I woke up this morning from a deep sleep and hear "ding dong, ding dong". The sensor had sensed heat outside near the bait! Clock read 3:31am. All of a sudden I felt the adrenaline running and was almost sure what animal this was.. Don't ask me how, but I knew. I could hear the rain outside (barely) but it wasn't raining hard plus it was a little warmer than usual, around high 30's to 40deg.
I grabbed the Condor .22 and quickly loaded a Kodiak because I had a feeling I had not put enough food out. I slowly & quietly walked to the other room and approached the window. I was stunned and got a huge adrenaline rush all of a sudden!
3 racoons eating out of the bowl where I had chopped up a turkey/pork/chicken (cheap) hot dog to about 20 small pieces. I start pushing the window up and they were all done eating! They must have finished in <15secs being there were 3 of them but 2 of them had pushed 1 away so it seemed it was only 2 that ate most of it. Now they were just scouting the area around the bowl and were sniffing. By the time I had the window all the way up and shouldered the rifle they were well on the move and leaving and I was left looking at their fat behind. The good news is they did not hear me put the window up nor did they see me so I am very happy about that. I moved the bait out to 23yds from the ~16yds a couple of days ago because 10 days ago a very large racoon heard me and looked straight at me. I 'm hoping the extra 7yds made a difference. Probably not, but we 'll see. The very large racoon that visited a few nights ago was not part of this group. These were average sized racoons, more like young adults and were all the same size. I would guess probably brothers (and sisters) from the same litter because there was no fighting or growling at each other at the small meal site and they all walked away together next to each other like good little coons. Probably yearlings exploring the world without mom or mom may have kicked them out of the den to be on their own. Maybe the big one was mom.. This is going to get interesting I hope in the next few days (hopefully not weeks). I 'm going to purchase a large bag of dry cat food so I don't run out and can put out enough of the stuff which will take them a while to consume.
I 'm thinking of letting them eat a couple of more times before I attempt to take one of them (if they return). I kind of want them to get used to coming back, and make this a regular stop on their patrol, so if I bag one, the rest won't be able to resist coming back again. I wonder what my chances are shooting one "early on" and the rest coming back a few days later? I don't want to scare them all off and never see them again..
The only bad part about this early morning encounter was that I could not fall asleep until 4:45am because I kept thinking about them and what other food to get the next day for them :-) I lost more than 1hr sleep and had nothing to show for it. Oh well, it will eventually pay off I hope.
