To Catch a Coon - Trapping for Land Management

So, I’ve become a trapper - at least the furbearers permit claims as much. Not the kind of woodsman extraordinaire who snares beaver to trade downstream for supplies and women to keep him warm during the winter. Or one who runs a line to make an extra dime on coyote or bobcat pelts. It’s a straight-up management attempt to rid our small Central Florida lease of a few raccoons.

Throughout turkey season I noted hen tracks in the sugar sand trailing from the adjoining property to the west into ours. With a lack of tall trees, they almost certainly do not roost on our land with any regularity. What occurred to me was the hens were visiting our weedy, brushy, scrubby land to nest. It is an ideal locale to do so with an abundance of sedge and palmetto and gallberry that offers not only nesting shelter but plenty of bugs for the precocious poults.

Ideal albeit one caveat: The Raccoons.

A couple months ago I wrote about the booming coon population on our lease, their thirst for destruction, and our feeble attempts to dim their flames. The property is surrounded by orange groves and a swamp bottom, a veritable raccoon Nirvana. Since that post we have implemented a serious trapping program. 

Well, let’s start from the beginning. I’ve never cared too much about trapping largely because there’s never been a real call to arms. Sure, most properties I’ve hunted host large numbers of egg-stealing predators, but either trapping was not allowed, such as on WMA’s, the properties were too far away to ethically run traps, or the situation just didn’t call for it. The first two elements are easy to explain – the last is the sticky wicket.

You have to decide whether trapping for management is worth your time, and I mean this in a couple of different ways. One, will your property benefit from trapping coons? Large tracts of land with an already-healthy turkey population will probably only realize minimal results unless you can dedicate many, many years to a trapping program. Which brings us to another point – do you have the time and resources to be consistent with the routine of keeping traps baited and dispatching the caught week in and week out? If not, you’re probably just spinning your wheels.

But back to our place. It’s a mere 140-acres, and there is a no-question surplus of ringtails. The turkey population is only starting to creep back into this part of Florida having been pushed out years back by mining, citrus and other factors. There are birds around; with a little help, there could be more in the coming years.

Now, again, it’s tough to predict if our efforts will pan out. Our neighbors aren’t trapping and coons breed rather quickly. On the plus side, coons will travel good distances seeking food and mates; there should be plenty of targets. The trick is to stay with it.

To begin, we used live traps near the corn feeders and baited them with tuna fish and dog food. This promptly wiped out 10, but the survivors soon grew wary of the cages. We needed a foothold or snare of some kind. The only problem with this – especially in Florida – is the possibility of catching an endangered something or another. Like a fox. Gray fox are protected here, and last thing I want is to find one in a foot-hold and have the man ready to write me a ticket. The cruelest thing he could do – to me and the fox - is have me release the creature. Hard to say who’d come out on top.

To remedy this, I purchased a pair of Duke’s Dog Proof Coon Traps and deployed them by a spinner feeder that had not had a live trap near it yet. The trap is a hollow tube with a trigger in the back. Its opening is just big enough for a raccoon’s or possum’s thieving paw, but if a coyote stuck its muzzle in there, it wouldn’t be able to set off the trigger. Same if they happened to step in it. The prey must reach past the trigger and pull it forward to spring it. It looks and sounds a tad gimmicky but nothing machined from steel tends to be. Same here. Neat design.

You’ll want to rig the trap with cable and secure to a tree. To set the trap, squeeze down on the spring-lock mechanism. Have a wooden dowel handy and stick in the trap to keep it open while you set the trigger. The instructions suggest marshmallows for lure, but I suspected the Florida heat and fire ants would ruin this, so I baited them with dry cat food and leftover fish-fry grease to sweeten the pot.

With people checking them every couple days, the first week we caught a possum and a large boar coon that probably should have ended up in my trophy room. The second week found two more coons. I’ll give the Dukes a few more days to dine and relocate them to other pieces of the property. They are efficient. I’ve been using my North American Arms .22 Mag derringer for the loud work – which is the highest employment I can justify for even owning that pistol.

The reality is I’m picking off the easy ones; the time is fast coming when trapping becomes more of an art form and strategy of woodsmanship. I’ve done research on both setting traps and trapping coons and feel I own a plan. I’ll look to place one trap near the swamp along trails coon sign and rotate the other between crossings from the orange grove with corresponding spoor. Sounds like a plan, at least. Let you know.

It’s too early to tell with turkey, but I will testify that it’s helped with the deer. Over the last few months I’ve struggled to capture whitetails on the Covert Camera by my bump feeder despite keeping the barrel slap-full of corn and dumping bags around it to chum up the area. All this produced were thousands of pictures of raccoons.

Within a week of removing the traps – and a half-dozen pests – I have the raccoons running scared and the deer happily grazing. I’d long heard that coons would keep deer from the feeders, but it was amazing to witness how quickly it worked.

So think about it. Trapping is not for everyone – personally and functionally on a piece of land. But in the right setting it can be an effective land management tool to improve turkey populations and deer hunting.

Trapping Wild Hogs

Well, Mike shot the 40-pound red boar for a BBQ. He called a few people to see if they’d want fresh pork but solicited little interest. Out of my allegiance to sport and good form, I passed on shooting one in the pen – really, I didn’t need the meat and abhorred the thought of cleaning a hog in the rapidly climbing heat.

So what to do with the 3 other young boars? There were five originally but minus the deceased and one that jumped up and wiggled his head and body through the fencing to freedom, this trio remained. They were certainly eaters – and they should be dispatched to alleviate the rampant damage they do to the area.

Oh, and then there was the matter of the 120-pound boar in there that would kill you just as soon look at you.

Trapping hogs is kinda cool, and it has hit Prime Time on the Discovery Channel’s Hogs Gone Wild. The show is overly dramatic, but it documents the troubles landowners are facing with the exploding pig population from Florida to Hawaii. Some of the hunters on the show use dogs to chase down feral swine. Others utilize traps.

The trappers really provide the theatrics. When they capture the hogs, the danger awareness lessons commence at once, what a perilous occupation this is and so on. True, but if your objective is to rid a place of hogs, you could make it easier on yourself by, I don’t know, shooting them in the head once trapped. This is work, not sport. Then donate the meat to local charity. Or local scavengers. I know they are not rehabilitating and relocating the damn things. The producers are probably catering to the sensibilities of the common viewer, but I know better.

So, they have one lackey distract or lasso the hog while Stud Trapper gets in and wrestles with the filthy animal. The hog is then tied up and hauled into the back of the truck while the wranglers pose for adoration or perhaps kisses and tins of chocolates like the Parisians bestowed upon Allied troops in 1944. It’s a fun program.

Trapping hogs really isn’t all that tricky, though they do learn in a hurry to avoid them if there’s too much human activity. Basically you build a pen high enough they can’t jump out – and yes, hogs can jump. Not like deer, but I’ve seen them easily clear silt fences. Place bait, typically corn, in the back of the pen and rig a tripwire to slam the door shut behind them.

For the tripwire, most folks use a peg on a line connected to the door and place it in the middle of the bait where it is triggered while the hogs feed. I built one when I was 12 or 13 in my parent’s backyard for a boar that was tearing up the horse pasture. I borrowed chain-link fencing material from a neighbor that included poles and a gate.

After the posthole and wiring work, I ran a tripwire across the back third of the cage. This connected to a tire looped over a pine branch to provide the energy needed to slam the gate courtesy of yet another line. It was all very Mouse Trap-ish and had more rope than a Mayan suspension bridge.

But. It worked. Sort of.

Friends and family helped test and fine-tune the contraption until one evening we watched the boar enter the pen. He tripped the wire. The tire fell from its perch. The gate slammed behind him. The boar immediately pummeled under the fence and into memory.

In hindsight, I probably should have just shot it. But, a lesson was learned. Make sure you bury the wire around the pen or have reinforcements to prevent the hog from burrowing under or running through it.

I thought of this lesson last Saturday morning on my way to try to call in a Levy County gobbler. I had been told the trap was baited. The squealing and banging of metal down the path confirmed a capture.

I approached the trap and shined in with my flashlight. The morning was pitch-black and a low fog hung on the edge of the cypress head, drifting in and out of the cage. I immediately noticed the young swine shuffling about and clamoring over one another to get away from the intruder. Then I heard another, deeper, grunt from the far back corner. I lifted the light to look, and the big boar charged from out of the fog and slammed full-speed into the fencing at knee-level.

A cup of coffee has never been brewed that’ll wake you up that quick. Glad that fence held. Had it been my trap, family and friends would currently be asking doctors which limbs can be saved.

He shook it off and pranced in a circle, popping his teeth. I checked my pants and shuffled on down the road to set up for the turkey hunt. All morning long, I listened to those hogs squeal and whine and bang into the doors. 2 ½ hours of that will threaten dementia.

Gene and Mike met me after the hunt and after we exhausted the rudimentary list of locals who’d possibly want a hog, Mike elected to turn them loose.

This prospect did not excite me.

For all the fun I’ve made about the Discovery Channel boys, they are correct that an angry wild hog is a dangerous critter, and this boar didn’t appear to have lost any zest for reprisal. He continuously beat against the fence, charging us as we walked by. His eyes were fire yellow. Truly, he was a young male, an adolescent eager to prove his aggression.

Mike climbed onto the top of the pen, the boar running about in a fury, sweeping aside the smaller hogs and flipping them in the air out of just pure anger. If Mike had fallen in...

Gene and I backed up to the nearest climbable tree fifty yards from the pen, though the 12 gauge was my first line of defense. Never had a hog charge before. Can’t say how I’d react. If there was ever an alignment of the stars for such an event, this was it.

Mike lifted the gate and the little ones streamed to freedom, leaving their fallen comrade behind. The big one froze at the entrance of the gate, not sure what to do. He gazed our way for a moment, but thought better of it. I doubt he slowed down before hitting the Georgia line.

I would hope no one got in his path.