You go out with coon dogs a dozen times, or maybe a hundred times, and the results are just so-so. Sure, you have fun. You strike coons and you chase them. You tree one 10 minutes after you put the dogs down. Or maybe you shoot five out of a single tree. By midnight you’ve had enough, so you quit and go home. But none of that’s quite what you’re looking for.
The coon chase you hanker for is one of those old-time, tail-twisting, half-the-night affairs, when the dogs get on the track of a buster with the brains of a fox, the grit of a badger, and the endurance of a wildcat. One that knows better than to tree until he has to, and can think of plenty of ways of putting it off until the last minute. Coon hunts like that are few and far between.
The best chase I ever had lasted from midnight until an hour before daybreak. Three of us tramped endlessly behind good dogs before we struck a track, but it was worth it. The coon was an old boar, smart and tough, and the hounds drove him across half a township, on and off rail fences, over grapevine tangles, down ditches, and in and out of drain tiles, while we clawed through brush, slogged in mud, and walked our legs down to stumps. They treed him finally, and we finished him, but we had to take turns lugging that bjg, autumn-fat carcass four long, weary miles back to the car.
That was a long time ago. I have had my share of some good chases since then, but it wasn’t until last fall, in Michigan, that I got the kind of hunt I’d been dreaming about for five or six years.
It had a commonplace beginning. I ran into my neighbor, Don Van Deusen, in town on a wet November afternoon when the sky was the color of old pewter and rain was falling in a cold drizzle.
“Want to go coon hunting tonight?” he asked.
That’s a stock question in our part of the country at that season of year, but it surprised me coming from Don, for he doesn’t own coon dogs. He lives in a fine old house his grandfather built right after the Civil War, keeps a rabbit hound or two, and does a little fox hunting. So far as I knew, coon hunting wasn’t on his list. But before I could ask any questions he went on to explain.
If you’ve ever listened to a duet of that kind, ringing through the darkness of a foggy autumn night, you know the spell it weaves. If you haven’t I can’t tell you.
“Coons have been raising hob in my corn all fall,” he said. “I thought they’d quit after it was cut, but they’re worse. You’d think a drove of hogs was working it. I want to thin them out. John Sexton is coming over from Pontiac tonight. He’s got good dogs, and I thought maybe you’d like to come. He’ll be along right after supper.”
“I won’t keep you waiting,” I promised.
The rain stopped at dusk and the wind died, and with the early dark came a thin fog that lay in a ghostly blanket on the hills. As I drove over to Don’s place the wet roadside brush shone like diamonds in the car’s headlights, and in the woods there was the slow and broken patter of water dripping from the oaks and beeches. I reminded myself that coons leave their dens early on such nights, I and prowl until dawn. The damp grass and weeds hold scent for hours, and the voices of the dogs are a hollow, lonesome sound — enough to chill a man’s blood.
I was at Don’s house ahead of time. Sexton drove into the yard a few minutes later and Don introduced us. Two dogs bounded down when John opened the car door, a big, rangy redbone and a black and tan that was only a little smaller.
“Glad you brought Pluto,” said Don to John, indicating the redbone. Then he jerked his thumb at the smaller hound. “This one new? Never saw him before.”
John nodded. “Yeah, that’s Wheeler, Pluto’s son. I’m just starting him this fall.”
“Looks straight black and tan,” I suggested.
“Takes after his ma,” Sexton explained. “If he turns out as good as she was he’ll be quite a dog.”
“How’s he doing so far?” Don asked.
“He doesn’t rightly know what he’s after or how to find it yet,” John admitted. “But he’ll learn. He needs a good chase or two and a couple or coon fights to take skunks and possums and rabbits out of his head.”
“Maybe we can fix him up tonight,” Don said. “One of the coons working down in my corn is as big as a bear, judging from the damage.”
“A ring-tailed peeler, eh?” Sexton mused. “I sure hope we hit his track. Pluto has just the medicine for th.at kind, and it’d do the pup a lot of good. Hope they can catch him on the ground.”
“That’s a lot to ask,” I put in.
“It is,” John agreed, “but I’ve seen it happen.”
The dogs streaked through the fence around Don’s cornfield and disappeared in the darkness. A big tamarack swamp lay beyond the corn, and the shocks along its border looked as if a tornado had struck them. They’d been ripped apart, and half-eaten ears were strewn an around. But the dogs couldn’t find a track.
“The coons must have adjourned their convention,” John said while we waited at the edge of the swamp.
The pup reported in finally, but Pluto stayed out in the swamp. We moved on, crossed the road below Don’s house, and headed for a second cornfield. We were no more than over the fence when the young dog struck, shouting a sharp note of discovery. He talked in broken syllables, as if not quite sure of what he’d found, and then we heard Pluto pound across the road behind us and go barreling through the cornfield.
“We’ll know for sure now,” John said quietly. On the heels of his words the older dog sang a long, rolling bugle note, and we knew.
Pluto’s voice is a bass that starts back around the roots of his tail and comes out full-throated and deep. That coon track was as cold and stale as yesterday’s flapjacks, and it was a joy to hear him bring it up across the field, patient and sure, feeling his way, bawling each time he found something worth mentioning. Wheeler sang baritone, whooping it out like a steam calliope. If you’ve ever listened to a duet of that kind, ringing through the darkness of a foggy autumn night, you know the spell it weaves. If you haven’t I can’t tell you.
At the upper end of the field they ran south and down in the bogs. Pluto finally found what he was looking for, a ribbon of coon scent that smoked in his nose. He went into overdrive immediately, and his song changed to an eager baying that rose and fell like a pulse beat. Wheeler pulled out a couple of stops and sailed in to keep him company, and they really stirred up the echoes.
“That’s more like it,” John yelled exultantly. “That coon’s going places now.”
“More likely heading for a den tree,” Don replied. “There’s big timber over that way.”
But wherever the coon’s den was, he wasn’t ready to make for it yet. He’d probably learned from experience that a tree is no sure haven. It’s common practice among local hunters, training their dogs before the season opens, to tree a big coon, hold the dogs, shake him down, give him a five-minute start, and turn the dogs loose again. When that has happened a few times to a tough old boar it’s next to impossible to tree him, and this fellow apparently had been through the mill.
For a minute the dogs would be on top, flailing, clawing. Then they’d all go under. As often as a dog broke free and came up for air the coon would be onto him, snarling, raging, riding his head and neck, shoving him down.
The dogs drove him east almost a mile while we did a marathon over hills, down ravines, across fences, running, panting, and stumbling. It was all we could do to keep them in hearing. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes behind when the coon turned back our way, running west on a wide circle with the dogs at his heels.
“He’ll go up now,” Sexton predicted when we halted for a minute at a fence. “He can’t stand that pace much longer.”
But the coon had other ideas. Off to the north the dogs stopped barking as abruptly as if somebody had flipped a switch, and for a minute the night was as still as a grave. Then Pluto rapped out a gruff announcement in a new tempo, and we were on the run again. There was something wrong, though. The old dog’s tree bark wasn’t urgent enough. He’d chop three or four times and then there’d be a long, puzzled wait.
We found the dogs sloshing around in the middle of a big pond grown thick with button bush. They’d treed the coon, all right, but he hadn’t stayed put. He’d gone up and traveled overhead, the way a monkey goes through treetops, and the dogs had fallen for it. By now the coon was running again toward whatever place of safety he had in mind. That’s one of the best tricks in the book, and when you see it pulled you know your coon is no beginner.
We didn’t have to call the dogs, for just about the time we reached the pond Pluto decided he was barking up empty branches. He splashed out and went wheeling around the pond, and on the far side he hit the track again and opened like a pipe organ. Wheeler caught on fast, and wasn’t more than three jumps and two yelps behind.
The coon had gained a little time, but it didn’t do him much good. The dogs drove him full tilt back through Don’s cornfield, and just beyond it John got what he had wished for. The rolling duet of the long chase broke suddenly and changed into an angry uproar. Then the unmistakable sounds of a fight floated back to us.
“They’ve caught him in the creek,” Don shouted. “He’ll drown one of ’em for sure.”
“That’s tough,” John shot back. “If two dogs can’t handle one coon they oughta drown.” But he was running for the creek like crazy when he said it.
We sprinted across the muddy field and down through a narrow tongue of swamp and marsh, the fretting of the dogs goading us every step. The last 50 yards we could hear the harsh, grating snarls of the coon mingled with the chopping and growling of, the dogs. When we reached the scene it was hard to say whether they had him in the creek or he had them. They were over by the far bank, in fast water that would reach above a man’s knees, and they were a splashing, tearing pinwheel of dogs and coon.
For a minute the dogs would be on top, flailing, clawing. Then they’d all go under. As often as a dog broke free and came up for air the coon would be onto him, snarling, raging, riding his head and neck, shoving him down. Each time that happened the other dog would grab the coon by the rear and drag him off, and the three of them would go round and round again.
“Better get in there with a club and bust that up,” Don warned John. “You’re gonna lose a dog.”
John refused to get excited. “Let them rassle awhile,” he said. “This is just what Wheeler needs. Nothing makes a coonhound out of young dog quicker than a good mix-up.”
Three or four minutes later, however, it was evident the coon was standing the brawl better than the dogs.
”They’ll get the worst of it,” Don warned again.
John handed me the .22 he was carrying, pulled up his rubber boots, and slid into the creek. Halfway across he stepped into a hole and went down to his hip pockets in the cold water. He pulled himself out, puffing and blowing, and wallowed back to shore on our side.
“Hand me that rifle,” he grunted. “I expect we’ve had about enough of this.”
Right then the noise of battle died away, and when we flashed our lights on the far bank the coon was nowhere to be seen. He’d suddenly broken away, scrambled up an overhanging tangle of brush and grapevines, and vamoosed.
Wheeler had had all the coon he craved for a while. He swam across to us and crawled out, half drowned and worn to a frazzle. Pluto clambered up the opposite bank and began sniffing around for coon scent that wasn’t there. We knew what had happened. Once clear of the dogs, the coon had slipped back into the water and vanished down the creek. A mink couldn’t have made a slicker get-away.
It seemed like the finish to one of the best chases I had ever had, and Don and I were pretty glum about it. But not John.
“There goes about four bucks’ worth of coon — pelt, meat, and all,” he announced cheerfully. “So what? We’ll just charge it off to Wheeler’s baptism.”
He sat down on the bank to dump the water from his boots and wring out his socks, and then we heard Pluto slip back into the creek.
“Well, the darned fool,” John exclaimed. “He doesn’t know enough to give up. He might make it pay off too.”
He did. A few minutes later he bawled word of a find about 200 yards downstream. He’d found the spot where the coon had left the water and had picked up its tracks. Wheeler immediately decided he wasn’t too tired, after all, and tore off in the direction of Pluto’s howling. We waited at the edge of the cornfield. They headed our way. Suddenly Don cupped a hand to his ear.
“Hear that?” he asked. John and I heard nothing but the dogs.
“Something climbed that tree down by the creek,” Don insisted. “I heard it scratch bark as it went up.”
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The dogs came on, straight to a big oak. Pluto tapped it, acknowledged his find with a hoarse bark, and went on to make sure. He circled out through the corn, checking as a coon dog should, and came back to the tree convinced. He sniffed the trunk again, upreared against it, and almost shook the ground with his chesty baying.
“That’s it,” said John. “That old potlicker doesn’t know how to lie at a tree.”
We weren’t quite through yet, though. The oak was hung with dead leaves and sparkling with big drops of water, and we couldn’t find the coon. So John finally strapped the rifle on his back, shinned up the tree, and spotted him in a leafy fork at the very top. One shot brought him down.
This story, “Wheeler’s Baptism,” appeared in the October 1954 issue of Outdoor Life.
