With 3031 records, the common raccoon is one of the most thoroughly mapped mammals in Maryland, found in every county from the barrier dunes of Assateague Island National Seashore to Catoctin Mountain Park, with Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore counties carrying the heaviest counts.
An omnivore that works with its hands
A raccoon’s forepaws are close to hands, and it uses them to feel for crayfish and frogs along muddy shorelines, raid nests, strip fruit, and open whatever a suburban yard leaves out. That flexibility lets it live almost anywhere in Maryland, in bottomland hardwoods, tidal marsh, farm country, and city neighborhoods alike, and it stays mostly nocturnal wherever people are active.
Spring is family season
Maryland records run all year but crest in April and May, when females are denning with newborn kits in hollow trees and abandoned burrows and foraging hard to feed them. Raccoons do not truly hibernate. They hole up for days during hard cold, then get back to traveling, so a mid-winter thaw can put tracks in fresh snow far from any den.
Status in Maryland
NatureServe ranks the common raccoon S5, Secure, in Maryland, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
