An Old Fashioned Coon Hunt

When dark-thirty rolled around last night, Ole Hoss and I were suffering pretty bad from itchy feet. It was going to be pretty bright and the full moon was already peeping around the ridge to the east of the cabin but it was still and we both knew we had to go try to bushwhack one of these old North Carolina mountain coons and hopefully to do so before the break of day. I could tell Hoss was getting impatient as I checked my light, the Garmin, the .22 shells, wiggled into the shoulder holster for the Browning Buckmark and in general was fooling around as I’m well known to do. He was tap dancing at the cabin door wanting to get out there and was giving me that “look.” Hoss is my house dog and is curled up on his bed behind my chair as I’m writing this but he makes the transition to coon dog when he sees me putting on my light.

Hoss and I have learned that it’s a whole lot easier to tackle the big ridge to the west of the cabin by four-wheeler. I recently had the back luggage rack lengthened to accommodate a large airline crate that I mounted to the rack with a couple of ratchet straps. We have to ride about a mile, mostly up, and travel a steep and rocky “road” to reach the benches that we like to hunt around the face of the ridge.

Hoss learned really quick to hunt out ahead of the four wheeler and I have one of the blue Tracker blinking lights on his collar to help me keep track of him in case I don’t hear him over the engine of the Suzuki as we make the slow grind up the grade. It’s tough to keep both hands on the grips and to watch the Garmin at the same time so I stop from time to time to see where he is if I can’t hear him.

The woods here are as dry as a popcorn fart right now and crunch like cornflakes underfoot. It didn’t take long before I saw Hoss leave the road and head uphill. I cut the engine and could hear him about 100 yards above the road, working. It wasn’t long before he opened a couple of short barks and I could tell from the Garmin that he was checking trees. He finally decided to give me the tree bark and I put the blinking light on top of the dog box in case I needed to find the four-wheeler when we came back. The Suzuki has a power point that makes it handy to plug in the blinker ($20 bucks in the towing supplies section – Walmart). It’s a trick I learned when hunting off a boat. My buddy Nubbin Moore has a battery powered strobe light that we hang on a bush when we leave the boat when hunting the White River Refuge in Arkansas. I’m going back there in a couple of weeks and can’t wait, but I digress.

Hoss was treeing on a grape vine on a poplar that went up about 30 feet or so and was broken off. The place was lousy with wild (fox) grapes. I shined everything in hand grenade range and couldn’t find it. I gave Ole Hoss a pat and told him “Good boy” for trying. Treeing coon under extremely dry and bright conditions that are feeding up in grapes is veteran stuff and I don’t expect 100% percent accuracy. I’m not perfect and I don’t expect him to be. I “rode” my hickory walking stick back down the side to the “caution” light that guided me back to my mount. I loaded Hoss and we eased on around the bench a little way just so he wouldn’t be tempted to go back.

We eased around the grade and I cut him again. We crossed a little drainage that flows year ‘round and past an old barn. I missed him out ahead and cut the engine in time to hear him open behind me going up the branch. He worked some tree laps and finally decided he had the goods. He was treed on a fair sized oak that had lots of blown-down timber around it. The coon wasn’t there. My experience tells me that when hunting in the mountains dogs can smell a track in the branch but when it leaves the creek, especially in extremely conditions, they just can’t move it. Add a little wind to that equation and it’s nearly impossible for a dog to trail a track.

As I led Hoss back to the vehicle I decided to go to the top of the mountain to see if anything had stirred out the ridge. My original plan was to try to ambush one in the dark coves of the mountain lower down but it appeared that coon had moved there very early, perhaps before dark.

We rode the four wheeler back around to where the main trail angles up the face of the mountain. Hoss roaded out ahead like our hounds used to road in front of the truck when I was a kid hunting with my dad in West Virginia. We logged many a mile at times before we struck a coon hunting that way. I stopped once to check the Garmin and could tell Hoss was already at the switchback that takes the road to the top of the ridge. By time I made it up there, over a couple of pretty steep places, I could tell he had taken the ridge to the south, just the way I wanted him to go.

I cut the engine and settled back on the seat thinking, “Man, I could have used this thing on all those all-nighters when Dad and walked countless miles in the mountains back home.” Hoss was about 150 yards to the south when he opened. He trailed off the opposite side of the mountain into an area that isn’t as steep as the east side and the timber is more open. I was enjoying that big old mouth of his when I heard what every lover of tree dogs lives to hear. I could tell Hoss was treeing with conviction on this tree and I quickly pugged in the blinker, got my walking stick and headed out the ridge, noting that the big buck that’s been using on this ridge was still at work.

Hoss was treed about 100 yards off the west side of the mountain on a tall oak that was about 18 inches through the butt. The leaves are off here in the high country and at first glance I thought it might not be there. I walked around to the north and squalled and then smiled as two green orbs lit up the night sky. “Got him!” My next thought was, “Man that coon is a long way up there. I should have brought the rifle.” I’ve streamlined my equipment in my old age and am all about equipment that is lightweight and bright. Lightweight because it’s easy to carry and bright because my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I remembered the new spotlight on my belt that Mike Kelley of K-Light recently sent me. This is an extremely lightweight LED spotlight that has three brightness settings with the highest providing an extremely tight, bright spot. I switched that baby on and it was literally like night and day. That coon appeared like he was sitting on the end of my pistol barrel. I got a rest against a small oak and touched off the Browning. I didn’t hear the desired thump but it sure got the coon moving. He moved up about two feet giving me a better shot and with the second one, he came tumbling down. “How about that,” I said to myself. I find I’m talking to myself a lot more than I used to but so far I’m not answering which, I’m told, is a good sign.

Hoss was cutting up since I had tied him at the tree and as I made sure the handgun was empty before I put it back in the holster under my arm, I thought, “I hope I killed that thing dead because if not, it’s a long way down off this ridge and I don’t even want to think about climbing back up.” Luckily, the coon was laying, graveyard dead, about ten feet from the base of the tree.

I carry an extra dog leash at this time of year to use to hang coons for skinning. When we got back to the Suzuki I tied Hoss to the luggage rack so he wouldn’t take me on another excursion and set about the task of skinning Mr. Ringtail. The first thing I do is to make a circular cut around the back legs, just above the feet and when I did I noticed the coon had one foot that was swollen to twice the size of the other. As I cut in to the skin, puss erupted from the ankle area of that leg. I looked closely and couldn’t find the origin of the problem but it had to be awfully sore. Amazingly it hadn’t hindered the coon’s ability to climb way up in that oak. It may have been the reason he didn’t take Ole Hoss for a long chase off the mountain. For that I’m grateful.

I always loved hunting the mountain ridges in West Virginia at this time of year and thought of them often over the years. Even though I had much better hunting around the cornfields and woodlots of southern Michigan for many years, I never forgot the thrill of treeing an old mountain “residenter” as we called these old mountain ringtails. Last night was just like old times and extremely pleasurable.

As I climbed the stairs to go to bed I thought, “I’m blessed to still be enjoying this sport after all these years.” Coming to the mountains of North Carolina has made me realize the ridges are a lot steeper than they used to be but as long as a I can have a Plott dog to give me that tree bark I’ll try my best to get up there to see what he’s got.

Thanks for reading.