With 4,069 records, the common raccoon is one of the most thoroughly documented mammals in Illinois. Cook County alone accounts for more than 1,300 of them, and the rest spread statewide, from Shawnee National Forest and Mermet Lake in the south to the preserves along the Lake Michigan shore.
At home almost everywhere
Raccoons classically belong to wooded bottomlands and stream margins, where they den in hollow trees and hunt crayfish, frogs, and other prey along the water’s edge, feeling for food with remarkably dexterous front paws. But the animal is an opportunistic omnivore, and Illinois’s record shows how far that adaptability carries it: reports come from the swamps around Mermet Lake, the oak woods of Starved Rock State Park, and the forest preserves and neighborhoods of the Chicago region alike.
Most visible in spring
Reports run through every month and rise to their strongest from April through June. That peak fits the raccoon’s year, when females are tending young in dens, adults range widely to feed them, and mild nights keep the animals moving. In the coldest weeks an Illinois raccoon may den up for days at a time, but it does not truly hibernate, and it emerges to forage during any thaw.
Status in Illinois
NatureServe ranks the common raccoon S5, Secure, in Illinois, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
