With 1,815 records spread across 71 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, the common raccoon is one of the most thoroughly recorded mammals in the state. Dane, Milwaukee, and Waukesha counties lead the tally, and the map reaches from the Lake Michigan shore to the marshes of White River Marsh and Crex Meadows wildlife areas.
At home almost anywhere with cover and water
Raccoons are omnivores with famously dexterous front paws, equally willing to fish crayfish and frogs from a marsh edge, strip a corn row, or den in a hollow tree behind a subdivision. Wisconsin’s mix of lakes, rivers, hardwoods, and farm country suits them at every scale. They turn up at Devils Lake and High Cliff state parks as readily as in Milwaukee’s river corridors, a spread that reflects genuine flexibility rather than any single preferred landscape.
A winter sleeper, not a hibernator
Raccoons stay active all year in Wisconsin, though they hole up in dens during the coldest stretches and live off stored fat until mild weather returns. Records never drop to zero, even in January and February, and they climb steeply through spring to a May and June peak, when females are nursing litters in tree cavities and family groups begin foraging together along shorelines and field edges after dark.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the raccoon S5, Secure, in Wisconsin, and the species is native throughout the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
