Shot the biggest Raccoon I've seen in a long time, last night...

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Magnum Wheel Man

New member
last night, they pulled the corn picking equipment into the fields at our place, around dark... 1/2 hour or so later, outside doggie let us know he had something trapped in the tallest walnut tree in the front yard...MRS goes outside, in her PJ's, comes back in & informs me he must have something treed in the tallest Walnut tree... so I grabbed the LED flashlight I keep in the truck, walked over to the tree, & scanned through it... sure enough, near the top of the tree, 2 eyes glowed back down at me... couldn't see the animal, but was sure it was a coon ( no moon last night, so it was pretty dark... fortunately the walnuts drop leaves earlier than most trees )... had MRS get me the lil 17 Mach 2 that she usually shoots them with... ( I suppose that since she was already in her PJ's I'll have to shoot this one )... I still could not see the coon, only the glow of his eyes, from behind the crotch of the branch he was on... 1st shot unsupported, holding the flashlight under the stock, I was barely able to see the crosshairs, I hit the tree, which caused it to "disappear"... found it's eyes again with the flash light, higher up than it was before... so I backed up to the next tree, & braced my upper arm against it's trunk, found the eyes in the scope again, & put a little bullet screaming into it's chest... hearing it fall, you'd have thought I shot a small black bear out of the tree, the way it thudded to the ground... of course "Cody" ( 1/2 white german shepard & 1/2 husky ) was on it, near as fast as it hit the ground... still not dead, that thing was growling like a bear, it was so big, he couldn't do his usual "shaking it" thing... took me a few minutes to get it in the scope, with a shot that I was sure I wouldn't get the dog, while they wrestled into the edge of the corn field... put the 2nd shot into him COM, which pretty much took the rest of the fight out of him... huge coon... 50 - 60 lbs... but was pretty hard to get an accurate weight, playing tug a war with the dog... but doggie is a big boy, & he usually carrys his trophies around for a while... this one was big enough that he could barely drag it around...

sorry... no trophy pics... hope I wrote graphically enough above that you got the jest of the story...

that lil 17 Mach 2 has killed more than it's share of farm yard varmints... it's still MRS favorite & sits behind the door in the study, so it's always the 1st rifle grabbed for that type of use...
 
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Mobuck

Moderator
The 17M2 is perfect for that situation. That's the reason I have one. Varmints in places that might not be the safest to use something bigger (even a 22lr). Very little chance of ricochet or pass through and the effect is surprising. I catch lots of coons and possums in a live trap in the barn. Possums aren't a problem-I just open the cage and smack them with a club as they toddle out. Coons aren't that cooperative and much quicker so they get shot. 17M2 kills them instantly with no chance of pass through (which often breaks the cage wires on the bottom). It's a little loud but it's easy to grab the muffs on the way.
 
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Magnum Wheel Man

New member
yes... I like to use it for shooting up in the trees, or around the building sites... mine was custom converted from an old Marlin 780 22 LR several years ago... as hard as cartridges are to buy right now, ( I bought 2000 rounds of ammo when I built the rifle ), I have probably only put 300-400 rounds through it since then, but I may end up selling it with a brick of ammo & putting a center fire into the rotation 17 Hornet or 17 Fireball???

how it looked, when I 1st built the rifle... it now wears a 2-7 BSA sweet 17 scope

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Gunplummer

New member
I got back into trapping for a while in the early 80's and caught a huge raccoon. I often wished I had weighed it. I made a new board for it and remember it was 12" wide at the shoulders (Pulled over like a sock). When I sold to the dealer, he said it was probably the biggest hide he ever bought, and he used to buy bales of hides from the hound guys. I wonder if there is weight record on raccoons?
 
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Magnum Wheel Man

New member
after it had been laying in the yard under the tree ( that doesn't usually happen, as the dog usually drags them off to his "secret" place ) I thought I better deal with it... tossed it on the feed scale at 46 lbs... not sure how much weight had left it, a day & a half after shooting it???
 
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madmo44mag

New member
Oh man does that bring back memories.
Me and two of my buddies were out coon hunting in late fall.
The dogs had a BIG bore coon treed in a huge cottonwood.
Mark took a shot with his 22 lr pistol and missed. Shot was deflected by a twig per him - LOL.
Paul backed up and took a shot with his 38spl and hit right below him. This caused him to climb further up in the tree.
He was sort of dancing back and forth on a good sized limb and growling. I have to admit it sounded a lot like a small brown bear that was really ticked off.
I told Mark and Paul to get to either side and put their flashlights on both sides of his head. I wanted to blind him so he would stop dancing around so much.
I pulled out my 30 carbine Rugger SB and took a good bead on him, squeezed the trigger and saw him fall.
Here is were the real fun started.
This big bore coon hits the ground with a thud.
Now the dogs being well trained coon dogs did not go after him as they had been trained to wait until commanded to get the prey.
They are running around barking and raising all kinds of hell.
The coon was an easy 50lbs.
Paul walks over and was about to pick him up and he springs to his feet ready to fight everything in site. Scared Paul dam near to death and sent Mark and I back about 20 more feet.
Now the dogs really go wild. Running all around us and the coon. Barking and bawling at the top of their voices.
The coon has a 30 cal hole blown right through his middle.
The coon charged at me and then spun and charged Mark.
We are all screaming shoot the SOB at the top of our lungs.
We all start blasting away at him and not one shot hits him.
We are less than 10 feet away but with all the excitement and dogs going crazy we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
After about what seemed like 10 minutes but less than 2 or 3 minutes he swayed back and forth and fell over dead, we thought.
At this point one of the dogs could no longer wait for the command to fetch and ran over snatched this coon up and started to drag him toward us and the coon reaches up and swats this dogs nose and lays it open with his claws.
The dog drops him and runs off bawling and this dang coon gets up and stares us down growling and spitting.
Now imagine three men standing in the woods at night with dogs barking and running around going crazy and there is a big bore coon, gut shot standing his ground wanting to fight and we are all pulling the triggers on our guns and nothing but “click, click. click” because we have shot every round in the cylinders.
The coon waddles towards me, growl's real loud and falls over dead.
Only bullet hole in him is from my 30 carb.
We gather up the coon and the dogs and head to the house.
The dog that got mauled was OK, just cut his nose some and being the nose it bleed a lot but he was soon out coon hunting again.
This is a night of coon hunting I will never forget.
 
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wizrd

New member
50 or 60 lb. 'coons? -- Sorry guys, but I gotta cal BS on these tales -- or the more politically correct term - 'hunter's exaggeration'. -- I hunted 'coon for over 15 years, with a couple of friends, we used to average about 5 or 6 thousand bucks a season for the hides we took, hunting two or three nights a week, and we never took more than one coon out of a treed group or family. Biggest single raccoon we EVER GOT - was WEIGHED IN at just a little over 30 lbs. Weighed on an accurate scale. We had to make a special board to stretch this one - and from the shoulder to bottom of pelt he measured 55" when fleshed, stretched and dried, 16" wide at the shoulder. 50 or 60 lb. coons? -- Sorry guys, but I gotta see pictures. This hunting all took place in NY state - Oneida county.
 
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mete

New member
That's like bear weight estimates ,usually high.
With coyotes though there's a problem .In NY/PA there are coyotexwolf crosses that can get 75 lbs ,maybe more I no longer have the link but an excellent scientific study shows weights , photos of skeletons etc. The skulls have obvious wolf features .Yes i've seen them and compared to normal coyotes they do get your attention ! :rolleyes:
 
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Tinbucket

New member
Shot biggest racoon I've ever seen

We had a male pet racoon. In two years he was 40 lbs.
In Florida, through the swamps, I've seen them on the road that, from a distance looked like a pig.
As we got closer saw one I think was as large as our dog now with a very big hump. Not sure of weight but could have been close to 50 lbs.
 
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979Texas

New member
No they really do get that big at least down here in East Texas they do, and I imagine through most of the Deep South they do also. Now it never was very common at all to see them that big, and I havent seen any this big in the last decade but they really will get that big. A big ole boar coon can get that big.

Once upon a hog spotlighting hunt after dark way deep deep in the back swamps and sloughs of the Navasota River bottoms in northern Grimes County, Texas we came upon what we thought was a small pig in the spotlight. Upon checking the animal out with my scope while it was just 20 yards away from me I saw that it was just a huge ole boar coon about 50-60 pounds, biggest coon I have ever seen.

A bunch of the old timers in this area also will talk about seeing coons that big, but its been over a decade since I've seen one that big. Beavers also get big down here some weighing in at 80 lbs or a little over, and those are in recent times the last few years with the beavers. But these people on this thread aren't ''exaggerating" weights at all on coons, go get in some real woods and see what you can find.
 
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Old Stony

New member
Sorry, but I think I would have to see a picture with real world type comparisons to buy into the 60-100 lb. coons stories. I think estimates like that might be a little overstated. I trapped near to 100 of them this past year that were all spoiled corn fed ones, and some even snacking on high protein deer food......nothing even close to to those weights.
30 lbs would be a really large coon and I guess 40 could be possible...but bigger?
 
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Gunplummer

New member
I started looking on the net and found a pet raccoon over 70 pounds. Apparently it was on the news and TV. Weird thing is, it was in a town really close to me and I never heard of it. I am sure the one I talked about earlier was in the 40 pound range.
 
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wizrd

New member
Lots of talk -- but nobody has weighed one yet -- except for the captive pets. Beavers? ... Hell yes, I've seen beavers up here - that WERE WEIGHED at 90 lbs. Huge! Huge NY coyotes, YES - and research by Syracuse University has proven that 80% of northern NY state's coyote population share the DNA that is traceable to Canada's Algonquin wolf pack, interbreeding is proven here with the coyote / wolf thing. -- But, guys, 50 - 60 lb. wild raccoons - Naah!
 
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Magnum Wheel Man

New member
as I mentioned... I tossed it on the feed scale a day & a half later & it weighed 46 lbs... not 50 or 60... but still one of the biggest I've ever seen...

BTW... we had field corn on our place, but several of the neighbors had 160 acre fields of sweet corn
 
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madmo44mag

New member
Here in Texas we can hunt deer over bait.
Coons can be a real problem.
They can defeat most systems designed to keep them out of your corn feeder.
They get pretty dam fat eating corn mixed with sweet feed.
So seeing a coon in the 40 - 50 range although not as common as it once was we still see them that big.
 
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