9 Scents That Raccoons Hate (and How To Use Them) - Pest Pointers

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Hot Pepper Keeps Raccoons Away

When raccoons are out, looking for food, their most effective way to find a food source is through their olfactory receptors (responsible for picking up scent.)

Hot pepper is one of the most potent scents that you can use to drive them away because it irritates their sense of smell. So, it’s less likely for them to continue their search for food. If you use hot pepper regularly, it may teach these critters that your property is off-limits for them.

It’s the first that we recommend because it’s almost always available in every household. If you only have small amounts of hot pepper, you can purchase something like this 5LB Bag of Cayenne Pepper.

There’s one caveat to it, though; hot pepper only irritates their sense of smell, and its scent diminishes over time.

A persistent raccoon will find its way back to your house in a few days if you don’t keep applying hot pepper in places where they’re most likely to find food. So, if you’re going to use it as a raccoon deterrent, be sure to use it regularly and apply it in every location where they’ll find food or pathways that they use to go to their food sources.

For application, sprinkle the pepper onto areas where you don’t want the raccoons visiting.

Spray a Combination of Onion and Pepper

Hot pepper works effectively against raccoons, but sometimes, temporary irritation isn’t enough to keep them out of your property. So you may want to try a combination of onion and pepper of an equal mixture boiled in water.

This combination will irritate their sense of smell while releasing an unappetizing smell that may help keep raccoons away.

Despite its pungent smell, though, onion and pepper mixture will only last for a few days. The scent diminishes over time, so if you want to keep raccoons out of your property for good, you need to use this combination at least twice a week.

You may also need to spray it in places that they use as their habitat to teach them that getting inside your property will only get their olfactory receptors irritated.

While this is an option, really it’s a temporary solution as is with using ALL scents. They go away after sometime!

Peppermint Essential Oil To Deter Raccoons

It takes a LOT of time and effort to use these scents to drive raccoons away from your property. So another viable option for you is to use a scent that most critters hate.

Peppermint.

A widely used essential oil, peppermint oil is profound across many industries and works well to keep raccoons at bay

My recommendation is that you purchase a peppermint based wildlife repellent spray, something like Rodent Sheriff Ultra-Pure Peppermint Spray.

You can even take it to the next level by using peppermint essential oil straight, although this may be more expensive.

Regardless if you use a straight spray or pure essential oil, like any scent, you’ll have to keep reapplying when the scent goes down possibly daily or weekly depending on the strength of the smell.

Plant Garlic Bulbs or Spray Garlic Juice

Raccoons go out at night, and they hate the scent of garlic! No, they’re not vampires. But if you have a garden, you can keep them out of the garden beds by planting garlic bulbs. It lasts longer than other methods that we’ve shared with you, and you don’t have to keep doing it just to keep it a potent deterrent against raccoons.

The scent that garlic bulbs produce won’t be enough to cover your entire property. So if you want to keep your house free from raccoons, you can use some of these bulbs to make garlic juice. It releases a more pungent smell that lasts longer.

However, you still have to apply it throughout the perimeter of your property, and in every location where raccoons have easy access to food.

You can even spray it on your crops regularly, especially those that are far from your garlic bulbs to make sure that there won’t be any food available for these critters. You can also use it to make their habitat inhospitable, which will eventually force them to move to another place where they can take up residence.

Sprinkle Cinnamon in Food Sources & Access Points

Cinnamon is another perfect spice that you can use because aside from producing a potent scent that raccoons hate, you can also use it for your meals. It even has a longer shelf life than the other spices on this list, so you can stack up on cinnamon without worrying about the excess.

However, cinnamon can only temporarily irritate a raccoon’s sense of smell.

So you need to use it regularly and apply it directly to the pathways that raccoons use to access their food.

Aside from this, you also need to sprinkle ample amounts of cinnamon in locations that raccoons visit, to make sure that it will work well in keeping them out.

Use Ground Black Pepper in Specific Locations

Humans have a very low number of olfactory receptors, but ground pepper can still irritate our sense of smell when inhaled directly. So you can expect that raccoons will experience amplified irritation with it, especially if they’re out looking for food.

However, for it to be an effective deterrent, you have to put it in precise locations, especially in places that they go through when they enter your house.

Ground pepper works well if raccoons are not yet staying inside your house. Since they’re still unfamiliar with the place, they’ll always rely on their sense of smell to find food sources.

Depending on how serious your raccoon situation is, you may want to leave it to a professional. Call our nationwide network of pest control professionals to get connected with an exterminator near you in seconds for free. Using our partner network helps support pestpointers.com and keep content churning. Thank you tons!