Raccoons in sweet corn

I've been trapping nuisance raccoons successfully for years in various situations. But this current problem is truly a problem. Client has a sweet corn patch, 1/3 acre, coons hit it every night. I can see no incoming trails. I use numerous cages, well camoed, baited with everything from sweet corn, marshmallows, clam bait, fruit scents and baits, cherry scents, etc. No takers. Started using DP's as possible dogs and cats, currently nothing. Any suggestions or Old timer tricks I can use?

Been catching them hard here with dry cat food mixed with fish oil and coon potion. Bugs won't bother it unless it gets wet. Just set up a sweet corn patch today.

Try putting dishes with mountain dew or coke in them around the traps. If they hit them, put them in the traps.

Mountain Dew or Coke. Must be some thing Billy on TV uses.

What flavor of coon potion and dry cat food?

Peanut butter and fish. Just get enough fish oil on it for the powder to stick. Takes very little fish oil. The berry flavor works well to.

My dad has about 5 acres of sweet corn, it just started to come on acouple weeks ago. we've been trapping it for 3 weeks 67 coons! Pull out all the stops; cages, dp's, snares, even footholds set blind between the rows. Once they get a taste for the corn it can be hard to convince them to go for something else, so give them every option.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

Appreciate it. I'll implement these.

Just put a electric fence around the patch . If your in coon country growing sweet corn the coons will come .

X 2. Don't treat the symptom.... solve the problem.

As stated fencing will be the most effective answer.Running 2 strands of single wire strand fence or composite wire at the height of 6" and 12" connected to a solar powered fence charging unit will do a good job for coon and some deer issues.Just need to keep the weeds under control so as not to ground out the fence line charge.Running a band of "round up" around the fence line will help keep the weed growth under control for the most part.Once the coon get jolted a time or two on the nose or paws they wont be too interested after they are conditioned a few times.

Thanks for the advice. I knew I could get some good answers.

The solar electric fence also works great on bird pens.

Do you ever use peanut butter on aluminum foil hooked to the fence to make sure they get a good "taste" of the juice?

Good idea and effective to chum them as stated to an odor attraction of conductivity, particularly to the sides of the fence that will be tested the most with random attractions in other positions to cover all the bases. They learn pretty quick without additional attraction but a good recommendation to really shock them good.

I usually buy a roll of chalk string and soak the needed length of string in a small jar of fish oil. Remove the string pieces and let them drip over nite. Then I wind wrap sections of the soaked string around the wire tightly and zip tie it to the fence strands at about 10 ft sections at a time at both levels of fence. Now they are drawn to the fence with their noses. Guess what happens next. Now nothing is left to chance.

Bad deal is, anyone trapping coon come fall with fish oil in the proximity of the conditioning areas might not get very good attraction to fish oil odor products due to this type of treatment. However the oil will last for weeks to months at a time depending upon wind and UV conditions.

If needed the string can be treated by shutting the fence off or detaching the leads from the charger. Then saturate a rag with fish oil again and run the saturated rag down the string runs to rejuvinate the odor for another period of time.

I think part of the effectiveness of the fence baiting is it slows the animals down, and lets them know where the biting monster is located. Otherwise they will roll on through just speeding up when they get bitten.