Suburban Raccoons

There are all sorts of raccoon traps available in hardware stores as well as those advertised on the Internet. Generally speaking, there are good quality raccoon trap and they can be used to trap raccoons as well as other animals such as squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, and other animals that may be causing problems for you around your home and even in your attic which is the problem we had. Note, you really do not want to catch a skunk in your trap for obvious reasons!

Essentially a family of raccoons set up home in our attic and raised two young babies and generally made a mess before we could get them out. Along the way, we learned a few things about raccoon traps and getting rid of raccoons which we would like to share with you and hopefully help other people deal with this problem.

Raccoon Trap

The trap above is an excellent humane trap that would work well for many animals, however, for raccoons, they simply will not work. Suburban raccoons just have too much experience dealing with humans, and they will not enter these traps. Sure you might get one or two to enter, but not all of them! They are just too smart no matter what food you put in the trap. The young ones will fall for it but not the parents! They have seen them all before and know what happens when they go inside a trap like this.

Raccoon Trap Does Not Work

For starters, do not try to trap the raccoons while their young are in your attic unless you also plan to go in the attic and remove the young raccoons as well. The parents will always come back to the den and if you have blocked the entrance, they will literally take your roof apart trying to get back into the den to return to their young babies.

Raccoons also have 4 or 5 dens in a neighborhood and there are at least 20 families per square mile, so if you remove one group another group is going to make their home in this den.  You must take steps to get the raccoons out, effectively block the entrance with strong wire mesh and spray the inside of your attic with a chemical that gets rid of the odor of raccoons. Only then do you have a chance of not having repeated raccoon problems?

Our Trapping Experience

We tried trapping them and were successful at trapping and removing the young raccoons once they were old enough to travel.  They simply were not smart enough to stay out of the trap. We used a humane animal trap and placed the raccoons in a forest area. The adults are another matter. Being far more experienced at this, the adults refused to enter the trap and would try to get at the bait through the wire mesh of the cage.

They would not enter the trap at all, although there was lots of evidence of them trying to get at the food. So the trap really was a waste of money.

One Way Trap Doors

Instead of using a raccoon trap, what we had to do was install a one-way door over the entrance, and leave this in place so we could be sure that the adult raccoons had left, before permanently sealing the entrance with a heavy gauge wire mesh that is screw nailed into the roof and the brick. Make sure that you place silicone sealant over the nails to avoid future leaks.

Effectively this is a far better approach to getting rid of raccoons vs. placing a raccoon trap to catch them. Additionally, this approach avoids dealing with a snarling enraged raccoon. Who is trying to get out of the raccoon trap if you are lucky enough to catch them as well as other animals that might venture into the raccoon trap such as skunks?

Once they are gone and you have sealed the entrance as previously mentioned, not other raccoons are going to get in. We have seen tracks in the snow on our roof were they have come back to test it only to find their way blocked. We do not know if they are the same raccoons or a new family, but they did not get into our home again.

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