Coon Numbers Down Few YOY?

So I am a bit of a stats person and I keep spreadsheets of my catches by location along with the sizes of all the finished fur. So this year my coon catch is off about 25% from normally trapping the same spots. Marginal impact from weather during trapping season, it has been wet, but I have worked around that and no real cold/snow to shut down the coon movement. Certainly given the market, not necessarily a bad thing if my catch is down however I have noticed that I have caught almost no young of year (YOY) coon. our early YOY tend to run L-XL in size. Late litters will run S-M-LM. My statistics show that while total catch is off 25% I am running at around 90% 2X-4X. I am pretty consistent every year with 2x-4x running at around 65% (say 2 out of 3 coon.) If I would have caught the "normal" amount of smaller coon I would be right in line with total past results. This year I have caught some of the biggest, well furred coon I have ever seen (color is a whole other matter as many look like bumble bees.) No sign of illness whatsoever in the ones caught. These are all caught in the same general area(say 15 mile radius) but seeing almost no YOY at any location. Anyone else in Ohio or other region experiencing this? We have had a very wet year including a wetter than normal later spring/early summer. Depending on what data you look at our year to date precip is anywhere from 25%-40% above normal. I am wondering if there may have been some impact form the wet conditions on the young. I am curious what it will look like next year with the limited number of young this year? With all this being said.......I did catch a crazy number of possums this year. I stopped counting pretty quickly as I realized i did not have enough fingers/toes on myself and all my family to keep count.

Of the few coon I caught, all the kits seems to be near or around den sites this year.

All the standing corn I've been around this year had shown very little damage from raccoon and most the creek banks I saw between boughts of flooding have shown little sign and what tracks I've seen are bobcat and big raccoon tracks.

They must have all moved here. I killed about 20 this summer, in my yard, as they decimated my chickens. Four or five family groups.
I'm still getting more coon on trail cameras than ever before. I've caught a handful this fall, but only set a few traps out for a week so not much of "sample".

If a lot of your coon are ground dwellers or Denning in old beaver huts, you could lose a lot of young coon with high water events.

Does 60" inches if rain since July count as a high water event? LoL.

Coons are WAY down here also prime places that produced several every year in the past that yielded 1 coon and in some great places that did not hold a coon or a skunk, talking old farm places with a ton of denning options for them. Must of been distemper early in the year as I'm not finding any carcasses like the last time it went through they were laying all over then.

Never seen so may dink coons dead on highway. Must have been a lot of late litters here. Seen a dead one on the road this morning that wouldn't weigh 10lbs. I have never seen anything like it .

The 18 of November I was scattering out corn and heard a noise. Had 3 of the smallest coons I have ever seen in the wild coming running up to me. Just like feeding some chickens. These little fellows had to be less than 5 lbs. About the size of my hand. I took several videos but don't know how to post them here.

Couple years ago I caught a female and 2 of her pups the same day and she didn't weigh 10 lbs. Late litters will get you late litters.

They found a few coon in my area this summer that had rabies. I don't know how widespread it got. The DOW dropped rabies vaccine treated baits over a large area around here trying to stop the spread of the rabies. My coon catch is way off. Obviously some is due to the high water that has been prevalent this year but I'm not sure that is the sole reason. Possibly all the bobcats in the area have killed them off. Unbelievable how many of them are around.

I thought it was the USDA doing the baits? From what ive read on those things they do a good job vaccinating coon as a dead coon can't get rabies...

It may have been the USDA. I'm going from memory. Just know the paper said some organization was dropping the baits.

Are you saying the baits that they drop kill the coon instead of vaccinating them?

If baits are dropped too heavily in an area and raccoons being gorgers, can make a decent dent in the population.

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/newsroom/news/sa_by_date/sa-2018/orv-efforts

Rabies bait drops locations in the North East, maybe it had a little more punch n the population than expected.

Coon catch way down here. One woods that is usually good for 15-18 produced 3. High water kept me out of some ditches that are usually good for a few.
And I also caught a ridiculous amount of possum, trail set, dp's, blind sets,... Didn't matter, they showed up in all of them.

I haven't seen the high number of roadkills this year. Those that I have seen, most all have been pretty big ones. Very few smalls or medium sized ones.

No doubt, I must ha e caught well over a dozen possums in pocket sets and were drowned. Never caught that many possums in the water maybe a couple each year. The number caught in DPs was insane. To the point I was hoping someone would come out with an OP.

Alcatraz was pretty close to being a OP

Plenty of coon in N. W. Ohio. Only high water every other day is holding back the numbers on water animals.

I have turn more coons loose then i have taken this season

Killing quite a few coon here these last couple weeks. First weekend of December was tough. 3" of rain followed by snow then hard freeze. Now its 40s and 50s by day and mild, coon everywhere and they are in awesome prime shape. Lot of mud everywhere though so you have to walk fields to set for them but should be worth the effort. We are having one of our better coon and coyote catch decembers. Boys and I are having fun.
Jim

was like that here last year.only 7 checks in on a smaller than usual line and seems like a better crop this season.