I went digging on the dogs yesterday. It was 45 degrees out -- delightful weather -- and I did not expect to find anything to ground (most groundhogs are asleep, and it was too warm for fox), but in the end I did see a fox above ground (trotting around a bend into the next field) and I did dig on a raccoon in a forest sette.
Mountain sounded deep, but the box said she was only three feet down, and in fact I opened up the pipe at only two feet. There were a lot of rocks in this sette, so maybe that made it sound deeper.Larry M. thinks raccoons that are born in the ground den in the ground their whole lives, and I suspect he might be right.
As a rule, I try to snare raccoons out and let them go, but Mountain pulled this small one straight out by herself, and with both of them ahold of each other, I had to step in and sort things out. With five or six young born every Spring, Mother Nature more than plans for such loss. I helped even things out a bit my moving this coon up to a fox run on the edge of the field, where a vixen is sure to find it and recycle it. In nature, everything is recycled. You will be too. Count on it.
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I can't tell you how much 'coonhunters hate those raccoons that go to ground. If one of the things you like to brag about is the ability of your dog to tree a raccoon, then you're going to hate raccoons who don't go with the program.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I bet you like it when they go to ground, because it gives your dogs something challenging to work. Raccoons are much at digging, compared to groundhog. But they are like small grizzly bears in temperament.