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janet kosnik

Through the years, I’ve collected many different ideas from other houndsmen on what to use to lure Mr. Coon into the live trap.

Here in Montana, I’ve always had good luck baiting a trap with canned sardines, the plain ones in oil. That’s worked really well for me in the spring and summer. But I’ve tried to catch a coon this past fall and winter for my young pups and I’ve had a REALLY hard time catching one!

I’ve used the tried and true method of sardines with the oil from the can drizzled out in front, leading the coon to the trap. Placing the trap under trees where my hounds have treed coon before with no luck. The weather was warm enough for the coon to still be moving so there shouldn’t have been any reason for me not catching a coon. But all I finally trapped were skunk…3 of them!

So I had to change my tactics. Friends have told me about using raw eggs, dogfood, Little Debbie’s fudge cakes, grain with pure vanilla extract and plain pork rinds. But all of these will attract skunk in my area, so beware. It seems that early on when the weather is just beginning to get warm in the day in late winter/early spring, skunk seem more active than the coon are. So I tried to find something tasty for Mr. Coon but not a favorite of Mr. Stinky. What I came up with is this: peanut butter and marshmallows. I’m having real good luck with this combination. I put some peanut butter directly on the pad/lever in the trap and put a few marshmallows in the trap and scattered outside, too. I smell skunk in the area around the trap but so far, coon are the only ones going for this bait.

If your live traps are kept outside in the weather, the lever to release the trap door sometimes becomes harder to step on. Take some cheap vegetable oil, like cooking oil not motor oil, and grease all those moving parts well. It’ll make for an easy release of the door and you’ll be able to catch that coon for training.

Let me know if you have some other tried and true methods for live trapping coon. I’ll be happy to add them to this article for other houndsmen to try.