Are we talking peaches or pears or both? My raccoon behavior is totally different but I’m only talking about pears. So all the trees you’re talking about wrapped with a bird netting so far, I haven’t had any problems but if it doesn’t work, I’ll probably lose it all in a night I don’t have video but I know for certain that’s exactly what my raccoons do they wait till it’s almost ready and then they raid the tree and go store it in the woods. They’ll strip it out of the bags or break branches if necessary bags are usually scattered at the base of the tree. It occurs very rapidly a few they can’t get to pears are ruined because they have a large scratch marks inside the bag
Both.
I do think you should put up a game cam. Even if it’s not going to stop the theft, you’ll know what to guard against.
I still don’t think it’s raccoons stripping trees unless your tree only has a small number of fruit:
- The raccoons I observed waited until the fruit was ripe before really consuming it. They definitely tested before then, but only showed up for real once the fruit was ripening.
- Racoons don’t cache food or hoard food
- Racoons live alone or as mom + kits. You’d have to have a lot of groups to eat 100s of fruit.
Squirrels do cache food. They don’t wait until the fruit is ripe. They can also rip through bags and are very clever. While they’re generally solo operators, each squirrel can maintain hundreds of caches each with multiple items in it.
Even though I agree the larger animals are more likely to break branches, you could have a mix of animals.
I also had a real problem with crows in my pear trees. They’d break branches, peck through bags, knock fruit down, and show up in large scary groups. For whatever reason the crows ignored my peaches.
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I’m also in Southern Oregon. I have tall fences for the deer but lose a lot of fruit to ground squirrels and raccoons. I trap the raccoons with big Havaheart traps and marshmallows, which don’t attract stray cats. I have not figured out how to reduce the squirrel population without poison, and had a population explosion this year.
For stone fruit, bagging helps, but mostly against insects and birds. My trees are too big to bag the whole tree. But as previously mentioned, squirrels will rip off the whole bag, and they will start taking fruit at any size. They’ll eat the pits, too.
I don’t know if you have any prune plums, which were a major commercial industry around there, but I can tell you the original trees went feral between sucker-forming rootstock and rodents burying pits.
I think the damage below is from squirrels. They attack all 3 of my Hudson’s mercilessly, even though I planted them far away from each other.
BTW, I really don’t think the cats, foxes, and possums are the problem. They’re likely the symptom. They’re showing up because either they want to eat what is eating your fruit, whether insects (possum) or rodents (foxes, cats).
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What do you do once you trap them?
I pay a guy to take them to BLM land (deep forest). I don’t particularly want to shoot them.
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This picture was from last year. I guarantee you 100% this was crow. I do not have squirrels. I have pictures of crows, but they hit them when they’re small like that. I have bagged them this year and got them up larger and not had so much problems the crows will get around towards the base of the tree they will not get in the tree they don’t like the bags The raccoons will wait till they’re almost ripe and then attack. I did not have many raccoon problems last year because I didn’t have any pairs once the crows got finished with them but two years ago they stripped an entire tree 60 Fruit in two days left raccoon tracks busted limbs bags and a little fruit, but most of the fruit was carried off. I caught five raccoons that year, but that was not all of them.
By the way on peaches, I’ve really never had much loss other than a couple of bird pecks . I wrapped the bird netting around the trunk on the peach trees, and I bagged about half of them just in case I didn’t lose any peaches, either bagged or not bagged and peach season is over
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Nice set up that thing’s not going anywhere
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I think I sometimes have multiple raiders.
I have a high racoon population and always have. I see them all the time bow hunting. They usally hit a tree, bust it up and knock the fruits to the ground to waiting thieves, but they don’t completely eat them. They are greedy and wastefuI. I think multiple sows with their kits hit the trees. The kits being more nimble and able to get out further on the branches without breaking them. They put a lot of fruit on the ground fast.
In comes a clean up crew of a group of 8 deer and vacuum the ground drops up. They feed there all the time. If the coons break a branch the deer will strip all the leaves off of it they can. Usually in one night. They clean up all the apples the raccoons have left and the orchard floor looks clean. Its amazing they can strip so much and be so clean.
I haven’t put my trail cameras up in the orchard for years, but I swear I once got one with the deer waiting on the raccoons to knock them down some nice apples.
They also poop everywhere so my dog can roll in it. Tucker, my dog, thinks the deer are swell.
Squirrels hit the apples some but are really hard on the stone fruits and they seem to like pears too.
I can’t say I have ever seen any of them cache fruits. I’ll look a little harder. The orchard floor is pretty clean.
I think the early fruits get hit hard as there isn’t a lot to eat in late June early July that’s sweet. Once all the wild apples come on, the racoon pressure slows down. My Lodi apples always get hit the hardest.
Maybe I’ll quit feeding them my spoils. Seems they often look past crops early on…until they get a taste of it and figure it out. Last years sweet corn only got hit after it wasn’t any good anymore. It was my first crop. This year they are eating the tassels and haired up ears. They have a memory.
I hate fences and the freedom they take away from my movement and enjoyment, but there probably some in the future.
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In my area, you can’t grow much without a fence. The deer will devour everything. Years ago I put up a 4 ft perimeter fence and the deer have never jumped it. I’m sure they could they just never have
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That doesn’t surprise me at all. I do think they behave differently, depending on the area and the crow population that you have. I did not have a problem until the tornado last year wiped out their habitat. I had them on my property and they would walk around my pond and my trees, but they didn’t bother anything so I left them alone then they got a taste of pears last year and wiped them out. They really like them when they’re small, they can pick them off the tree and go around and get the seeds .
I’ve been watching them on my game camera and they do not get up in the tree. They do not like those bags fluttering in the wind. I recently set up a motion detector with shotgun blast really don’t know how that’s gonna work yet. Also, I have used a real shotgun blast and it does intimidate them for a little while.
I don’t live at my Orchard and they know when I am there they’re very sophisticated. They will set up a lookout on a dead pine tree over 100 yards away to spot me coming out my door and sound the alarm. I also use a fake dead crow, and it was effective at first, but not so much now I don’t think plus it was expensive and it has not held up well under the weather.
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This helps me solve my whodunnit here- looks like squirrels, which is good news, as I know to “address that issue.”
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Squirrel legs make excellent hot wings.
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Bird netting draped properly over the whole canopy has been the only thing that reliably kept both birds and squirrels off my cherry tree. The key was weighing it down at the bottom so nothing could get underneath, just bricks around the edges. Not pretty but it works. Squirrels still try to chew through occasionally but they seem to give up after a few attempts if they can’t find a gap.
The top photo is an electric fence wire going all the way around the pear tree.
The other one is proof that the squirrels are leaving the tree alone.
The tree is away from my house.
For four previous years, the tree has been loaded, but eaten before this time of year.
Hungry squirrels are all around.
The hot wire is about two feet from the ground.
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This year it’s ants everywhere and birds pecking anything getting close to beginning to look ripe. Some dark gray birds with darker gray highlights. A bit smaller than a robin. Last year it was squirrels and I was about to buy a Squirrelinator with custom drowning bucket.
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I walk the orchard today thinking I had things under control and to check my peaches. I was surprised to see they had knocked down and ate about a dozen.
They are after the pit in most cases.
I put up my electric fence charger to my trunk cages to give them a surprise. Plus a couple of live traps for coon or squirrels.
Ive uploaded some picks of squirrel damage. They eat some but go after the pits.
If my electrical fencing works I’ll post some pics. My tester said it was off the charts strong. They can still jump in from higher up, but haven’t in the past. Once they get zapped, they fear the basket that bite so the other trees are protected.
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The electric fence around the trunk is a clever setup. I tried something similar last year with my plums after losing most of the crop to squirrels two years running. Single hot wire about 18 inches up the trunk and another at the first branch junction. Worked well as long as nothing was close enough for them to jump from, which was the harder part to manage honestly. Had to cut back a neighbour’s overhanging branch before it actually made a difference.
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I went through this many years ago.
First I was trying to keep deer out, hoop fence did the trick but couldn’t get in to prune
Then came the raccoons when the fruit showed up, guns and traps couldn’t keep up. Up went a basic E-fence,
Weeds needed constant wacking to stop the shorting, trees rats moved in!
Lastly, installed 2 foot tall wire fence, chicken wire. Ran hot wires starting 2 inches above the chicken wire, then to 6 inch spacing. Nothing but birds get in now
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