Stopping Power
Dad calls me last night and relays the following tale. I may get some details wrong. His partner says there’s a raccoon outside. Dad goes out there with a broom and swats the porch area. The raccoon stands up and is acting like it wants a confrontation. Dad goes back to the office and calls animal control. Looks up, and sees the raccoon heading toward a wood pile where a mother cat just had kittens. Dad decides you don’t mess with the cats and gets his 9mm. He shoots the raccoon twice and it falls. He goes to wait for animal control when his partner tells him the raccoon is up again. He puts three more into the raccoon to finally kill it.
He tells me this and I ask what sort of ammo he’s using. After all, if he ever needs to use a weapon in self defense, a would be attacker is probably bigger than a raccoon. He says it was ball ammo. I tell him you’ve got to get some of these. Hollow points are much more effective.
ETA: Theory is that the raccoon had distemper or some such. It’s quite odd for a raccoon not to just run away at the first sight of someone.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Terminal ballistics is strange stuff.
A 9mm JHP designed to stop a 200-lb crack fiend may not work so hot on a raccoon. Conversely, a .17HMR might turn half a raccoon’s insides to jello, but wouldn’t faze a 200-lb. crack fiend.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Once shot a feral cat with ball 9 mm, it fell down into a wall, when I went to pull it out I had a face full of snarling, feline. it took about 3 more to end it.
Since then I’ve seen 9 mm HP’s do dramtic things to cats.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:55 am
From what I’ve seen, the 147 grain 9mm ANYTHING is not a good choice. For raccoon or goblin, I’d go with a 124 grain HP like these.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
About 5 years ago I shot a skunk outside my office. Took one shot from about 5 feet with a 124gr. JHP/357sig to make it lay down and be quiet forever. It’s just what I had on hand.
A couple of months ago the dogs woke me up because they had a raccoon irritating them through the chain link fence. Little bastard was snarling and reaching through, trying to swat them in the nose while they were intent on trying to play raccoon extruder. I managed to pull the dogs away from the fence enough that the coon claimed victory and shuffled off, but as it was 0300 I was hollering for my wife to bring me something long with something spiky at the end of it so I could stake the coon, rather than shoot it.
Regards,
Rabbit.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Racoons are normally aggresive and will rise up to threaten just so they can escape. The raccon could have been rabid, that is more likely in the daytime.
Whatever he ammo at least multiple shots worked.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Yeah, 9mm FMJ is not a good round for coon. I’ve shot a few with it before and its taken anywhere from 4-8 rounds to put them down.
8 rounds raises the pucker factor a bit when you’ve only got 10 in the weapon and Mr. Coon is still itching for a fight.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Kevin,
The anti-147gr 9mm thing is so 1999. The current crop of 3rd-gen 147gr JHP’s work as well as any other good handgun round.
(Protip: With the best of the modern projectiles, caliber & bullet weight arguments are very nearly pointless. And this is coming from someone who’s carrying a .45ACP.)
August 11th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Addendum: If your JHP is designed to expand fully after three inches of penetration to take down said 200-lb crack fiend, and you use it on a critter that’s only 3.5″ thick along the wound track, you aren’t going to get results. Conversely, if you shoot the 200-lb crack fiend with a bullet designed to disintegrate in the first 3.5″ of travel, he won’t be impressed, but it’ll drop that little critter DRT.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Whatever, 9mm’s are for girls, and 500 S&W is for real men! Anything smaller than 500 S&W is not enough, unless it’s an AK…AR’s suck!
August 11th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Pfft. Pikers. 3″ magnum 12 gauge slug. Nothing but a fine pink mist…
August 11th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
And I suppose you keep one of those in your car/office?
August 11th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Errmmm …. I keep a beater Mosin-Nagant in a zipperbag in the back of the Suburban.
If I don’t kill the coon, I will at least set it ablaze.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
“And I suppose you keep one of those in your car/office?”
FUCK YEAH!
Heh, sounds like the raccoon wasn’t right, glad he put it down.
I’m sure hollow points will get better results, still what’s worth shooting once, is worth shooting twice!
I had a rabid skunk in my yard, sadly discharging a shot in city bounds would land me in the pokey.
Had to call animal control, and the thing had wandered off before they got there.
Didn’t hear about anybody being bit or sprayed, which is good. I would have felt bad if a pet had to be put down because I couldn’t grab my .22 and a garbage bag…
August 11th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Tam, my point was that the 147 grainers probably wouldn’t have time to expand in something as small as a ‘coon before they zipped on out the other side.
Like you said, if it’s designed to expand in the first 3″ . . .
August 11th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Eh, 12 guage is all that is needed. Stops the crack fiend and I know from experience that it never has an issue with raccoons. (especially if you’re using buck and ball.)
Guess I’m just into overkill. Not sure how it would go over in his neighborhood though.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Friend of mine went downstairs at midnight to find a possum on his counter. He grabbed a broom and hit it a few times. It ignored both strikes. He decided to show it who was boss and hit it HARD. He said it stopped eating, turned to face him, bared its teeth, raised one clawed paw, and hissed at him. Then it returned to eating.
Perturbed by the events, he simple left, closing the door behind him, and called animal control. He said it left of its own accord within 15 minutes.
Some of these animals are not afraid of people. That should factor into your response.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Shotgun.
#4any number of shot, #9 if that’s all you have, at porch ranges. The racoon gets the cutest one-and-a-half-inch tatoo on both sides of its body. Kind of like a sunburst.August 11th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Both raccoons and opossums are difficult to kill with firearms you might consider appropriate for a suburban setting. Neither is in a hurry to avoid you, and both fight like, well, wild animals, when cornered.
Raccoons have such an attitude that, when shocked by an electric fence, they will come back to bite it again, and are often found hanging there in the morning. If you put a smear of peanut butter on the muzzle of a .22 magnum, the raccoon will bite the pistol barrel. Be especially careful that the pistol does not go off while in this position, or the raccoon may be seriously wounded.
An opossum can take six .22 shorts through the brain without significant alteration of its thought pattern.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
All this crazy talk of shooting poor, defenseless, potentially rabid wild animals. You gonna scare people.
But considering the comments, I’m kinda glad I’ve got bears. At least it is understandable when a cylinder full of .44 mag JSPs only makes ’em mad. Plus I’ve never even needed to draw on one. (put my hand on the grip once though)
August 11th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Raccoons are FUCKING NASTY MEAN. A friend of mine and I were walking through the woods when I was 16 or so. He had a Marlin model 60, which jammed constantly, and I had nothing. We took turns shooting various targets of opportunity.
He sees a Raccoon in a tree about 10 yards away. I say “Don’t shoot it, you’ll only piss it off!” as a joke about his marksmanship, but it was a premonition of things to come. He proceeds to shoot the coon, which hunches it’s back turns and looks right at us, and makes an audible hiss. He fires several more shots, visibly impacting the Raccoon who winces with each impact, then falls out of the tree.
We walk over to find the corpse, and we get within about 15 feet of the tree, and the thing CHARGES US from out of the bushes. Brian squeezes off three wild rounds or so, the gun jams, and he works the action frantically to get it unjammed. I’m running away at this point. The thing gets to him and he swats it with the rifle hard enough to crack the stock and then he runs.
We get a safe distance away and excitedly retell the events to each other. We regain our courage, get the Marlin unjammed and go back to finish it off. It’s lying about where it was when he hit it. Out of caution, he fires the last five rounds into the still corpse. We poke it with various long sticks to confirm death. We then count the bullet holes. Eleven. That thing had at least six bullets in it when it charged us. Possibly rabid, definitely scary, and certainly mean as hell.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:05 am
At these short ranges and the possibilites mentioned I would have to say I have the perfest handgun. Taurus “Judge”, stainless, 3″ brl, 5 shot, .410 3in #4’s or .45 Colt hollowpoint. I mix and match and have the choice whenever I need it, what else can one ask for.
August 15th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
“Whatever, 9mm’s are for girls, and 500 S&W is for real men”
Perhaps only real men with sever Fruedian issues stemming from the fact that when they pee, they hold their weenie with three fingers and pee on two of them.