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Raccoon Study

Coon Party!

I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but a year and a half ago I decided to conduct a simple study on raccoons. A few things I wanted to see if I could learn were:

-Do raccoon follow a schedule? And if so how is it affected by moon phase?
-Does the phase of the moon really affect raccoon feeding habits?
-Do raccoons "den up" during storms rather than come out and feed?
-Do Raccoons feed before a storm heavier than normal?
-Will raccoons feed on artificial food sources rather than natural food sources when given a choice?

I admit this was a very simple study, only involving one local raccoon populous. For discovery I chose to use a Moultrie Gamespy Digital camera with a date, time, moon phase, and temperature stamp feature.

After a year and a half, and many hundreds of photographs (and hundreds of pounds of dry dog food), I've summarized my findings into something that surprised me, and would warrant similar studies across the US. I simply tabulated time/amount of photos/temperature/moon phase to determine a mean amount of coon photographed as it corresponded to the variables listed before. I also compared coon photos as it correlated with local food sources such as spring peepers and frogs, raspberries, blueberries, acorns, and lastly..beechnuts. Here are my findings:

To my surprise, I found that raccoons largely couldn’t be patterned as far as time goes. They seem to come and go as they feel fit, regardless of temperature, moon phase, time of year, and weather. They didn’t seem to have any type of “internal clock” much like deer often do. Interestingly, I only saw sows with kits from sunset until 12:10am. I photographed raccoons feeding from just before sunset, until well after sunrise. Several were photographed feeding between 4 and 5 pm during the summer when it’s light out until 8:30pm. Largely, raccoon preferred to move after dark, and to stop feeding before daylight arrived.

I saw no correlation between moon phase and raccoon movement. The age-old myth that “coon don’t move during a full moon” didn’t hold up here. During some full moon periods I photographed lots of raccoon, other “no moon” night’s there was very little activity seen. Raccoon seem to feed when they’re hungry regardless of moon phase.

I saw no evidence that raccoons “den up” during storms, or feed just before a storm. I photographed raccoons feeding during downpours as well as snow storms. I did notice that during severe cold snaps, there were no coon out feeding until a warm up occurred.

Another surprise to me, was that raccoon seem to prefer natural food sources over artificial sources such as what I supplied. My feeder is a 5-gallon bucket, which I filled with Old Roy dog food. I noticed a sharp decrease in visits when natural food sources were available, such as berry and nut crops and then a sharp increase as soon as those natural sources were depleted. During the spring when the frogs are breeding and abundant, I saw very little feeding activity on the bait but began getting more photos as spring wore on and the frogs seemed “more quiet” at night. This marked decrease in visits to the bait station during the spring frog season correlates positively with sows birthing their young. There was no way for me to dissect which impacted more for a drop in visits ie. mothers birthing young vs. abundance of frogs. I can speculate it’s probably 50/50 for pregnant females and nearly 100% food source change for males and non-bred females. Either way, once the frogs went quiet at night, males as well as females with young began returning to the bait station.

Overall, raccoon are very “random” creature with no set schedule. The feed if they want, when they want. They do like to stay in their den during severe cold snaps, but absolutely don’t hibernate and will feed all winter long during normal weather patterns. Rain storms and humidity don’t seem to steer their activity levels, nor do approaching storm fronts or full moon phases.

This was a fun little study to conduct, and I’d like the chance to conduct a more in depth one possibly with tagged raccoon to try to narrow it down to individual specimens. Radio telemetry would also be interesting, as I’ve always wondered if raccoons actually use specific dens? Or do they simply use convenient places of refuge? How many of us have seen coon laid up in places sound asleep in a spot where you’ve felt they’d been for days sleeping out of the wind at night but getting sunned during the day? Or maybe from your deer stand at first light, you see a coon come waddling on by, seemingly pick a tree at random, climb up and fall asleep on a limb? Interesting huh? Anyway, I’d like to see some results from other parts of the country. Hopefully you’ll find these results as interesting as I did.

Here is just a small sampling of photos I managed to take.



Mom with kits active during an almost full moon period



Coon out feeding with almost no moon



Coon feeding during half moon



Coon feeding during full moon



Daytime coon

WOW!!!

That is a very impressive study that you have done, and it helps dispell a lot of myths about coons. Thank you very much! I have already re-read it about 3 times.

thanks again

__________________
Midnight Melody Kennels

GRCH 'PR' Midnight Melody Brandi
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pgohil@frontier.com

Thanks very insightful. I either need better dogs or I need to stop being such a whimp!

I love hunting in the cold, but downpours have always been my least favorite. SAme with the full moon, so I'm gonna start running more with the natural light of the moon We'll see how it works.

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Rip Acorn Creek Black Swamp Jester

In Honor of Jim Sizemore, " This ain't no benchshow!"

study

thats pretty interesting. thanks for sharing!

Very interesting.

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jeff j

Good stuff Mjflores. I never had trouble finding coon on moonlit nights, but they do like to run and ya really got to pound em to make em climb. I also noticed the big boys will run even when it's bitterly cold if they've a mind to, but the sows and little one s not so much.

Thanks for sharing, it was fun and informative.

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Bill Harper
Washington, NC
252-944-5592

Thats outstanding..Thank you for your work on this and thank you for shareing.

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Dennis "Marty" and Heidi West
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how

maney picters did you get when it was 10 degrees last winter.

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Tell the truth or the dog will.

During real cold weather like that I didn't get many at all. As we would think, during cold snaps they seemed to stay in and live off fat reserves rather than waste calories going out to feed. I never got a single photo during the real nasty cold and windy weather we get during Jan and Feb. On the occasional nights where it warmed up a bit to 20 and 30 degrees, I saw increased activity.

Cool Mike!

CANNOT WAIT to get up there and tree a couple of those with you guys!

I hope other people will do this too. Interesting to learn about the habits of the raccoon.
Have a good one, Heather

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Home of the BIGCASTLEDAWGS
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i71/BIGCASTLEDAWGS/Websters%20First%20coon/IMG_0045.jpg

You did a real nice job with this study. You were not too far off from how a graduate student would do it in a university study. I would suggest that you contact a professor in wildlife management at your state university and see if they could work with you, they would be more capable with doing statistics and the other hard core scientific tabulations. Unfortunately there is not a whole lot or research done on raccoons in this country and a lot of that is related to disease control. It is refreshing to see your study which actually reflects on the life patterns of coons.

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Upstate Hillbilly

I am impressed! You obviously put a lot of time and effort into this study and thanks for sharing your results with us. It kinda makes analyzing your dogs a little easier too, since we tend to put the blame on the coons instead of the dogs a lot of the time. It sure makes you think twice about half the stuff you hear about coon behavior.

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Erin Britt

Aight guys, this ain't a bench show and I ain't a hound. Keep ya eyes where they need to be.

thank you

mjflores thanks for the great info. And thank you for inspiring me, I believe Im gonna try something similar down here in NC.

James

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing with us!

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Thanks!
Brad McDaniel
Cordele, Ga USA

Great work....

I would think that your study shows how coon activity is related to artificial food sources though, and not on activity.

I'm not convinced that your study is indicative of coon movement, but rather it is indicative of feeding activity on buckets....not sure they are the same thing.

Would be great to put your camera on a den tree and monitor times when they are out and about, and not just "feeding"....

Just something to think about!

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Joe Newlin
UKC Cur Advocate
Home of Oak Ridge Kennels

Nice job!

I like Joe's idea too...I am making some coon nest boxes and putting in Hemlocks to see if I can get some to use them ...I'll keep ya posted...but thanks for the study I like reading stuff like that!

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Doug Robinson

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mjflores YOU'RE WRONG

I believe coons have an IQ of 150, leave very little scent, and often fly from one tree to another.

Very nice job. I've always wondered if they move around here when it gets below 0 degrees ?

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Tim Hoeck

I know that I live within a couple hours drive of Purdue University. Two or three years ago, there was a graduate student that was studying movement patterns of racoon. He had caught several of them in live traps and put tracking collars on them.

We would see him driving up and down the country side in a white ford truck with the worlds largest Yagi antenna mounted to the back of it on a nightly basis. Fact is on a couple of occaisions we even treed coon that had the tracking collars on them.

I don't know if his study was ever published.....

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Joe Newlin
UKC Cur Advocate
Home of Oak Ridge Kennels

I haven't seen the data but understand a study here in Kansas observed quail and turkey nest preditors. This study had the racoon as the #1 preditor for nest distruction.

Good study. A local club actually did a less scientific study some years ago. They kept track of temp., barometer rise and fall, moon phase, and a few other from every hunt they had. At the end of the year, their conclusion was pretty much the same. Very randomn movement.

Moon Phase

Those are some interesting observations. I have been trying to see when coon activity is best also. There were two things that stuck out to me in your observations, one was the full moon and the other was new moon or no moon. I noticed the same things. Also, in your pictures I see the moon phase recorded, but I would be more interested in knowing where the moon is in the sky at the time the pictures were taken.

There are two brothers here that are very accomplished deer hunters and they swear by hunting the moon phase, but from what I understood of what they explained to me was that they could forecast the best deer movement during the day/evening by where the moon was in the sky. I going to have to get with them so they can explain again unless someone here might know.

I never could correlate moon phase to coon activity. Temperature was very signifigant. Usually the second day after a cold snap (0) F and below)broke was a high activity time. Coons did not move during heavy snow or right after a heavy snow. Temperatures in the 40F down to 15F showed highest activity.

Rain, would stimulate coon activity..probably due to natural food availability. Hard storms would shut them down temporarily. Moderate storms would not increase or decrease activity.

As far as temperature, coons will remain active to a lesser degree down to -30F but only if the food source is close, predictable, and conveinent. I.E. bird feeders, spilled grain,open grain bins, sileage, deer feeders, garbage, cat food dishes, etc.

It seemed that they would begin looking for food during the night if the day temps got up to 20 and the nights stayed -10 or above. They would also look for water. I.E. beaver dams, running colverts, livestock feeders, natural springs etc.

Coons would stay in a reletively small geographical (1/4 milesquare) area provided they had food shelter and were not males looking to breed. They did not have problems with dominance in a living area, but could often get possesive of a food source when another coon approached.

Coons in other areas may differ greatly. Just what I have observed...

Joe, if there is anychance you can get a hold of that study the guy from purdue did, i think it would be interesting. i am also kinda curious if the amount we run dogs in a certain woods would affect the coon at all? dad says you'll never tree the same coon two nights in a row in the same woods, but i dont know.

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Sam Fox

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