BigGameHoundsmen.com

Question maybe you guys can answer. I have a nice irrigation ditch with tons of frogs and crawdads and minnows running through a nice spot covered in black berry bushes, lots of nice den trees, and no hunting/trapping pressure. It's always good for a few coon to live trap and turn loose in front of my pups.
this month though (July) lots of black berrys (and I do mean lots) I would expect there to be lots of coon in there. I am finding no coon tracks at all. No coon anywhere here. Any ideas? I havnt had a trap in it since December when a coon was killing my neighbors chickens. I caught him in a live trap nice big male. That was the last coon I've seen in there.

could be that you took that dominate male out of there and right now coon are moving all over the place trying to fatten up for winter. coon would rather raid carbage cans and such right now its easy to find because its hot and everything is easy to smell. they will come back to those berrys and the ditch when there ready, and a new big male will probally settle that area this fall. This is the secret now and coon are smart right now and choosey because food is plentiful, however you need to go fishing get some scraps from local fish and find you a good sweet lure and that should do the trick, coon eat alot of thrown out or washed up fish during the summer because everyone is fishing and fish die or people throw scraps out and coon eat it, its plentiful and easy to find but if you use something like tuna or some store bought fish right now I promise you will catch skunks instead. hope I helped and good luck.

Thanks much for the advice. I never even thought to use local fish. Will give it a try. I didn't realize that coon moved around that much. About 12 years ago I had an awsome hunting spot. Was a small slough that stretched a mile and was covered in berry bushes and den trees. The other side was all corn and watermelon patches. There were litterly coon everywhere you looked and since I only killed a few everynow and then never saw any decrease. I hunted it about 4 nights aweek and never saw any affect on the coon pupulation. One night I had a dog catch a coon on the ground that didn't look to healthy. Within a month all the coons were dead from distemper. It took a year for coon to finaly move back in and then a well to do judge bought up the land and built a house in the middle. He didnt take kindly to my dogs waking him up at 2 in the morning so I lost my spot.

coon move around alot in the summer alot like bear do and some will settle the same spots as the year before some will find new areas, but coon are hard to catch right now, most of the year I could catch coon in a live trap allmost every night in as many traps as I put out but right now there just hard to catch around the end of august or beginning of september they will get less picky again, as long as I can remember it has been alot like this, coon do have good noses and they can tell the difference between something not native to there area and something that is and right now because there is alot of food to eat anything out of the norm they will steer away from.