I don’t think I know of anyone who really even coon hunts anymore. The trainers I know that do are the field trial types and don’t shoot them out. My uncle Albert and Mr John C Martin used to take me when I was a young buck. Mr John raised up and won the world championship with Radar at least once that I know of. My buddies from Echo always had coon and deer dogs before the state outlawed buckshot in dale co. Man those were some good times. We’d load 1 dog in the houndsman deluxe and a few cases of beer in the other stall, stay out all night “looking for the dogs” with whatever chicks we corralled into “coon hunting” that particular weekend

Basically the stuff we talked about in this thread........

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=3849006#Post3849006

Yeah and we’re talking about managing coon populations on millions of acres of land across the state…..

When I ran dogs, that is how I got access to most of the properties I could hunt was to shoot every coon we treed. It was hard to get access to bigger chunks of land 20 years ago, so I can’t imagine how bad it would be now. Hides aren’t worth anything, and people are scared to death that running coon hounds are going to push all of their deer off. Hound hunting is a dying breed, but I would love to have a couple dogs right now to turn loose on places with feeders. I could thin the herd in a couple weeks.

I went around and around with the DCNR on this bounty/reward deal.

Good luck. I am 100% for it.

So to judge the situation fairly here’s the potential downside to such an idea……..Racoons occupy a broader area than do turkeys…..In other words, there’s a lot of places where coons exist that turkeys don’t …….So for example, coons being trapped in town are not going to be directly impacting any turkey nests……If we trap 100,000 coons then you may end up with only 50,000 that comes from turkey nesting areas…..or less.

Also, I believe studies have shown that trapping doesn’t have the same impact in lower level turkey populations like it does where turkeys are well established……..Therefore, that may cut your positively affected areas down a little bit more

Wish all you folks with all this extra money would stop raising the cost for others to hunt .

You want less predators worry about your on spot stop worrying about mine

There’s the potential for what I just mentioned to happen and it probably would to some degree……but I’d think the way it would actually play out is that a really high percentage….something like 60-70% of all properties where turkey hunting was taking place would have someone trapping on it…….That would mean that the vast majority of existing populations would be positively effected or affected… ..and there are already existing turkey populations in every county……So you should get some growth and possible expansion out of the current populations…….Also, even if all the coons may not directly impact a turkey nest…….If we start taking out something like 100,000+ coons per season statewide then we could potentially lower the overall base coon population and decrease immigration/dispersion rates…….which in turn should help the existing populations with any growth and expansion……

Of course this is assuming that the hawks don’t kill all of the excess chicks that you create……..I think that actually may happen on some years when their main prey sources are low…… but on the years when there are plenty of other prey, that’s when you’ll see bigger jumps in the population growth of the turkeys due to the incentive.

You also got ask, what is it costing in terms of extra birds being killed and does that cause any negative outcomes that offset the gains from the trapping. There’s really no way of saying definitively beforehand but I think that 20:1 rate would more than pay for itself in terms of producing way more birds than what gets killed. Like has previously been said…..if 5,000 people participated that would equal 100,000 coons……..If half of those people were successful at getting a bird during that early week it would only be 2,500 birds……and its safe to say that a portion of those were going to get killed anyways ……So I’m just guessing that the total net extra kills will not really be that many compared to boost in overall production.

Those are just some things to ponder about such an incentive.

They'll just issue a paper tag or form you can fill out, you can toss it, and print a new one...

Im with Frankie. Don't want a dollar of my license money spent on any bounty. Take care of your own land how you see fit.

I forgot to mention.........no decoys allowed during the early bonus week.

Could always ban them and then sell permits to use them . Lol

In essence that would be what the trapping incentive would do……give back the days they took away in exchange for folks doing a little trapping……Truth be told I think some of y’all are just worried that others are gonna be out hunting a week earlier than you.

Using my money to do it. I trap without government assistance, and burn, and thin and spray gums and privet......without uncle joe having to send me money

Dang, how much could it actually cost to have someone receive vacuum sealed coon tails through the mail and enter into the system who sent them?? Doesn’t seem like very much administrative cost to run such a system…… As much money as gets spent on other things that seems like a small drop in the bucket. Heck. if you could just figure out a use for a hundred thousand coon tails you’d be making money……Maybe use the fur to build sasquatch decoys and raffle them off.

Here’s something else that could potentially happen from such an incentive………There’s an estimated 70,000 turkey hunters in the state from what I looked up……correct me if that’s wrong. Now I’m guessing that’s overestimating when it comes to the number of serious turkey hunters who actually go numerous times per season……..But lets say there’s 40,000 serious hunters and of that half decide they want to take advantage of the trapping incentive…….20,000 hunters……..It would take 400,000 coon tails to fill that demand……..In a situation like that it wouldn’t take too long for folks to really have to branch out looking for coons to trap…..

That’s one of the things that leads me to believing that a high percentage of properties would start getting trapped…….Even if 10,000 hunters participated that would be 200,000 coons annually which I believe is higher than any of the top years during the fur era. That may be wishful thinking though for that many to participate……but if they did it might get interesting.

I think it would probably end up striking a pretty good balance when all was said and done……You’d have some folks on social media boasting about “getting their twenty!”……turkey season would roll around and other folks would be hatin on them for getting to go early and the guy that trapped his would be telling them folks to go out and trap their twenty if they wanted to start early too……..and it would make for good entertainment and a bunch of extra turkeys.

Follow me here and you’ll see why a lot of turkey hunting properties will get trapped…….


So lets say we have our 10,000 hunters, or whatever it is, who want to take advantage of the incentive…….A portion of those hunters are going to trap the coons themselves and will most likely do at least a portion of it on their hunting property.

Another portion of that 10,000 will pay someone else to trap the coon tails for them…..They’ll buy them from a guy who goes out and traps for that very purpose…….You’ll have numerous trappers spring up all over the state doing this and they’ll be looking for places to trap to get these tails to sell……And who is going to be the most likely people to advertise to them that “Hey you can come and trap my land!!!”…?????…..It’ll be turkey hunters. It may even get to a point where ALL turkey land is wrapped up with someone having the “trapping rights” permissioned to them. Ultimately the biggest risk might just be that the incentive will be far too successful.

No , if having more deer and turkeys in itself for a land owner isn't incentive enough to do his own trapping then screw him .

A trapper will be in it for the bounty money not for the good of turkeys . You got trappers in cities that catch coons as pest ,, what would keep them from claiming bounty money for coons that's never seen a turkey egg.

Hell, I stop at ever stream of water next to a high way and set a trap . I would only worry about bounty money and how fast I could make it . I'd pick up ever road kill I found too