Can you link to a citation? Because I’m pretty sure you are wrong about some of those states. As @Dallas_Jones points out, air-powered guns aren’t legally firearms in many places, and are very lightly regulated. In my state, you need to be over 18 and you can’t fire across a street or at public property. That’s it. (I mean if you shoot your neighbor’s dog, you are violating laws about harming your neighbor, but you’d be in exactly as much trouble if you did the same damage by throwing stones.)
In my state, some animals are considered vermin, and can be killed whenever. Others (which probably include raccoons, but i haven’t checked. It does include gray squirrels) can only be killed is season, or, if they are damaging your property. There are also laws against torturing animals. But in general, it’s okay to kill them, if they are in season, if they are vermin, or if they are damaging your property.
Also, in my state, it’s generally legal to kill a wild animal that is harming your property, or to trap it and release it back on your property. (Maybe after putting a grill over the top of your chimney, or patching the hole in your fence.) But it’s illegal to trap a wild animal and move it before releasing it. (There are a very few exceptions, which require a permit and special reasons.) So when a coyote starting eating too many small dogs in the neighborhood, the animal control officer and the police tracked it down and shot it. And hoped the rest of its family would move on their own. But they couldn’t move the animal.
It’s considered bad to move wild animals both because
most of the animals are territorial, and if you dump one in another’s territory, it will generally be killed.
that’s a good way of spreading disease among wild animals.
The newspapers run semi-regular reminders that it’s illegal to trap and move animals, with quotes from wildlife experts about why it’s cruel to do it.
That’s a coati, an animal I’ve always wanted to pet if the opportunity came along. The first time I ever saw them was at Gloria’s Exotic Pets in St Albans West Virginia, they had 2 or 3 bottle fed babies for sale and those li’l critters almost broke my heart they were so cute, with their little rubbery snoots and claw-equipped baby hands. Another time there was a sort of tent-show mini-zoo at the County Fair one year, and one of the gents whose show it was had a wee baby coatimundi sitting on his lap, drinking adorably from a human baby bottle.
I don’t know anyone who eats raccoons, but they are related to bears. And bears are said to be tasty if they’ve been eating tasty food. (And nasty if they’ve been living off garbage.) So i imagine that if he fattens them up on apples or acorns they are pretty good, and that if he slaughtered them right after they were caught, they might not be so good.
You do not need a license to shoot racoons on your own property in my state (Wisconsin) and you can use air rifles to hunt the following:
Bobcat
Fox Squirrel
Gray Fox
Gray Squirrel
Hare
Rabbit
Raccoon
Red Fox
Skunk
Small Game
Squirrel
Some municipalities have ordinances about using air rifles. But ordinance violations are not crimes in this state. I’ve read that over 1/3 of all racoons are rabid. As a peace officer I interpret dispatching one as a form of self defense/defense of others as you are eliminating a potentially dangerous animal. So let the pellets fly. or use C-Bee .22 ammo. It’s a lot of fun to shoot and whisper quiet for back yard safaris.
Ex-zookeeper here - our children’s zoo had a coati in the '6o’s, and he was a sweet-tempered chap. He liked to lick your hand with his long tongue, which would give you a close look at his amazing fangs. We never offered him to children to pet, because he was a well-armed wild animal.
I live in the northeast, but i know that 20 years ago we had a rabies epidemic, and a lot of skunks and raccoons had it. A local politician saw a raccoon wobbling across his driveway, and shot it. (I forget whether he used a firearm or a pellet gun.) Then he called animal control, which picked up the corpse and tested it. Yup, rabies.
That made the local newspaper, where he was celebrated for protecting the neighborhood. A police officer was quoted praising him for quick thinking and acting responsibly. It seems pretty unlikely he was breaking any laws.
But the rabies epidemic has passed, at least here. I haven’t heard of a rabid animal in several years. (And during the peak of the epidemic it was common. I saw a rabid skunk in my yard, for instance.)
When my parents were still living on the farm, Dad liked to raise a good-sized plot of sweet corn. Almost-ripe corn is considered a delicacy by the masked bandits, so Dad went to great lengths to protect his crop from the cunning bastards. He found that an electric fence consisting of two strands of wire was a great deterrent, but he also set a live trap which nailed a couple of the thieves each year.
The question then became how to eliminate the raccoon once it’s in the trap. He didn’t want to shoot it for fear of harming the trap, and he didn’t want to put it in the stock tank where it would likely foul the water. So he came up with his own solution: He put the trap into a large garbage bag, stuck one end of a garden hose in the bag, sealed it, and ran the other end to the exhaust on his car. Running the car for 5-10 minutes did the job, permanently.
(And, yes, Dad’s ancestors were German. Why did you ask?)
To add to the growing list of “states where it’s perfectly legal to shoot a raccoon on your property with an air rifle”, Indiana is firmly in the “Yea” column. In fact, the DNR specifically recommends raccoons be euthanized rather than relocated back into the wild.
Municipality-specific laws certainly can limit this. Indianapolis/Marion County is likely the most restrictive when it comes to discharging a firearm. Luckily, air rifles are not classified as firearms, for very obvious reasons.
Well, I actually checked too. In California it is legal to kill racoons.
Raccoons causing damage may be taken at any time by legal means. The California Department of Fish and Game Regulations prohibit the relocation of raccoons and other wildlife without written permission of the Department. For further information, contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Raccoons causing damage may be taken at any time by legal means .
And in Oregon.
Raccoons causing damage may be taken at any time by legal means. The Oregon Department of Fish and Game Regulations prohibit the relocation of raccoons and other wildlife without the written permission of the Department. For further information, contact the Department of Fish and Game.
