How long before a raccoon moves on?

had a raccoon in my shed. It went out at night and I sealed the hole it entered in, but he keeps coming back trying to get in... How long does it take before he moves on, and is there anything I can do to encourage that? I'm not sure how long my patch up will keep him out!

Did you check to see if there are baby raccoons in the shed?  If there are, the raccoon will keep trying to get back in. 

never in our experience over 37 years. Second and third generation of the critters called our property home. We moved --problem solved!

House next door was empty and a racoon family moved in.  There was a hole in the roof and we could watch them pop up.  Raccoons evicted and hole repaired.  We observed Raccoons coming back to visit for quite some time.  Next breeding season, raccoons returned to covered porch for mating rituals, but we rarely saw them after that...perhaps because fresh human homeowners had similar daylight/nocturnal hours to natural hours of racoons.

crap- there's babies! I'm leaving the doors open tonight and hoping mom takes them away. She stayed near our property all day, now I know why. I already put down mothballs and some kind of deterrent pepper powder stuff, so will now clear a path so she can come and get them. I'm hoping I bothered her nesting site enough that she doesn't feel safe... Pretty please

One method that usually worked in an unfinished attic was to fling a large quantity of moth balls into the problem area.  As the heat from the sun warms the shed,  at least to a small degree the moth balls will give off a vapor.   Usually worked and you don't have much to lose.

A few years back we had some in the attic, they had torn a hole in the roof.  My husband thought they were squirrels, so he climbed up on a ladder and tried to spray them with a hose (I believe his words were "I'm gonna drown those f*cking rats") only to see three little wet baby raccoons staring back at him.  Once he realized that they were raccoons and not squirrels he quickly went down the ladder.  Later that night we saw the momma take them through the back yard and over the fence, one by one, so they then became the neighbor's problem.  We then hired Dave DeCastro to fix the roof, but he first put in one way mesh for a week just in case so he wouldn't trap any inside.

This year we heard them again.  This time my husband went up inside the attic and started screaming, stomping, and throwing random object in random directions. He never actually saw them in the attic, we could just hear them up there.  We didn't see them leave this time, but it has been about 3 weeks and we haven't heard a peep since. 

Apparently insane human males are good for scaring them off. I don't recommend this method though unless your health insurance covers rabies shots. 

Until whatever local injustice has been put to rights. Then, like David Banner at the end of each week of The Incredible Hulk, he packs his daypack and walks mournfully to the next town, never knowing true peace.