No trapper education. No park sticker. This weekend.
Right now, at Governor Dodge State Park, the Wisconsin DNR is running a two-day “Learn to Hunt & Trap Raccoons” program aimed at children. It runs today, 8:30 to 4, and again tomorrow, Sunday, from 7 a.m. to noon.
This isn’t a rogue group renting a shelter. It’s on the DNR’s own events calendar. Participants pay $50, and the DNR supplies the traps and guns. The program covers trapping, running raccoons with hounds, luring them with electronic calls, and how to handle their fur once they’re dead.
No trapper education. No hunter education. No state park sticker. I called and confirmed all three. The rest of us pay to enter that park. Kids with zero training are being handed traps and turned loose with hound packs where families come for the trails and the waterfall.
What the DNR Isn’t Teaching These Kids
I rehabilitated raccoons for about ten years. Here’s what I know.
Their paws are their eyes. Almost two-thirds of the sensory area of a raccoon’s brain is devoted to interpreting touch, more than in any other studied animal. Those are the paws children are being taught to clamp in a trap.
They’re as brainy as primates. When scientists counted the neurons in raccoon brains, they found dog-level numbers packed into a cat-sized brain, putting raccoons on par with primates in neuronal density. They can remember how to solve a problem for up to three years.
The babies are still with their mothers. Young raccoons stay with their mother through their first winter and don’t leave until spring. Kill a mother this weekend and her young face a Wisconsin winter without her.
I’ve sealed up attics and taught families to live alongside these animals without killing a single one. Raccoons are not training targets, and our kids deserve better lessons than this.
Our Parks Belong to All of Us
The DNR holds our state parks in trust for every Wisconsinite, not just the ones who want to kill what lives there. When the agency waives the park fee and turns a public park into a classroom for hound hunting and fur handling, it’s spending the public trust on a tiny slice of the public.
Stand Up for Wisconsin’s Raccoons
Help Us End DNR-Sponsored Raccoon Killing in Our Parks
We’re going after the DNR for turning state parks into raccoon killing classrooms. We take no corporate or government money. We run on people like you.
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2 thoughts on “The DNR is teaching kids to kill raccoons in a state park, this weekend”
this is evil, sadistic and heartless. how can anyone hurt a innocent beautiful raccoon or any animal. this makes me so very f””””””” angry that this can even be done. evil people like this should be sent to prison. the picture of the raccoon and the hurt in the eyes will haunt me just like the others i see when i do my activism to speak up for the wildlife and non wildlife. how can anyone do such a heartless act and be fine with it???? these things need to be punished for such a vile act. i wish i could do to them what they do to animals. only self protection for one’s life is the only reason to hurt them which doesn’t happen very often. it is free will most of the time to torture and give pain or a trophy which should be stiff prison time. a life is a life and they cannot depend themselves so the good people that love animals need to say hell no, u r not going to hurt or kill another animal again. giving pain and death is not excusable and let’s protect and preserve instead of being passive about this. how can these evil monsters do such a thing?
This is unconscionable. I pray you all will be able to stop these atrocities immediately or they will become acceptable practices extending to additional wildlife. What we permit… persists!!!
this is evil, sadistic and heartless. how can anyone hurt a innocent beautiful raccoon or any animal. this makes me so very f””””””” angry that this can even be done. evil people like this should be sent to prison. the picture of the raccoon and the hurt in the eyes will haunt me just like the others i see when i do my activism to speak up for the wildlife and non wildlife. how can anyone do such a heartless act and be fine with it???? these things need to be punished for such a vile act. i wish i could do to them what they do to animals. only self protection for one’s life is the only reason to hurt them which doesn’t happen very often. it is free will most of the time to torture and give pain or a trophy which should be stiff prison time. a life is a life and they cannot depend themselves so the good people that love animals need to say hell no, u r not going to hurt or kill another animal again. giving pain and death is not excusable and let’s protect and preserve instead of being passive about this. how can these evil monsters do such a thing?
This is unconscionable. I pray you all will be able to stop these atrocities immediately or they will become acceptable practices extending to additional wildlife. What we permit… persists!!!