after a 22lr to the head. They then become Sunday dinner for my fathers old maid.

[kfarm]

Growing up running dogs all night treeing coons listening to his lies (stories). Those were some of the good times with my dad.

[docone31]

Those rascals can indeed climb!
Back when I had chickens, they figuired out how to get in the coop and then have lunch. They would turn a chicken over and eat its stomache contents.
Miserable to see. The chicken would still be alive when we go to it.
We gave up on the chickens, and the coons still came around.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

One of my favourite authors on shooting, fishing, animal behavior and South American revolutions, Thurlow Craig, tell of a pet raccoon a friend had in Argentina. I think it must have been a crab-eating raccoon, though sadly deprived of crabs, because the common raccoon isn't found there. It not only had the habit of washing food, but used to lather itself with shaving soap before washing itself. I don't know if it was just copying humanity, or understood the cleansing effect. Only it never learned to unscrew the cap, so it had to chew open a new tube every time.

[M-Tecs]

Interesting tidbits on coons.

http://www.animalfactsencyclopedia.com/Raccoon-facts.html

http://www.raccoonworld.com/raccoonmyths.html

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/raccoons-wash-food1.htm

[Mtnfolk75]

SWMBO had a couple as pets when she was younger, till the day he died her Dad had a really nasty scar on his right calf from the male named Rufus. When we got married they only had one left, it's name was Rascal. SWMBO told me they would feed them dry catfood & Sugar Smacks, the critters would even swim with them but would try and drown the family dog if he got in the water.

After SWMBO's two younger siblings got married and moved away, her Dad & I took Rascal up to a Cabin they owned on the Lower Kern River at China Gardens and released him. That was around 1980 or so, for several years after that we would find empty crawdad tails on the river bank quite often. They sold the river cabin in 1993 and moved to the cabin that we live in now, we bought it in 2000 when they moved closer to town due to declining health issues.

Haven't been down to the river cabin since, but have wondered occasionally if ole Rufus was still down there fishing for crawdads. We do have coons that come around nightly & paw through the feeders, usually a shot to the hip from a low velocity .177 airgun will make them understand that they can't hang around.

BTW, since we have lived here I have had to exterminate about 10 or so that just wouldn't take the hints ...... :Fire:

[gwpercle]

If you want a good laugh, listen to some of Jerry Clower's coon hunting stories.
They all good, but my favorite is the coon hunting monkey story.
Jerry Clower was the original blue collar comedian...not dirty, and funny as all get out.

[Grits]

I hate raccoons. Hitting them is like running over a rock. Tore up a couple of cars hitting them.

[twc1964]

Coons can climb like a monkey! My then 15 yo daughter shot her first one out of a 50ft cottonwood tree. He didnt come down as gracefully as he went up. They kill chickens on the land we were hunting on so we did the owner a favor.

[ShooterAZ]

I witnessed a smallish coon squeeze through a chain link fence. I could not believe my eyes, and thought for sure there must have been a tear in the fence. Nope...he just squeezed himself right on through.

[MaryB]

I hit a huge racoon while driving a Chevy Citation, tore the heck out of the front end, bent the oil pan back...

I get them trying to get in my garbage some years. If I see garbage on the ground I know the little thieves are back and I will chain the garbage can lid down. One was so fat and roly poly that he kept jumping to try and get on top of the can and couldn't make it. I was watching out the bay window of the kitchen(he had triggered the motion sensor light) and was laughing so hard he finally heard me and waddled off to the neighbors(she leaves cat food out...). If they attack her cats I will dispatch them, otherwise I let them be.



I hate raccoons. Hitting them is like running over a rock. Tore up a couple of cars hitting them.

[mold maker]

The coon made several attempts to climb down, but each time one of the children on the porch would spot him, and the commotion would send him right back to the top. They had great fun watching him, most of the day.
Sometime during nap time he made good his escape.
I guess I had heard of dogs treeing coons, but it just never crossed my mind that I'd ever see one.
There are always stray cats and loose dogs here in town, but things like coons, groundhogs, and possums, are newcomers. I was over 50 when I saw the first groundhogs about 25 miles away, on the side of I 40. Now I have a hard time keeping them from digging dens in the yard. Possums are now common and I guess the coons are next.
As a lad when, Grand Paw caught a possum, he called a certain member in the black community, to come get it. He would keep it in a barrel, while feeding it sweet potatoes, "to clean it out", and then have a special feast of it.
Are coons and groundhogs eaten also?

[MaryB]

Both are edible... groundhog is like pork

[randyrat]

Corn bread and Coon drippings are great!, they say. I took their word for it and never tested the theory.

[GoodOlBoy]

by they way it is fact, not fiction, that a determined coon can pick a lock with them bitty fingers. I have also watched a coon catch a perch out of a creek, then wash it off in the same creek it came out of before he would eat it. Lot's of folk eat coon, and possum. Never had much taste for either myself. But we use to catch them, skin 'em for the hides, and sell the meat locally.

GoodOlBoy

[w5pv]

When I was younger I had several coon dogs,I used Treeing Walker's that was from the old House's Tom/Tom and House's Hank stock of dogs.Very good blood line.I never had one that was real high priced dog but I knew of some that were sold for 5 to 10 thousnad dollars.
We hunted nearly every weekend and some during the week and for the most of the time never killed the coons just located them marked them down as being treed and gone one for another run lost of fun and it kept the kids off the street.

[WRideout]

When I was in the CA Army Guard, we used to train at Camp Roberts quite often. The oak foothils around there are full of coons; they would come into camp, open a rucksack, open a package of MRE's, and keep opening packages until they found the food. One of the forward observers said that they were out at the OP one night, and a crowd of coons came to visit. He thought they were going to be in trouble for a minute.

BTW: I have it on good authority from an army captain I met, that coon is delicious.

Wayne

[rosewood]

Coons unlike many tree climbers can go down a tree head first. They have the ability to turn their paws almost around backwards so the claws grip for going down. Very crafty critters. They are good at getting around obstacles you put on your deer feeder to keep them out. However, the Duke's dog proof coon trap work every time. :)

[oldarkie]

B B Q coon is real good but it takes awhile to cook it. Ground hogs can climb trees also,I have seen them many times.

[Multigunner]

I wonder if Sasquatch are descended from Racoons?
Thats about the only other critter in North American that has hands.

Seriously there are critters that are descended from Racoons that bear little resemblence to the coon. In Japan theres a doglike creature related to the racoon.

[mold maker]

There is simply no end to the education you can get here. I just got a coon education, from as polite a bunch as you could ask for.
Thanks gus.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Just because they wear a black mask doesn't make them the Lone Ranger. I have an uneasy feeling that out earliest primate ancestors might have been pretty much like them.

[rosewood]

At the risk of opening up a can of worms. All of my ancestors were human.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Then they fell for a bit of fast talking from the serpent.

[drinks]

Young, corn fed coon is good, IF you remove 90% of the fat, old, mature coons are tough and sorta strong.
As to having a coon for a pet, a friend who had one advises to NOT have a pet that is smarter than you are.
I have never eaten groundhog/woodchuck, but as it is just a big, fat squirrel and I enjoy squirrel I do not doubt it is good.
A friend eats muskrat and beaver, both rodents, and said they were good, if cleaned and cooked well.
I do not eat possum.

[goofyoldfart]

Drinks, I used to hunt groundhog/woodchucks in LaPorte in N. Indiana. skinned, cleaned (parboiling helps clean them good) and make stew out of them. fed them to the wife and girl for 3 years before the wife caught me skinning one. that night for dinner she was awful quiet about eating until baby girl (11) said that if she didn't want it, she'd eat it and started to take the bowl. Mama smacked her hand and said to leave her "roast beef stew" alone and started eating. I had told her for 3 years that it was roast beef stew and she snarfed and gobbled it. I paid for that for a few days, but she got over it and I still tease her about it. ;-) God Bless to you and yours. Goofy aka Godfrey:D

[blackthorn]

About 10 years ago I got up to my cabin a day before the other 2 guys. Sitting there, looking out the window, I spotted a couple of marmots (AKA ground hogs) hanging around my outhouse. Now, those varmints have a habit of digging into the edge of the bank near the bottom of the outhouse and they push the dug ground into the hole! NOT COOL! I got my 22, opened the window and very shortly there were 2 dead marmots. Thinking about it, I got a wild hair and thought I would skin those fellows, boil them a bit to get rid of the grease, and make a stew. I went and collected them but they were crawling with vermin! So--- my buddies did not get the "beef" stew I had con template making. There is really no reason not to eat them, after all there is a couple pounds of plant fed meat there and all they do is eat and lay around in the sun, so they should not be tough!

[AggieEE]

My grandmother and her brother went to his deer lease one year and he got a turkey. That night htey had it hanging on the porch to stay cool and went to bed. Some time later that night my grandmother woke up to pots and pans banging together. It finally got loud enough for her brother to wake up, hard of hearing. They were laying in their beds trying to get the other one to go see what the noise was, they were both 50-60 something at the time. He had a bad hip so he couldn't move too fast and grandmother just didn't want to. In the morning they say where coon(s) were trying to get the turkey and they were jumping up trying to grab it and was hitting the pots and pans hanging on the porch. She had a good laugh about that with me when she got back home.