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Raccoon trapping
- Thread starter bueller
- Start date
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Still have a few cages out for coons and possums. Picked up a coon yesterday and a possum today. I am shocked at the number of possums I have caught in the last couple of months. With that many on my place I can see why there seemed to be no turkey poults last Spring. How does a nest stand a chance with that many possums. I am going to trap my neighbors for a couple of weeks once I get a chance to set some traps on it. Still have a couple of coyotes that I would like to kill on my place. Its nice to see my habitat work paying off! LOL The best habitat around attracts the prey and the predators.
It is really amazing that any of these ground nesting game birds ever hatch a chick. From the time a turkey lays its first egg to when the nest hatches, that first egg has laid on the ground almost forty days. Dont know how they ever hatch an egg
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
It truly is. I do believe quality habitat outranks predator trapping as a way to boost game bird populations, but I am not sure great habitat could even out shine these predator numbers. My traps have been set in areas that seem most favorable for nesting. The 3 cage traps have not changed location since they were put out after Christmas. I think I am up to 17 possums and 4-5 coons. Trail camera photos reveal yet another possum making the rounds last night. If I was actually targeting these critters 2 out of the 3 locations I probably would not have even set a trap at. I did pop in a couple of DPs yesterday down in a dry drainage just to see what I come up with. A spot that I would more likely associate with those types of furbearers.
If you can get them all, great - but Tall Timbers plantation with their predator index, showed that there is a specific density of predators - if it falls below - quail population will still increase - the predators dont all have to be gone. I would imagine the same is true for turkeys.
I did the best I could reasonably do with my habitat - and only had an occasional turkey show up. When I started spring trapping - not long after, I started having some resident turkeys. But I agree, if the habitat had not already been there, the trapping would not have helped by itself. Here, it takes both
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
As a professional trapper for close to 15 years, back in my younger days I know all too well that outside of a very few exceptions, such as an isolated colony of beavers, you aren't really going to have any real long term effect on the population when trapping smaller sized, random properties. Way too many critters on adjoining properties just looking for a chance to shift into better or less inhabited habitat when the opportunity arises. I have no delusions of getting them all, but hopefully I will see some benefits from thinnin them out on my place. Maybe become the hotbed of bird nesting in a 10 mile radius. 
I think back in the day when fur was worth good money, trapping was why we had so much game. In my area of arkansas, quail were everywhere. Rabbits were a nuisance to a bird hunter. I was killing upwards of 200 quail in a season on commercial timberland - no old grown up private fields. We even had “woods birds” back then. Quail that lived around a 1/2 acre patch of grass along a slough edge a mile back in the woods. I havent seen a “woods bird” in thirty years. I had a basset hound we sometimes killed six or eight rabbits in front of during an afternoon hunt. Guys with a good beagle pack were killing 20 or 25. Now a good hunt with good dogs is three rabbits. But the real telling note, where I live right now, I have about 25 acres of what used to be grazed to the dirt cattle pasture back in the mid 80’s. I bird hunted that same 25 acres back in the mid 80’s a time or two because I knew the man who owned it and he didnt have bird dogs and he wanted me to take him. There were two coveys around that 25 acres in horrible habitat.
Now, it is a mix of little bluestem, indian grass, some small one acre wheat clover food plots and browntop millet, pollinators plants, and lots of ragweed and marsh elder and hasnt been a quail on it since 1990.
I often hunted an 80,000 acre wma in the 1980’s and beyond for turkeys. All big mature pine/hardwood forest. A lot of walkin areas you could walk for miles. There were often 20 turkeys checked there before noon on opening day in the 80’s. . Now there are ten turkeys checked there all year. I once heard 16 different gobblers there one morning.
I trapped that area in winter and would find previous signs of trapping a 3 mile one way walk back in the woods. I knew dozens of trappers. A lot who would trap in the day and run coon dogs at night - including me. After the first two or three weeks of trapping season, I never felt like I was trapping fresh ground.
A $25 southern coon from 1980, with inflation - would be worth $100 today. I would be checking traps right now - if there were $100 coons today. The bottoms below my house would be ringing with the sound of coon hounds every night.
But, those were different times. There was a fur buyer in every small rural town. Coon dogs were the most popular dog around. That is the difference between then and now. Quail, turkeys, and rabbits could make it in mediocre habitat because hundreds of people in every county were trying to catch the last coon, cat, or fox.
I know one other person now who traps - a little - to help out some farmers with beaver problems. I know no one who runs coon hounds. You cant even sell our coon anymore.
I still trap my place a couple times in the spring each year - but not one other neighbor is trapping. Every one of these properties were trapped in 1980. While I can greatly reduce predators on my 300 acres - for a few months - quail and turkeys need more than my piece of ground to prosper.
Ground nesting animals can no longer make it in mediocre habitat like they used to because of high predator loads. Now you need great habitat and some trapping MIGHT just remove that one coon that found that one turkey nest.
