Tennessee’s raccoon record is one of the deepest in the state’s mammal atlas, 2,599 sightings running the length of the state, from Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge in the northwest corner to Cherokee National Forest on the North Carolina line.
Built for water and for hands
A raccoon’s forepaws work almost like hands, and it puts them to work at the water’s edge, feeling under stones and into mud for crayfish, frogs, clams, and anything else it can rinse and eat. That diet keeps it close to bottomland hardwoods, marshes, and stream courses. The wet country around Reelfoot anchors Obion County’s 480 records, the largest county count in the state, and Meeman-Shelby Forest Wildlife Management Area and Land Between the Lakes hold strong numbers in the same kind of habitat. Hollow trees supply daytime dens, and farms, parks, and neighborhoods that imitate those hollows suit it nearly as well.
No true winter for an opportunist
Raccoons do not hibernate. They den up through the worst cold snaps and come back out as soon as the weather softens, so Tennessee sightings continue in every month. The record builds through spring as new litters leave the den, and it crests in September, when that year’s young raccoons are nearly full grown, traveling with their mothers and foraging hard ahead of the leaner months.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the raccoon S5, Secure, in Tennessee, and the species is native throughout its Tennessee range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
