What Georgia's no relocation rule means for your house
Most homeowners picture the same ending: someone catches the raccoon, drives it to the country, and lets it go. In Georgia that ending is not available. The state's wildlife control permit guidance allows nuisance animals to be killed or trapped and relocated, but carves carnivores out of the relocation option, and raccoons fall in that group. The reasoning is disease movement, since hauling a raccoon across county lines is a way to move rabies into a place that did not have it. The practical effect is a change in emphasis. If the animal cannot be taken elsewhere, then the only durable outcome is a building it cannot get back into. That pushes the value of the job toward exclusion and away from trapping. It also changes what a good operator sells you. A Georgia company that leads with a per animal trapping price and treats repairs as an optional add on has the priority backwards. Ask for the exclusion scope first, then the removal method, and expect a plain answer about what happens to any animal that is caught.
Permits, prohibited pets, and hiring the right person
Two Georgia rules decide who is allowed to touch this problem, and both are worth knowing before you make calls. The first is the wildlife control permit, which the state issues for periods of up to 90 days. Anyone charging a fee to trap and remove wildlife should hold a current one, and asking for it is not rude. It is the fastest filter between a wildlife company and someone with a cage from a hardware store. The second is the prohibited pet list, which includes raccoons. That matters more often than you would think, because people find a kit in a crawlspace in May and want to raise it. Georgia law does not allow that, and the healthiest outcome for the kit is usually reuniting it with a mother who is still nearby. When you call around, ask three questions: do you hold a current permit, how much raccoon specific work do you do, and what is your process during denning season. The answers will sort the field faster than comparing prices, and they cost you nothing but a few minutes on the phone.
Attic or crawlspace: two different Georgia jobs
Where the animal settled decides most of what you will pay, and Georgia housing offers both options in quantity. Crawlspace jobs dominate in older neighborhoods across Macon, Augusta and the coastal counties. Entry is at a vent screen, a loose lattice panel, or a dug channel under the skirt in soft clay. Work happens on your back in a tight space, sanitation covers duct board and subfloor insulation, and the durable fix includes a buried mesh skirt to stop digging. Attic jobs dominate in newer subdivisions. Entry is almost always the joint where soffit meets fascia, or a gable vent with the screen torn out. Work happens on ladders and roofs, and the sanitation number is driven by attic square footage. Some houses give you both, and a raccoon that loses the attic will happily try the crawlspace next. That is why the inspection should cover the whole envelope rather than the one place you heard noise. Ask any Georgia company to list every opening they found, with a photo of each, and use that list rather than the price to judge the bid.
A Georgia raccoon year, month by month
The calendar drives both difficulty and cost, and Georgia's mild profile stretches the busy season at both ends. January and February bring den shopping. Lows around 33F push animals toward insulated shelter without shutting them down, and pregnant females start testing crawlspace vents and eaves. Repairs made now are the cheapest of the year. March through July is litter season. Young arrive, the sound overhead turns to chirping and squealing, and removal stretches across several visits because kits have to come out by hand. One way doors are the wrong tool in this stretch. August through October the young disperse and go looking for their own dens, so call volume climbs again even though the jobs are simpler. This is also when USDA drops vaccine baits across the northwest corner of the state, roughly 690,000 in the 2025 round. November and December feel quiet. That quiet is misleading, since animals are still moving and any opening you leave will be found before the next denning season starts.
Health rules worth following in a raccoon household
You do not need to be frightened of raccoons in Georgia. You do need a few fixed rules, because the consequences of an exposure are severe even though the odds are low. Rule one covers contact. Nobody touches a raccoon, living or dead, and any bite or scratch means a call to a doctor or the county health department that day. The CDC counts raccoons as the top land based rabies carrier in the country at about 29 percent of reported rabid animals, and an animal involved in a bite is euthanized and tested rather than released. Rule two covers pets. Dogs and cats need current rabies vaccination, and a pet that has tangled with a raccoon needs a vet call regardless of how minor it looks. Rule three covers the mess. Roundworm eggs in an attic or crawlspace latrine need a couple of weeks to become infectious, then resist ordinary disinfectants, so nobody goes into that space to poke around before it has been cleaned properly. Keep stored belongings out of the area until the sanitation work is finished, and wash anything that was in contact with the material.