@Olpea, I was wondering if you have problems with racoons or squirrels? Deer? Groundhogs? How do you control wildlife in your orchard?
Hi KSprairie,
For squirrels I trap them at the house. I run a Tomahawk skunk trap all year long. It’s essentially the same thing as a Havahart trap, but much better, imo. I bait it with acorns and keep the squirrels thinned out, otherwise I wouldn’t get any fruits at the house. People dump squirrels out here, so it’s a constant battle, but consistent trapping keeps them at bay.
I also trap coons/possums at the house. People dump those out here too. We are just far enough from the city, where the rural area starts that it’s convenient for people to dump their wildlife out here. Coons are coy and don’t readily want to enter a live trap once they’ve been trapped. So I have to use some dog proof leg hold traps for those. Possums are dumb and will wander in a live trap, no matter how many times they’ve been trapped.
For the larger orchard, it’s more out in the country, so we don’t get squirrels. There are very few large trees in the orchard, so that also helps.
We do get lots of coons and possums (again people dump them out there, and a coon can easily travel 5 miles looking for a new home with a food supply).
For the large orchard, I use a combination of an electric fence and a horse fence. I didn’t want to keep the electric fence close to the ground because of all the weed eating required, so I used a 2"x4"x30" tall horse fence, then ran an electric fence wire at the top of that. It completely stops the coons. The possums are lazier and instead of climbing will sometimes dig underneath the fence. They don’t wreck quite as much as coons. For any possums which dig under, I still put out a live trap or two. Here’s a link where I discussed it extensively with lots of pictures:
If you decide to go with an electric fence, I wouldn’t worry about setting up some type of pinball fence. That’s overkill. A coon which gets zapped good, won’t challenge the fence again. It doesn’t take repeated zaps to teach a coon, unless it’s a really weak charger. If you can afford it, go overkill on the charger. That way, if you have weeds touching the fence, the charger will power through them and still deliver a good shock.
Kencove may have good electric fence supplies, but their regular fencing sucks. They have some problem with their galvanizing. I ended up buying my galvanized electric fence wire from Orscheln. It seems like pretty decent wire. I like the heavy stuff (12.5 gauge).
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That is a really good idea. I wondered how you kept coons and possums out of your large orchard. I guess I completely missed your post about this from '21. I appreciate the link. My husband handles the electric fencing… I don’t know the rating of the charger he is currently using… but I do know it will drop an adult to their knees if you accidently back into it 
The cattle respect it too.
We might go with a solar charger for the orchard, we have had several different ones over the years for horses and calves. I’ll make sure he knows not to skimp on the charger!
I might have to do some trapping as well as fencing so I appreciate the links you provided. I have plums in areas that would be difficult to fence and I’d rather not put any fence up there. Assuming plums are targets for the wild critters too, I might need to set a trap or two around those.
Thanks again.
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In 30 years of trapping coons I’ve never encountered one that wouldn’t go into a trap baited with marshmallows and a leading trail. I wonder if mid-western coons are smarter, because I’ve even had coons escape by tipping a gravity trap and then going in one again.
On average, I trap about 20 coons here a year. I’m glad I haven’t had to use a leg trap, they are pretty brutal. I’ve used them occasionally for woodchucks when failing to entice them into a live trap.
I have more difficulty trapping squirrels When their numbers are bottomless there will eventually be a couple who I can’t get into a trap. The squirllinator design works better for me than boxier traps… much better. Also, I have spent a lot of money on “the best” lethal squirrel traps and never caught a one.
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I almost tried the Squirrelinator trap based upon your reviews and others. The draw for me was to be able to catch multiple squirrels at a time. But upon reflection, sometimes I catch one squirrel a day in the Tomahawk trap, which thins them out pretty fast. I’ve occasionally caught two in one day.
This last summer was particularly bad at not catching some coons in a live trap. A lot of times they would just tip the trap over, even with a trail of bait leading to the trap. Sometimes they would just eat the bait right up to the entrance to the trap, and not go in. Perhaps they had been trapped multiple times? It was pretty frustrating to see the significant damage day after day with no way to prevent it. I was using cat food with salmon oil as bait. At one time I even had two live coon traps set to try to catch them. I did use some marshmallows last summer too.
I finally had enough and ordered some heavy duty dog proof leg hold traps from Minnesota trapline. I had tried dog proof traps before, but had a coon pull out of a cheap one.
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Who knew wildlife behavior could be so regional? I learned that from this forum. I think some wildlife trappers around here use lethal coon traps that maybe go around their throats, Heavy traps that I bet are hard to set and possibly hazardous. they bait them and put them in 5 gallon buckets.
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Conibear style traps like you’re describing are very easy to set as long as you’ve got the proper tool. You can buy the tool or make your own out of wood and a single bolt.
In Missouri it’s illegal to set a conibear trap that is not submerged in the water. The conservation is touchy with lethal traps. I’m assuming that is because of cats and dogs being killed. You can elevate a conibear in a bucket above where a dog will be, but anywhere a coon can go a cat can go. You should be able to avoid catching cats by using sweet bait, but I still prefer box traps and dog proof traps for coons.
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