Can you guess what animal this is in the first 10 seconds of the video?

Made my guess...

Placed my bet.

Big raccoon I see them bastards through the thermal almost every night.

That walk is unmistakable. Raccoon.

What do I win?

I would have guessed a skinny raccoon, but then again, maybe the coons I see at my lease have just eaten too much of my corn

They make for fun target practice

What is interesting to me is based on the responses so far it would seem the determination and "ID" of the animal isn't coming within the first 10 seconds of the video.

It is a neat way to illustrate some of the difficulties of getting used to seeing the world through a thermal eye, anybody here think they can tell me why it is DEFINITELY a coon based on only the first 10 seconds of footage?

Simple Searcher, there is no prize on round 1 of the game - this is the practice round

At 6 seconds I knew exactly what it was with the ears and the way he stood up to figure out what was going on, and that's coming from somebody that hunts with thermal religiously!

Great point! I am just starting to figure out hunting with thermal, overall I have just shy of a years experience with it.

Common animal recognition isn't where i'd like it to be just yet.

Benny, I have seen a lot of coons at my place through thermal, so I had an educated guess it was a coon by the appearance of the ears and then when it stood on its back legs it was a give away for a coon.

It was confirmed later in the video by the walk and all that, but the ears really give it away. having said that, the body size of the coon looks really skinny compared to what I am used to seeing, and I looked at your answer list before watching, so it was a tough call in the initial 4 seconds between a fox or a coon (never have seen a ringtail cat before and the ole possum just has a different facial structure all together so I knew it wasn't that, seen plenty of them too) but the fox will have bigger ears compared to his head and that lead me to think it was a coon. Then at 6-7 seconds when it stands on its back legs was a tall tale giveaway for a coon, never have seen a fox do that, they will typically jump up from all four to see rather than stand up.

more time under the thermal will make you better at quick ID, but you do have to be careful you aren't seeing what you want to see vs what is actually there.

Body language is a good giveaway, I had a bobcat come in last night as soon as it came out if the treeline I knew exactly what it was. My biggest issue "sometimes" is judging distance especially on a piece of property I'm not familiar with. The cat came in to the call and I over shot em

Bingo. Even have a hard time sometimes on my own places I know pretty well. I had a triple coyote kill the other week, I would have had more had I known they were juveniles but I thought they were farther than they were due to their relative size and the location was a different place I normally hunt on my place. Having said that, body language told me they were young ones from after the first couple shots as they didn't all run away quickly, and the fact there were 6-7 of them tightly grouped together made me think it was a young group (although i have seen big packs of adults roaming together from a distance, most of the adult coyotes on my place are solitary or a couple). Still don't know the exact distance i was shooting at, but made adjustments and connected on three. Thank goodness for 30 round mags

I am looking forward to testing out the latest Pulsar Digisight n850 LRF model.

LRF = Laser Range Finding

It is supposed to be built into the HUD on screen and give you a readout of distance to target at night.

This would appear to be a BIG addition to the hog slaying arsenal, to be able to detect with a thermal moncular, pull up the digi scope and be given an exact range to target

DRT..........

They had a prototype at SHOT... It was sweet! A rangefinder on all night vision and thermal scopes should be a requirement.

In addition to distance being a challnge, I also find that determining the angle of the target can be difficult.

The Raccoon's stand up like that all the time where I hunt to see over the tall grass.

I would have thought a ringtailed cat, we used to shoot them around Christoval TX back in the 60s.