It’s that time of year again where the predators start to enjoy fresh chicken and lamb. We have not had much rain in the last three weeks, about 1/10” last week. This has not been enough to keep anything green around us. The raccoons start to think that chicken is a great meal and the coyotes start to like the idea of lamb. Mr Rainman has been going out in the mornings when he arrives and trying to shoot the two coyotes in the upper fields. So far he has missed on three separate occasions. I have been up there seven times and have yet to see a coyote. He thinks he may be scaring them away, we are humoring him at the moment.
The dogs have been barking early in the morning before we go to work. I was able to spot three raccoons running in front of the driveway headed to the barn. By the time I grabbed a pistol and got through two gates to the barn I was able to get one shot off as the coon climbed into the barn and on top of the hay stack. We know they are in the barn as there are two huge piles of raccoon dung in there, like 20-30#/each. They can make a heck of a mess. This is the third time we have seen them but only the first time I have managed to get a shot off. My mother-in-law states they have started coming to her house again to eat the cat food. They pick on the cats and can kill them. Not to mention can add about 50-75# of animals to feed depending on their size.
Friday evening she called me to say that there were several raccoons on her front porch. Normally, I just grab a pistol and walk down there but the raccoons always start to run before I can get close. So I decided to drive the pickup down this time. I grabbed the suppressed 22 pistol and three extra clips. Unless you manage to hit a raccoon directly in the head it takes about an entire clip to put one down, especially if it is very large. We try very hard to not just wound them so lead poisoning by quantity is my strategy.
Luckily, I also have a green laser on the pistol. This helps dramatically when shooting around buildings and other animals. If I would spend some time practicing with the pistol every month I would probably not need the laser. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that. I could be building more fence or completing another project. So I use a crutch to help me. Plus, in the middle of the night the laser is essential when running around in the dark.
I ended up killing four raccoons. I took 40 rounds of ammo and used 36 rounds by the time I was done. If there had been six raccoons I would have run out of ammo! So I will need to buy another couple of clips. I just fill my front and back pockets with spare clips before I head out of the house. I do keep the empty ones and put them back in a pocket instead of dropping them on the ground. I would lose them nonstop if I dropped them on the ground.
No cats were harmed despite them running all around while I was trying to kill the raccoons.
We put the live trap in the barn but as usual no raccoon is foolish enough to go into it. It has been up for a week with zero results.
Stewart Creek Somethings 