Big day calling coons

Cdog911

New member
Going against conventional wisdom, we spent the day enduring brutally cold temps, falling mercury and gale force winds focusing exclusively on coons to illustrate how calling coons can serve as a great filler in those times when coyote calling just isn't worth your time. Bear in mind that when we started this morning between 8 and 8:30, the temps were right around 39. By noon, the thermometer had fallen to the mid-20's. By four o'clock when we were just about to call our last two coons of the day, the temp was right at 12-degrees with windchills sinking as low as -20 and the digital readout on my rear view mirror simply said "ICE". Ouch.

Throughout the day, the winds blew at a comfortable 35-40 mph, we had a full moon night before last and it has been lighting everything for the past several night - all night - and today was the last day of our 10-day firearms season. The odds were stacked against us, yet we were still able to turn what would have been a day for coyotes-only kind of callers to stay in where it was warm into a banner day for multi-species callers like us and ended up doing this...

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Minaska Bandti M1 caller, Minaska coon sounds 87, 89, and 80 (mostly), twelve gauge shotguns shooting 3-inch #4 buckshot. Running or sitting, not much gets away inside thirty yards!

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Very interesting! I've never seen so many racoons climb up on a 4 wheeler ramp and commit mass suicide like that before. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Good job, mind telling us your technique?
 
Thanks, guys. Always glad to share techniques as I've written several articles on this type of calling.

I use a Minaska Bandit M-1 caller, and my sequence of sounds is kit distress (87), followed by sow fighting over babies (89), interspersed with angry boar (80).

Set up at the base of a good den tree with the caller positioned so the coon has to come clear out of the hole to see it (i.e., behind the tree from the hole). Position yourself where you can see the hole clearly at about fifteen yards back. Hit the go button and wait. If a coon sticks his head out and won't roll out, step up the aggressiveness of the sound. A lot of times, this will bring them on out in a hurry. Once they clear the hole entirely, and I mean clear the hole so they can't climb back in or fall in, bring them on down. They usually appear within seconds, and occasionally minutes on long stands, with long stand being maybe 5-10 minutes max. Most stands are less then 3 minutes in length.

Bear in mind that coons do not respond out of curiosity like 'cats or coyotes, nor do they come in fast because of hunger. They will respond to prey distress, but why wait? With coon fighting sounds, they are coming to a fight, and they will fight you, the caller, and anything else that gets between them and the party.

Here's a brief video that shows us on a typical denner, the sounds we're using and the appearance of the coon and shot.



And yes, these are from Kansas, ranging in weight from just at 25 to 35#.
 
Cool! That was a quick response! Now I have got to get my hands on some coon sounds! I know where just about every coon den is within a mile of my house thanks to the dog!
 
Very interesting post and thank you for sharing.

What part of the country has the largest Racoons and what is the maximum weight ever taken?
 
fat coons! I have used woodpecker in distress and called in alot of coons by mistake. I used my bow to take a few of the closer ones when I was shure no cats were going to show up. Texas was loaded with coons. I sat by a tree that looked like the one in the video had to be 8 coons in that tree. I am going back this fall with a 17hmr and some cases of ammo. lots of fun.
 
NO, LOL. We happened to be downstream from the local airport on that stand. Then again, I could try to make the set up bigger and more grandiose than it is and tell everyone we were trying a direct attack first, with an air strike on standby. Just in case. LOL

Oilman,

Woodpecker distress and other conventional prey distress sounds like that are very effective at calling coons, but most times, they elicit a slow, almost cat-like response because the coon is responding due to hunger or, at times, curiosity and know that they're generally the smaller, weaker guy on the block. As stated above, coons responding to the sound of fighting coons are motivated by an entirely different mechanism in that they are responding to what is, for them, a very strong and oftimes overwhelming instinct - their territorial defense response. Most everyone I've ever taken and introduced to daytime coon calling that has experience calling coyotes and bobcats, and who see this response for the first time, are overwhelmed at the level of aggression these coons will show in their response.

I only know of one instance on over thirty years of calling coyotes where a coyote willfully and deliberately directed an attack-like behavior at the person calling rather than turning tail and running. It won't take you long calling coons to realize that they will attack you if they see you moving as they approach. Granted, I've had several change course and bug out, but at the same time, I've had a few boresight me and line up for the approach only to be met with a load of #4 buckshot to the face. In those instances, the fireworks become a matter of self defense and there have been times when we've had multiples in play where you just fire for effect without necessarily aiming.

Just an FYI, there are a number of different guns to use on coons. The Borlands who own Minaska Outdoors prefer the .22WMR while my gunner Matt and I prefer one of us with a .17HMR and the other with a 12 gauge shooting #4 buckshot in 3-inch mag rounds. BTW, 2-3/4 inch 00 buckshot ain't worth spit on coons. Not enough knock down or lead to anchor one dead when he's all ginned up for a fight. Several of the coons in that picture took 2 rounds of #4 buckshot 3-inch with 41 pellets each at under ten yards, catching upwards of twenty-+ pellets per round to center mass, then after falling upwards of twenty and thirty feet, hit the ground, rolled over and still charged one of us forcing us to do the coop d'gracey with our .22LR pistols. They can be THAT tough.
 
Glad to see someone from around here is whacking a few. I haven't seen many road kills and haven't been able to call a single one yet. Do you have any clue how far from a den tree they will travel and do they go back to it every day? Your article on calling daytime coons a few years ago really helped me a lot. I don't have many places to hunt, so calling for coyotes then looking for coons makes the days more worth while. Really pays off when calling in the morning then looking for coons in the afternoon. I just read your article in Predator Hunting about coyotes, real interesting read. Thanks.
 
No, William, thank you! Always good to hear from a reader. And I'm glad you find our morning vs afternoon multi-species approach helpful for you, too. We sure have saved a lot of busted days by turning our attention to coons.

As far as how far they'll travel from their dens, I can't say. I suppose a lot of local factors would come into play, including availability of water, food sources, time of year and the like. We generally just locate clusters of den trees and go from one to the next until we hit pay dirt, if we do. What we found yesterday was that the coons seemed to have anticipated this arctic front coming and and were grouped up to stay warm. We could call an entire riverbend and see nothing, then hit one tree and 2 or 3 come rolling out, one right behind the other.

Along the same lines as my suggestions in that latest PH article, as far as the key to consistent success calling coyotes being a matter of knowing more about coyotes rather than more about calling, I would suggest that you do some googling and see if you can find any good literature online about coons. It's always interesting to read those reports, decipher the results and compare their findings with what your personal experience has taught you. More times than not, when reading through studies on coyotes, I've found the missing links that fill the gaps between various things I know or suspect, thus completing the "big picture". Just like the X Files, it's (the information) out there!
 
I tried to call some a couple weeks ago and didn't have any luck. I think I'm gonna give it another try this weekend.

So, you set up at about 15 yards? We were trying to figure out how far away we wanted to sit. Also, does the sound of you walking in seem to bother them much? We were trying to be quiet, but crunchy leaves were making that hard.
 
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