mjflores
Banned
Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Everywhere
Posts: 2708 |
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
Last edited by mjflores on 09-18-2007 at 03:36 AM
Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged
|
09-18-2007 01:30 AM
We'll see how it works.
