Another Coon Hunt

Let me set the stage for this adventure, if that's what you'd call it.

It was another cold mountain night in December, way into coon season. Pappy was as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room fulla rockin' chairs. Ya see, this particular night we's a huntin' with a well respectin' coon hunter named Beecher. Now, ol' Beecher stood 'bout 6 foot 4, an' weighed about as much as a two-year-old steer. To hear Beecher tell it, he'd swear he wasn't a pound over 300.

Anyway, ol' Beech had probably the best dog in the state, named Sam. Sam was big headed, big mouthed, and could smell out a coon in a hurricane. One fine dog, by any standard, especially 'cause Sam was pure black 'n tan mountain cur. Pure mountain curs are hard to find ya see.

We met up with Beech at his house 'bout nine, an' finally got to Left-Hand Hollow 'bout nine-thirty. Lettin' the dogs out is usually my job, for two reasons. One, 'cause I'm the youngest, and two, 'cause whoever lets 'em out gets run over by them big hounds, wantin' out of that truck. We had my jip Redbone, Susie, my black 'n tan, Joe, Pappy's worthless little Norwegian, Duke (better known as Fuzzy-Nuts), and of course Sam. That's 'bout three-hundred pounds of dog on a seventy-five pound boy, goin' at it 'bout sixty miles an hour. After I got up, we started huntin' by roadin' the dogs. All that is, is ya drive around the old strip mine and loggin' roads in your truck, until the dogs tree a coon. Purty simple so far, huh?

Well, on the cold nights it's tough on even a good dog to work track. It wasn't until 'bout one-thirty, when the dogs treed. Just my luck, it was up a big poplar with no limbs till 'bout fifteen feet up. Naturally, with all them dogs barkin' up his butt, he hid his eyes so we couldn't spot 'im. Unless you can see a coon's eyes in the light, ya don't know where to shoot. There's only one thing left to do when that happens, and that's somebody's got to go up and knock the coon out. As a boy of twelve years old, I could've told what happens next. Pappy takes one look in my direction, and then up that tree. Rick's treed again! The idea is to climb the tree, and to either get the coon to look down at ya, or to jump out in among them dogs. Little did I know, that coon had another option in mind.

Beecher lifted me up to the first limbs, and I started climbin'. For a while I thought he'd already crossed to another tree up in the tops. Well, like all good coon hunters do, I found that coon in the forks of the top, 'bout fifty feet off the ground. Trouble was, I was forty-eight feet up in the tree, and he didn't like it none. Now I start thinkin', what if I fall out an' the dogs think it's the coon comin' down?

Funny how things work out, 'cause here's where that coon pulled his third choice escape. He must've thought the same thing I did, 'bout me fallin' out an the dogs thinkin' it was the coon. He put his plan into action by headin' straight down my back and hangin' on to my light belt. Now imagine if ya can, me up a tree fifty feet, with a mad-as-hell twenty pound coon on my back, surrounded by a pack of hounds, with Pappy hollerin', "throw him down boy. We ain't got all night!", and Beecher rollin' on the ground laughin' to high heaven in the middle of the night in twenty degree weather. Some picture ain't it? That's just when the fun started.

I got scared, and tried to fight that coon off. I was doin' pretty good, until I forgot I wasn't hangin' on. Me an' that coon came down hard, in the middle of a creek, that wasn't exactly froze over, but wasn't real soft either. I came back up for air, just in time to see all four dogs comin' off the bank on top of my head. That wasn't a pretty picture. Somewhere in the middle of that fight, in four feet of freezin' water, a stick hit me in the top of the head. That made me mad enough to start throwin' dogs an' coon, an' anything else I got my hands on, out of my way. After all I'd been through, to top the evenin' off, I get whacked with a stick. It was finally over in a few minutes, after the dogs figured out who the coon was, and they hopped out, ready for more action.

On the way back to the truck, I was soaked to the bone, froze stiff in my legs, had several cuts from the fall, and a splittin' headache from the stick, Pappy in all his wisdom says, "you know, Rick, it could 've been worse, you might've fell on the other side of that tree."

I said, "Pappy that's right. I might 've hit the hard ground."

He replied back with a straight face, "yeah, an ya might've hurt one of them dogs."

Somehow it didn't seem fair at the time, but now it's a little different. After all, if I had misplaced my false teeth for two weeks, like Pappy did after that hunt, I know he really didn't mean for it to come out that way.

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