A year or so before we bought our house it was broken into. The woman was 108 years old that lived here, and she was clearly targeted. They broke in and stole all her silver. If only she had a EDgun Leshiy lol. I never really worried about it, but to say it's not on your mind from time to time would be foolish. This is an important little fact nugget as I dive deep into this epic pesting adventure story.
We had just had a early spring heat wave the week before, so I had been doing some ratting in my neighbors yard. I deploy snap traps as well as bait and snipe them from an elevated position on a balcony I have off my home office. This particular night, the temps just snapped and we went from 80 to 20 degrees!
I woke up to take a piss (getting old sucks!) around 2am. I heard this slamming against a wall kind of noise. I know it’s just a pellet gun, but I felt like I’d feel a lot better with it in my hands. It’s hard to explain the layout of my house, but it’s unique. From a birds eye perspective, it’s shaped like a “C”.
There’s a courtyard in the middle of that C, and then a traditional backyard off the back. The story is about an epic 2 hours, primarily in the “C”… although it ends in the backyard.
Now that I’ve given you a visual, lets get back to that loud banging on the walls. We have cameras everywhere… so I quickly took a spin through the security camera dashboard and saw nothing. I could hear it loud and clear though.
Armed with 2000 lumens, I still needed that EDgun Leshiy, and the night vision sitting on top to ease my tension (or at least give me a little peace of mind). So not to be detected, by what my 2am brain was imagining as some punks trying to get in, I army crawled through the family room… why? it has a 16ft glass door out into the courtyard in it, so I didn’t just want to walk past by foe in my boxers.
Once I was past the family room, I zipped up the stairs and grabbed my EDgun Leshiy, flipped on the ATN X-Sight 4K scope, and started to scan the courtyard from my office.
I saw nothing, but could still hear noises! I slowly crept out onto the balcony, and saw nothing… but then I noticed some movement in the bushes directly below me.
I’m in shorts and a sweatshirt and house slippers… and this is the point where I made a bad decision. I walked out on the roof to get a better angle.
It’s freezing… like hands shivering kind of cold… but I didn’t care… I finally was able to ID my foe… it was a Skunk! It had gotten it’s leg trapped in a rat trap and was slamming it against everything in an attempt to remove it.
Upon closer examination, I realized it’s leg was broken too. This tough, smelly bastard was literally trying to eat it’s leg off to free itself. I hate skunks, but I actually felt kind of bad… and cold, really cold at this point. For you fellow EDgun Leshiy owners, you know how cold that air cylinder can feel on your cheek! It's pitch black out, so I was using the ATN X-Sight scope on top of the EDgun Leshiy as my vision. I was sitting right on that roof to the right.
Normally, the story would come to a quick end, but because it was a skunk, and in my courtyard (with nice furniture)… this is just the beginning of a long "stalk". I sat there contemplating what to do, and I came up with a plan. I was going to try the old laser on a ground trick you’d do as a fun game with a dog or cat.
I had some early success, but progress was really slow! I was able to get it to move about 10ft in the direction I needed over about 30min.
I’m so cold, that I decide to come off the roof, back on the balcony, and into my office for some pants, socks, gloves, and a hat. I think I warmed up for 2-3 min. I came back out, and it was gone! WTF?!?! I then looked at the cameras, and saw it sitting down next to a target I have on the side of the house about 20 yards away.
disregard the time stamps on all my ATN scope pics/videos btw... I've never changed the settings to actually be accurate.
I’m rip shit pissed, as that exactly where I was trying to get it to go to put it out of it’s misery, and get me back in a warm bed!
I have to find it though, and figure it couldn’t be far. This thing has a broken leg, and still has a trap on it. I jump out the front door… Delta force style double back around the house whilst looking through my scope. In my mind I was badass, but the later footage proved otherwise… I looked like a middle age dude wearing slippers holding a pellet gun.
Once I made it to backyard, I was scanned the yard. I heard something in the far corner. There’s furniture and bushes, and tons of kids shit everywhere… so it took me a second, but I found it. It was stuck on the fence.
If you’ve ever shot a skunk you know things can go south quick if you’re up close. I has this gun sighted at 25 yards, so the holdover, while freezing, and free hand was just too much. There was really no good clear shot either.
I had to back up to about 18 yards, and then lay prone to find a tiny hole through some bushes, and under a table. 1 later shot later with the EDgun Leshiy, and my epic adventure comes to an end.
Cheers!
Tim