I need some opinions on what may have happened to a racoon that I recently shot, please.
I live in a rural area and recently had a regular visit to the hen house by a maurading racoon. My wife saw him several times at night and we could see where he was trying to get into the chicken coop. Point being that we only ever saw one racoon. I started going out at different times at night with a gun. We caught him actually in the coop just seconds before he could have done some damage. So I shoot him and toss him outside to be dealt with in the morning. This is at 10 pm.
At 6am I go out and his body is moved from the coop area and onto the lawn, close to the house. He is completely skinned up to his head with the hide still attached there like a cape. only his feet and head still had hide on. There were a couple tuffs of hair laying nearby on the lawn.
What was especially weird to me was that the hide was removed from the legs exactly where you would expect someone to make cuts around the "wrists" on all four legs, just above any pads/claws. And, none of the meat was touched. No marks at all on the now naked body except for an occasional bullet hole.
I assumed some animal did it and i got rid of the carcass. I regret now having not laid out the skin to determine if incisions were made up the legs and belly. I doubt that seriously happened but I also doubt seriously that a coyote or other animal detected that dead racoon and came in and did this just hours after.
There are coyotes around but they never come near the house in the 3 years I've been here. I'm wondering if another racoon would/could do this??
