Ryan Goes ‘Coon Huntin’
This week I participated in the reddest of redneck sports – the ‘coon hunt. One of the guys at the mill, Dean, had been bugging me to go for a while and I finally decided to try it out. How could I not?! As they say, When in Rome …, or in this case, When in South Carolina…
‘Coons come out at night, so that’s when the ‘coon huntin’ is done. I met up with Dean at his mom’s trailer around 7pm. As I pull into the driveway, all I hear is a roar of barking. Dean has not 1, not 2, but 5 hounds he uses for raccoon hunting. He’s got a young one – T.O.O. (stands for The Other One since he couldn’t figure out what to name her) – that he’s just starting to train. He picked her out and also one of his seasoned dogs for tonight’s trip.
To prepare me to the trip Dean loaded me up with my “equipment” – basically a battery pack attached to a light through a cable. The battery back was fairly sizable – several pounds – and had its own belt to strap it on. Dean and his friend attached the lights to their hats. I just carried mine like a flashlight.
Soon after, Dean’s friend shows up with his two dogs. His friend has a special dog box he has in the back of his pickup. We load all four dogs into the dog box and the three of us piled into his pickup. The dogs were still barking like crazy. We drove a ways down a dead end dirt rode and stopped along a wooded area. Dean and his friend let the dogs out and attached radio collars to them. Dean’s friend had a receiver that would beep when you were pointing it in the direction of the dogs. It’s pretty handy as I would soon find out.
We let all four dogs loose and within seconds they were gone – tearing through the pitch black forest. A few minutes later the two young dogs came back to the truck. They still hadn’t figured out the whole concept of ‘coon huntin’.
‘Coon hunters know their dogs. Dean and his friend could tell just from the bark whose dog was barking and whether the dog was on trail or if it had tree’d a ‘coon. By now the dogs were so far off we couldn’t hear anything. We pulled out the radio beacon and figured out which direction they had gone. We put the two young dogs back in the box and drove in the direction the other dogs had gone.
We pulled down another dirt rode and heard the dogs barking like crazy. They had tree’d a ‘coon. We pulled the truck over, grabbed a .22 and started walking towards the barking. We brought the young dogs with us – hoping maybe they would see and learn something from the two experienced dogs.
After about 10 minutes walking we finally got to the dogs. They were both standing against a tree and barking up into it like crazy. The three of us starting shining our lights into the tree to find the raccoon. Now, raccoons are pretty good at not being seen. You’d think you’d be able to see one pretty easily in a bare tree, but you can’t. Dean had a contraption called ‘Coon Squaller. You blow in it and it makes a noise like a raccoon in a fight. It tends to freak them out and get them to move so you can see them. After a few blows on the squaller the raccoon finally looked down at us and we saw the refection of our lights in its eyes. Still, he was pretty high up in the tree. It took Dean and his friend about 6 shots with the .22 before they finally hit it. When they finally did the raccoon started violently shaking and quickly dropped out of the tree – hitting a few branches on the way down. It dropped right into a shallow creek. Within seconds the dogs were on it. The each grabbed one end of the ‘coon and started shaking it out. It only took a minute or so before the ‘coon was dead.
Dean and his friend then dragged the seasoned dogs off the raccoon. They tossed it onto a low branch trying to get the young dogs to hone their hunting kills. The young dogs didn’t really care. The seasoned dogs, however, were still barking like crazy. As the “rookie” I got to haul the dead raccoon out of the forest. We wanted to keep it for a friend of Dean’s who likes to eat them.
After this successful hunt we stopped back at Dean’s place and swapped dogs. We drove out to another remote location and let the dogs go. They didn’t go quite as far this time – at least not so far that we couldn’t hear them when they finally tree’d a ‘coon. We trudged again through the dark forest to where the dogs were. This time they weren’t successful. We spent a good while looking up in the tree for a raccoon, but finally came to the conclusion there wasn’t one. The dogs had screwed up. Dean and his friend said the dogs will screw it up about 20% of the time.
This was our last hunt of the night. We drove out of the woods back to Dean’s place and I headed home. I could now add “’Coon Huntin’” to my list of interesting experiences.
Apparently an even better ‘coon huntin’ experience is to use mules. You let the dogs go then, when they’ve tree’d a raccoon you let out the mules and hop on. The mules are trained to head straight for the dogs. The only problem is that they go straight to the dogs. They don’t care about hills or braches or bushes that are in the way, so you need to hold on tight and pay attention or you’ll find yourself clothes-lined by a branch and flat on your back.
