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Post by magnumwheelman on Oct 14, 2015 6:02:54 GMT -5
last night, they pulled the corn picking equipment into the fields at our place, around dark... 1/2 hour or so later, outside doggie let us know he had something trapped in the tallest walnut tree in the front yard...MRS goes outside, in her PJ's, comes back in & informs me he must have something treed in the tallest Walnut tree... so I grabbed the LED flashlight I keep in the truck, walked over to the tree, & scanned through it... sure enough, near the top of the tree, 2 eyes glowed back down at me... couldn't see the animal, but was sure it was a coon ( no moon last night, so it was pretty dark... fortunately the walnuts drop leaves earlier than most trees )... had MRS get me the lil 17 Mach 2 that she usually shoots them with... ( I suppose that since she was already in her PJ's I'll have to shoot this one )... I still could not see the coon, only the glow of his eyes, from behind the crotch of the branch he was on... 1st shot unsupported, holding the flashlight under the stock, I was barely able to see the crosshairs, I hit the tree, which caused it to "disappear"... found it's eyes again with the flash light, higher up than it was before... so I backed up to the next tree, & braced my upper arm against it's trunk, found the eyes in the scope again, & put a little bullet screaming into it's chest... hearing it fall, you'd have thought I shot a small black bear out of the tree, the way it thudded to the ground... of course "Cody" ( 1/2 white german shepard & 1/2 husky ) was on it, near as fast as it hit the ground... still not dead, that thing was growling like a bear, it was so big, he couldn't do his usual "shaking it" thing... took me a few minutes to get it in the scope, with a shot that I was sure I wouldn't get the dog, while they wrestled into the edge of the corn field... put the 2nd shot into him COM, which pretty much took the rest of the fight out of him... huge coon... 50 - 60 lbs... but was pretty hard to get an accurate weight, playing tug a war with the dog... but doggie is a big boy, & he usually carrys his trophies around for a while... this one was big enough that he could barely drag it around... sorry... no trophy pics... hope I wrote graphically enough above that you got the jest of the story... that lil 17 Mach 2 has killed more than it's share of farm yard varmints... it's still MRS favorite & sits behind the door in the study, so it's always the 1st rifle grabbed for that type of use... mine was custom converted from an old Marlin 780 22 LR several years ago... as hard as cartridges are to buy right now, ( I bought 2000 rounds of ammo when I built the rifle ), I have probably only put 300-400 rounds through it since then, but I may end up selling it with a brick of ammo & putting a center fire into the rotation 17 Hornet or 17 Fireball??? how it looked, when I 1st built the rifle... it now wears a 2-7 BSA sweet 17 scope
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Post by bulasteve on Oct 14, 2015 10:01:55 GMT -5
Raccoon chili ! Stir fry ? What ?
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Post by magnumwheelman on Oct 14, 2015 10:57:45 GMT -5
sorry... dog chow / cat food... I've never had Raccoon before... one year we shot so many, that I looked up recipes on the internet, but never ended up cooking one up... I'd think the yearlings would be better eating, that this huge old buck???
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jsh
.327 Meteor
Posts: 884
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Post by jsh on Oct 14, 2015 17:11:33 GMT -5
50-60lb coon. I have seen some big ones and got a few but nothing even close to that.
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Post by dougader on Oct 14, 2015 21:55:13 GMT -5
Great story!
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Post by bulasteve on Oct 15, 2015 8:18:35 GMT -5
Dad-n-law used to bone'em out and grind them. He'd mix in some sage, quite a bit of black pepper. Made great breakfast sausage pattiies. The other night on TV, on a show callled, "Dirty Rotten Survival", they ate a road killed one and it reminded me. Good show. Nephew in Va, who is a vet, feeds his stable of bird dogs on'em..
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Post by warhawk on Oct 15, 2015 8:53:28 GMT -5
When I was a kid, an aunt gave us boys a standing order for any "fat young coon". She cooked them in a pressure cooker until the meat fell off the bones, then made BBQ sandwiches with it. Makes my mouth water, 40+ years later.
I coon hunted for many years, the biggest coons I ever saw were killed on the same night, old boars weighing 35 and just shy of 40 pounds. Cant imagine a 60 pounder, he must have been very well fed.
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Post by magnumwheelman on Oct 15, 2015 9:32:56 GMT -5
in all fairness I couldn't weigh it or get a very good idea ( I pick up 50 lb bags all the time ) so I'm pretty good at judging weight, but with the dog refusing to let go of it... I will say, that yesterday in the light of day, it's still the biggest coon I think I've seen ( & we have a population explosion around here, a couple years ago, the same dog treed over 20 of them ) so I see a lot of them...
guessing he ate all sweet corn & field corn he could for several years
also, around here they generally have no preditors, so they live a long time, unless they get flattened on the road... the local state park is going to have to finally do something about them, the numbers have gotten so high, & they have become so braizen, that "gangs" of them rove the park from camp site to camp site clearing everything off the picnic tables, food or not, they fly in, clear the table ( doesn't matter if people are sitting at it ) & sort out the food from "other stuff" in the woods after the heist, before they move on to another camp site
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Post by bulasteve on Oct 15, 2015 9:49:14 GMT -5
I'd best add a warning though. A fair bit of rabies being carried by our local raccoons. I've shot 2 mid day, wobbling like they were drunk, not responding to yells or thrown stuff, over the past 5-10yrs.
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Post by CraigC on Oct 15, 2015 18:03:22 GMT -5
Reminds me of one I killed several years ago. Dad couldn't figure out what was getting into his dog food. He was putting a whole case of canned dog food on top of a big bin of dry food and something was still getting into it. I setup with a light and a rifle one night and waited. I saw something approach in the moonlight and watched the big coon through my binoculars. He reached up, grabbed the lid and pushed up until the case of canned food slid off the other side. Then he was ass over tea kettle into the dry food. Killed him with one shot from the .22Mag and just about couldn't get him out of the food bin. I never weighed him but he had to be a least 30lbs and easily the biggest coon I've ever seen.
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Post by magnumwheelman on Oct 16, 2015 7:49:15 GMT -5
after it had been laying in the yard under the tree ( that doesn't usually happen, as the dog usually drags them off to his "secret" place ) I thought I better deal with it... tossed it on the feed scale at 46 lbs... not sure how much weight had left it, a day & a half after shooting it???
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Post by contender on Oct 16, 2015 9:35:23 GMT -5
That's a big coon! I catch a bunch each year in my business, and I rarely get one over 40 lbs.
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jsh
.327 Meteor
Posts: 884
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Post by jsh on Oct 16, 2015 17:42:11 GMT -5
Dang! Maybe a young Sasquatch ?
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Post by squawberryman on Oct 16, 2015 19:16:04 GMT -5
Around here there's gas stations that have pictures of Richard Petty in large posters on the pumps. He's got this big ole hat on with these two funny little bones on the front. Doubt many folks know what they are. Kills me. I think this is a picture of the poster images.craigslist.org/00v0v_9RjrrWF3Cri_600x450.jpg
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mstem
.240 Incinerator
Posts: 40
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Post by mstem on Oct 18, 2015 7:06:50 GMT -5
The coons around here usually run 20lbs or so. I'd love to see a 50-60lb coon! As far as eating one, I'd rather live on broom straw & snowballs!
squawberryman, I know exactly what those bones are & what part of the coon's body they came from.
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