I have found sweets to be a good bait, anything from fruit to marshmallows.
Fish & meat baits tend to attract cats instead.
I wish I had advice for repelling raccoons-- not just from a garden or
orchard plot but also from a larger area. But they are too good at finding
any useable den- or sleeping-site, and so good at living near people while
avoiding human activity.
One benificial thing is, I believe they eat a lot of slugs. I see more
raccoon tracks in a garden when slug populations are high.
----Original Message Follows----
From: W3cmp
Reply-To: North American Fruit Explorers <
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Enough of the killing
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:42:06 EDT
Joe:
Best way to handle racoon problems that I know of is to bait a
Have-a-Heart trap with come canned tuna or other fish and the apply a .22.
If the
racoon is in a group others may overturn the trap and try like crazy to free
the
trapped animal. I've set traps in the evening and the next morining the bait
is
gone, the trap is overturned and there is evidence that an animal was
trapped.
I assumed it was a racoon because these incidents occurred about the time
I
eventually caught a racoon in the trap. I don't know if lacing the tuna
with
vermin poison works. I have caught a couple when the trap was baited with
peanut butter, but I was intending to catch squirrels. Racoons are smart and
vicious and decimate an orchard. I would be anxious to hear how others
treat
their problem with racoons.