Know Your Target and What's Beyond

[Keith B]

Oops!!

US Park Police officer shoots self in foot trying to fight off raccoon attack

http://www.fox4news.com/news/215581828-story

The raccoon was dispatched by another officer

[twomillenium]

They certainly will be hearing for the RLM movement.

[Jeff B.]

Hey now, raccoons can be tough customers...

A long while back, while living outside of Chi-Town (Will County) we heard our trash cans rattling. We knew something was getting in our garbage from having to pick it up. So, I grabbed a baseball bat and headed out onto the back deck. Then I pounded the deck a couple of times and out pop this 'coon from one can...

Whoa man! This was the Daddy Coon. I'm not sure of how big it was, but I repeated the thumping and yelled at it while advancing on it.

Apparently, said coon was not impressed it started towards me, hissing and looked rather irate.

In short order, I returned to the kitchen and told my wife that "I needed a bigger bat".

A the time I was not yet back into shooting and didn't have a round for my 12 Gauge, 30/30, P38 or .22.

Dadgum coon ran me off...

But, at least I didn't shoot myself any place!

Jeff B.

[nightmare69]

Raccoon's life matter. RIP my trash panda friend.

[KHickam]

' coons take alot of killing sometimes.

[rbwhatever1]

They'll get him next time...

[Jusme]

This reminds me of when I was in high school. I had a buddy whose parent's property abutted another property with an old abandoned farm house. My buddy's family and the other property owner were good friends and my buddy had access to the property which we used for rabbit, and dove hunting fairly often.

He told me he had gone in the old house and found a litter of baby coons. He wanted to get one as a pet when they were old enough. (not the best choice for a house pet by the way)

He and I went there one afternoon after school with a burlap sack, and gloves (to prevent the baby coon from biting/scratching etc.) we didn't take any guns or any thing more lethal than a pocket knife.

We got in the house and found the coons, in a corner near where the floor had collapsed. We got to within about 8 feet of them, when Mama showed up, coming from under the house. Mama was not a fan of our idea to relieve her of one of her babies, nor was she concerned that there were two teenaged boys, who were there to carry it out. She charged us, and grabbed my buddy's pant leg, all the while growling and hissing. I kicked her free from my buddy, which then made me a target of her anger. We both managed to escape with nothing more than some teeth marks in my buddy's jeans, but we decided, that we would definitely seek safer animals to deal with, like maybe Bengal Tigers, or King Cobras.

[The Annoyed Man]

Raccoons are what you get if you cross a mongoose with a badger. I caught one raiding my trash can one night, and when I opened my back door, shined a flashlight on him, and hollered for him to get gone, he bowed up and started flashing gang signs at me, and dared me to come on outside and get a whoopin'.

No thanks pal. Enjoy the garbage. Don't bother cleaning up when you're done. I'll just get after it in the morning.

[vjallen75]

We've got a possum problem in our neighborhood. There's one that lives in the trees on my fence line and causes my pup to bark all night almost. While I was out walking him one morning we saw a shadowy figure run into the trees. I thought it was a 'Coon because of the color but I was not about to stay and find out. Those things are mean. My grandpa used to hunt them and he told us stories about how they would never go without a fight.

[oljames3]

My son, olj4, ain't afraid of no raccoons (with apologies to Ray Parker, Jr.).

At 16, he stalked and shot a raccoon at night. He had noticed that something other than his dog was eating the dog food outside. He had a crossbow, with which he had been practicing. Arming himself, we waited one night until the raccoon came calling. Alone in the dark, using only the light shining through the house windows, he carefully and quietly moved to a position from which he could safely engage the intruder and loosed a bolt. Crossbow bolt 1, raccoon 0. No more problems with disappearing dog food.


With only a little coaching, he was able to neutralize a threat to his animals from a safe distance without endangering anything or anyone else. He turns 20 tomorrow. Next year, LTC.

[Skiprr]

Every time I glance at this thread I flash to Geico's new TV commercial with three raccoons raiding some garbage cans. "It's like mango chutney, and...burnt hair."

[Jusme]

I still laugh at this.

[Middle Age Russ]

Jerry Clower was quite a raconteur.

Around the time I got out of high school, Dad killed a mama coon going into a tree hollow. He shined a light into the hollow and noticed two babies whose eyes were not open yet, so he managed to get them out, kept one and gave one to a relative. He obtained a fur-bearing animal license to legally keep the coon as a pet, and we had Fred as a pet for more than a year. From firsthand experience, coons are very resourceful, dexterous, curious, and quite capable of holding their own against most other critters armed with nothing more than claws and teeth. Dad made Fred a harness that he couldn't get out of (itself a bit of an undertaking) and set up a line across the back yard with a lead so that Fred could climb a bit, as well as get to shade, food and water. Though Fred couldn't get his harness off, he soon figured out how to get the harness off the lead, and he would go missing for two or three days at a time until he went missing and did not come back at all. I can't really recommend coons as pets, but having Fred as a pet was certainly an experience.

After Fred went missing, Dad put up some signs in the neighborhood and got a call a week or so later from a lady with a coon in her garage. It ended up being a juvenile female so not the coon we were looking for. When Dad went to get the coon, he wore leather gloves. He successfully caught the animal and brought it home in a cage, though he did so with punctured gloves and fingers. Freda, as we called her for the few days she was with us, was the single most foul-spirited creature I ever saw. Every ounce of her three to four pound being was filled with vitriol. Any time she became aware of someone she would hiss and strike out in their direction against and through the cage wire. We relocated her pretty quickly.

[rotor]

They are smart too...