How do yall keep 'em out???

It's more about minimizing the risk rather than keeping them out.

I use a good varmint cage around the spinner and then periodically use the dog proof traps to reduce the coon numbers in that area

You will never eliminate them.

I spend more effort catching them than trying to keep them out. DP traps and cage traps everywhere.
I also went to crank up feeders, coons cannot get to them. And I still trap coons
I have heard good thing about the Eliminator spinner plate.
There are a ton of gadgets like pipes, tack strips or grease on the feeder legs. All are a pain.
Otherwise it is a varmint cage.

If your feeder motor is 12v with a 1/4' shaft, I would install The-Eliminator Round Scatter Plate.

Marine grease on the feeder legs has worked well for me.

Thanks for the tips! Keep 'em coming!

I use 4" PVC around the legs for the past 3 years. It stops them. Take a 10' piece cut in half and place over your feeder legs.
The best part was watching the squirrels one day climb the legs and the next day after I put the PVC around the squirrels got confused, they would try one leg after another with NO results.

Any feeder that is truly coon proof will also be deer proof, or so they say. I also do the PVC pipe deal, works great. I try and stay away from varmint cages, I think it just gives them something to hang on to. My buddy has trail cam pics of a coon some how getting into the varmint cage and literally emptying the feeder. How he got in there, I have no idea...

Spot on. I've walked in and seen them hanging off the cage with one arm and reaching in pulling on the mechanism with the other. They always find a way to get to it. Very frustrating, expensive and time consuming. I never thought about the PVC thing.. Might give that a shot this weekend.

X3 on the PVC pipe....recently put the eliminator spinner plate on one feeder and seems to have really slowed down the coons. Saving corn.

http://www.texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/5290827/Re:_Varmint_Cages#Post5290827

This is how I set mine up with PVC.

Texas Direct Hunting Products Feeder and Eliminator spin plate. Just awesome...

Charlie

Moultrie has a cage you can affix to bottom of 55 gal barrel. I got em at Academy's. Think they go for around $15.

I used that square cage on all of my feeders before we went to crank-ups. I never had a coon get into one.

They don't get to your timer on a crank up? That's all we have these days and they get on our timers all the time...there is nothing I hate more than a coon!!! Well except multiple coons!!!

Catch as many as you can in traps and put on a Eliminator Spinner plate like posted above. You have to manage the population to manage the problem.

I used to put a 3 ft. strip of carpet tack strip on the top and one on the bottom of each leg. Very sharp. Coons no likey.

Never ending Battle...I have nightmares and night sweats about it...It has grown to consume me enough where I don't even focus on Deer anymore, just eliminating the "Enemy"

No doubt! I feel like I'm running a coon nursery! Not only do they destroy my feeder, they hang out on my bow stand and crap all over it. Essentially, they move my corn from the feeder to a platform 20 ft up a tree.

Dog proof traps..we've caught 31 so far..

I did that on a feeder last year, and as far as I could tell, it just gave them better traction. It certainly didn't stop them. My game cam pics showed em going up and down the tack strips like an escalator!

The ONLY coon proof feeders I have are the ones I suspended by a steel cable between 2 trees 20 feet apart, using a wench to raise and lower, and the Capsule feeder that uses an auger to pull the corn up rather than using gravity.

I've not tried the eliminator spinner plate, but it looks like it ought to work.

Varmint guards work as long as the distance from the guard screen and the spinner plate is further than the length of their arms and the openings are small enough to prevent anything but their arms to enter.

I've tried the grease on the legs trick before, and all that did was collect corn dust and make my feeder timer very greasy when the coons transferred the grease to the unit.

I've not tried the rotating PVC tubes on the legs as shown in an earlier post. For those that have, does it work? Coons are pretty resourceful and clever, so I'm a bit skeptical of that.

I have told this before. 4" PVC 5 ft long on each leg. The coons can't climb it. On our lease all the guys thought I was nuts, they work. Weather white (don't bother the deer) or black, use schedule 30. The squirrels don't climb either.

Moultrie is a peddler of crap.

I have a pic of my feeder, with one of those cages, with a coon sitting (albeit uncomfortably) INSIDE the cage, eating to his heart's content. I only wish he'd have ate so much that he got the bloat and died in there. I'd have happily cleaned that mess just for the satisfaction.

So I buttoned up the cage best I could, made sure they couldn't open the door. Next trip out they had ripped the cage completely off, then broke the spinner mech off, and emptied the barrel.

So I got mad. Then I got supplies. And turned the welder on...



That's some of that Rubbermaid shelving you can get at Lowes, and some metal strapping I had laying around. The gaps are big enough for the corn to get through, but too small for coon arms. Plus, it makes a nice ring when the feeder goes off, so they all know the food's on.

Cage is welded to the bottom of the barrel, as is the mounts for the feeder mech. If they figure out how to get through this, Ima catch them and sell them to a carnival.

We had hundreds of coons before we went to war on them. Luckily we had the crank up feeders. If you have a picture of a coon on one please share, I do not doubt it, I just don't think they can do it. Even with our invasion of them monsters, they never got to a single crank up.