Digging on the Dogs

Garvey on the third raccoon of the day.


I met Chris and we drove down to a spot off of one of the farms I hunt. We had four dogs; my two Jack Russell's as well as Chris' two young Patterdales.

Chris has purchased an Ortovox locator and box, but has not yet gotten the proper batteries for that kit, so I put an extra Deben Mark I locator on Bean and laced Garvey up with a small slide tag on a leather thong so that if he got lost he mighty get returned.

We walked a distance without finding anything to ground, but it was a nice cool day and the walk was not too much of a burden.

At the back of the farm, Mountain trundled into an impenetrable thicket and then opened up to a nice bay. The other dogs slid into the thicket, leaving Chris and I trying to find a way past the downed timber, barbed wire fencing, and multi-flora rose. At last giving up, we bulldozed in and found the dogs at a pretty large four-eyed groundhog sette. Mountain was in the ground and so was Bean, on opposite ends and both barking.

Eh?

I listened and heard the tell-tale growl. "I think we've got a coon," I said to Chris. "Maybe two of them."

We downed tools and the dogs bayed it up. We started in on the end with Bean, but as we got down about two feet, the whirl really started over on Mountain's end of the pipe, and I went over there to start sinking a hole while Chris continued to locate the pipe with bar and posthole digger on his end of the sette.

The dogs were about three feet down, but it seemed as if they were moving around a bit -- there was lot of action underground, that was for sure!

Things got quiet on Chris' end, and it seemed as if the raccoon and Bean might have moved. And where was Garvey? He had slipped his tie and disappeared somewhere ....

I did not spend too much time thinking about Garvey -- with this much action, he would not go far. Chris came over to my end, and we ended up taking turns in the hard soil. We eventually opened up the pipe to Mountain, who was clearly very close to his coon. While I opened up the hole a bit farther, Chris tied up Bean and discovered Garvey to ground in the other side of the sette. He was jammed in the pipe and could not get out. Chris tried to open up the pipe with bar and shovel without hurting Garvey, but the ground was very hard and the dog was jammed in as tight as a wine cork.

While Chris began to dig a second hole about a foot behind where we though Mountain's raccoon was, I took out a long-handled trowel and worked it around Garvey to free him from his hole. With a little bit of work and a hard pull, he was free. Excellent. But hello, what was this? Behind Garvey was a dead raccoon! Or at least it appeared to be dead.

Never one to mess with the business end of a raccoon with bare hands (rabies are thick around here), I got my short pole snare and pulled it out of the ground. It was indeed dead, but it did not have a mark on it, and neither did Garvey.

Hard to know what happened here, but I suspect the raccoon suffocated when it was bottled up front and behind. This can happen sometimes. Garvey might have done the job himself, but he's a very green dog (this was really his first time to ground), and considering how well jammed the dog was in the pipe, I think asphyxiation is more likely. Since I know Bean had been hard up against this raccoon most of the time, I count it as hers.

I put the dead raccoon up into the crotch of a tree and took over the posthole digger while Chris checked over Garvey and leashed him up. A couple of good hard blows with the posthole digger, and I finally broke into the sette. In short order the second raccoon of the day had bolted, and was quickly dispatched.

Chris and I filled in the holes, shouldered the tools and unleashed the dogs, prepared to call it a day. The dogs, of course, had a different idea! Garvey slid to ground and opened up to a nice bay.

Eh? We quickly grabbed up the other dogs and re-leashed them.

Could there be three raccoons in this sette?

There could be, and there were.

We opened up the two holes we had just filled, and I tailed out a third raccoon with the snare, with Garvey still firmly attached to the business end. I gave Garvey a solid tap on the muzzle and he let loose of the raccoon, and I tailed the dog up into the air while loosening the snare.

This raccoon was a little rattled and unclear on the concept, and so he did not run off into the woods as planned, but instead went back to ground again.

No matter. We would leave the den unrepaired if needed.

We checked over the dogs. Other than a very small ding on Mountain's nose (smaller than those on my arms after going through all that multiflora rose) the dogs were without a scratch. Excellent!

While we were checking over the dogs, the third raccoon crowned out of the hole he had entered, dashed over the ground about 10 feet, and then dived back underground in another part of the sette. He looked to be in fine shape. A minute or two later, and he crowned out of the sette again and then dashed for the surrounding woods.

Excellent -- this raccoon was clearly in fine fettle. Long may it run ... though with distemper and rabies being what they are, it will no doubt die a "natural" death within the year or so.

Three raccoons in the ground is not common, but that's only because groundhog pipes tend to be pretty tight for adult raccoons. In spots where there is more denning space, such as in a barn or attic, it's more common to find a male raccoon with two or three females in tow. These extra females are "satellite" females, and are often from the previous year's litter.

Mortality in raccoons is about 60 percent a year, so it makes sense for a male raccoon to have a spare female or two in the wings in case his primary mate should succumb to disease, vehicle impact, or trap.

Young male raccoons, of course, are driven out of their natal territories in August or early September of the year they are born, and they then roam widely looking for unoccupied spaces in the countryside and unattached females. As a consequence of their roaming, young male raccoons have a pretty high mortality rate -- especially from vehicle impact.

Raccoons have experienced massive population growth in the last 70 years.
Today, the number of raccoons in the U.S. is estimated to be 15 to 20 times greater than the number that existed during the 1930s.

The forces behind this population growth are varied. One factor has been the planting of massive corn and soybean fields, and another has been the decline in trapping and organized coon hunts. In addition, reforestation (in the Midwest) and increased forest fragmentation (in the East) has resulted in edge species like raccoons and deer doing very well.

The rise of suburbia has also been perfect for raccoons, as discarded fast-food meals, spilled bird seed from feeders, dog bowls left out on backyard decks, and full trash cans have provided ready meals for millions.

Finally, there has been a massive expansion of the raccoon's natural range as human habitation and construction (barns, attics, old vehicles, road culverts) has enabled the raccoon to move North and across the great vast bareness of the Great Plains and into the far West.

The growth of raccoon populations has not been without its price, especially among some song birds which suffer from heavy nest predation in the Spring.

The bottom line: even with distemper, rabies, and vehicle impacts, the raccoon population in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. is now so large and fecund it could still thrive with an annual culling of 35 to 40 percent of the Fall population. Absent that level of culling, raccoon populations tend to roller-coaster up and down with cyclical distemper outbreaks.



Chris and Bean, who got the first raccoon of the day.
.
.