The Killer Coon
Several coon have been taken since I last wrote about a hunt.
Most hunts consist of walking along the creek and having the dogs tree a slick tree now and then, or a den tree, or a tree so big that you never know if the dogs were true or not, you just can’t see the top.
Eventually you catch your coon, sometimes last thing on the way home, sometimes first thing out, and you can carry a coon all night which really makes the hunt more enjoyable but more work. But on one night something happened that was so unusual that it bears repeating… The story of the killer coon!
Midnight… Mary Ann is in bed and I am still sitting up reading when the idea comes to me, Get your gun boy!
The season is short! So I get boots and coat on pick up gun and the dogs all jump up and start barking! We walk out of the back door and down to the creek. We start downstream moving along enjoying the quiet, dark woods. We crossed the bottom meadow and entered the woods again. I crossed a branch on a down log I had marked with a reflector nailed to a tree.
Boys a cheap reflector is good for marking crossings and such and can be seen at night for a long way.
Just nail one to a tree facing both directions, you can find crossing quicker on your way back too. After we came out of the woods and into a larger field I noticed the wind must be 20 mph or more as big trees were swaying!
I remember thinking, “I don’t think they can find much scent in all this wind. And accordingly called dogs and turned to the right and headed up the hill to swing by and check my coyote traps.
We were three hundred yards from the creek,
in uplands, short grass and scrubby, mostly open with cedar trees here and there, 5’ and 6’ gully’s running through the place.
Just then I heard all three dogs start fighting something all at once! We were all pretty close in together and I don’t remember which dog located because I was thinking of coyotes at the moment.
I heard all the dogs really fighting something and then I smelled a skunk! I remember thinking “a skunk?"
It has been years since we went through this.
I was wondering if my new yearling Katy {out of gold creek ace}
had located the skunk because she had never seen one.
I said I’m going to kill that skunk as fur is fur I recon.”
I ran over there figuring I would teach Katy May a skunk lesson.
Well the dogs were all around a black object on the ground going crazy! I was trying to head them off, running parallel to them.
They came down one of those gully’s, and I stopped running and looked down and saw a large animal loping along, sideways, one way then the other then another, all hunched up and I said aloud,
"a young coyote!”
And ran along a piece when up on the flat bare ground beside me ran a big ole coon! With dogs all around him!
He was moving slowly, kind of waddling along.
A dog would grab him and he’d turn and bite the dog whereupon the dog would let him go. One of the other dogs would take their turn and the coon would bite them and they would let go.
The coon was waddling along at about the speed that a man can trot and another dog would nail him from behind and the scene would repeat itself. Now I still need to teach my dogs something about teamwork, my old catch dog Barry has passed on and I’ll have to have another teacher.
Now this coon would not run and he wouldn’t climb.
He got away several times and he would hide under a thick cedar thicket where I could see his eyes and finally the dogs would locate him and flush him out. Now this part sounds strange but it’s quite true.
The coon would fight the dogs one at a time,
then try to get away.
I ran over and kicked the coon away from cover and back out in the open. I must have kicked him, not hard really just keeping him where I could see the fight, 30 times I kicked this coon!
He rolled over on his back then and the dogs would try their one good chomp attack.
And instead of all jumping on him and stretching him out,
the other dogs would wait and attack alone.
It was very bloody by now at least for the dogs.
The coon was tired but doing pretty good!
This just went on and on and when it became obvious that the coon couldn’t get away…and the dogs couldn’t do more than get themselves all cut up… I shot the old boar coon. This was the most valiant fighting animal I have ever seen. John Wayne couldn’t have fought those dogs any better, or Rambo couldn’t have gotten any more beat up looking doing it.
I carried the old coon home and will tan his hide to remember him by. How I wish I had a camera. I could have taken five rolls of film while the fight with the killer coon was going on.
All three dogs shared equally in the fight and all three had holes and patches of hide taken out of their throat area.
Cotton Joe had two big punctures that got infected and swelled up pretty bad. I think I have a picture of Joe with those holes in his throat treeing a squirrel taken a while later.
I can hear Joe now as I write this,
barking treed down in the woods on a squirrel he has had since 5:00.
Thank you
J. Winters VonKnife
Home