Coon huntin'

“You never been coon huntin’? Anybody born in Iowa aught to go coon huntin’ at least once!” Those were old Jim’s comments one afternoon when we were butchering deer in a shed. Jim was a hunter and fisherman. He ran two or three trap lines every winter and spent countless hours out in the woods. He was a big strong guy who was well known for his fondness for the bottle.

I had never been coon hunting, but had heard a lot about it. I mostly stuck to rabbits, pheasant, and deer once a year. I have always loved to be out of doors and it doesn’t take much of an excuse to get me there. In the summer, my spare time was spent fishing. It still is. More recently I have lost the desire to kill something but still long to be outside.

Jim was adamant that he was going to take me coon hunting! He started pressing me for a time that I could go. Now you have to understand that coon hunting is done at night with dogs with names like Ole’ Blue, Boomer, Red, and Marley.

Generally, you take the dogs to some location in the woods and turn them loose and sit down and wait. Eventually, you’ll hear them bark. Well, it’s not a bark but a combination of a howl, a bark and a scream. That means one of the dogs is on the trail of a coon. The others rush to that dog and join in the racket. The hunters get up and wander off into the woods following the sounds of the dogs.

As you can imagine this is fraught with dangers. Who knows what hole you are going to step in or stream you are going to have to wade to find the dogs. When the dogs actually tree the coon, the sounds change pitch and an experienced hunter knows they have cornered the animal.

So, I made a date with Jim. It was a Friday night in October. He picked me up about 10:00 and we headed out into the country. Now, I am a person who likes to know where I am and I was hoping we would be hunting in some spot I was familiar with. That didn’t turn out to be the case.

We went north of town to some of Jim’s old stomping grounds. We parked along a gravel road and that is when I asked Jim if we had permission to hunt here. He said, “Nope.” But not to worry. If we were stopped by anyone I should let him do the talking.

He hoisted his two dogs over the fence and we climbed over after them. The dogs were long gone by the time my feet touched the ground on the other side. The sky was overcast and dark. I followed Jim into the woods feeling my way with my feet. He had a flashlight but didn’t want to turn it on. After stumbling and falling a few times we finally reached a spot where he said we could sit down and wait. I looked around as best I could in the dim light but saw nothing but weeds and bare ground to sit on. That was it. We sprawled there on the ground to wait for the chorus to start up.

Jim reached into his coat and pulled out a rather large flask of Blackberry Brandy and took a long pull on the bottle, wiped his lips and handed it to me. Not being much of a hard liquor drinker I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was at first sweet and pleasing but then I swallowed. My throat burned and it hit my stomach like water hitting a hot frying pan! I was speechless and my eyes were watering.

Of course, not wanting to look like a novice, I hid my discomfort the best I could. We sat there in the dark on the ground speaking in soft voices and waited for hours. Jim didn’t put his flask away but drank from it and handed it to me many times. Thinking back on it now I don’t know why I just didn’t fake drinking it.

Finally, in the far distance we heard a dog bark, then another. Jim jumped up. I tried to get up but staggered and fell back. I made it on my second try and we headed off through the brush. Now, not only was it dark, unfamiliar terrain, but we were drunk. We staggered through woods arguing about which way the sounds were coming from.

I gave into Jim and he was right. We found the dogs not under a tree but barking at a hole in the ground on a hillside. Jim quickly surmised the coon had been forced by the dogs to take refuge in the hole. He said, “We got to dig ‘em out!” I, dizzy from the alcohol and long walk, thought we should just give up and go home.

Jim had a big old knife and he started chopping at the hole. Suddenly, he stopped and reached up to his shoulder into the hole. Laying flat on the hillside he said the coon was in there sure enough because he could feel him but not get a hold of him. He said, “You try it.” “Not a chance! I said, your arms are longer.”

He dug away at the hole furiously now. Stopping every once in awhile and reaching in to touch the critter. I kept expecting him to bring back a bloody hand from some bite or scratch. He seemed unconcerned. Finally, he said, “We’re going to have to shoot him!” Jim had carried a single shot rifle with him all evening. Let’s see now…a gun, alcohol, dark unfamiliar woods…what’s wrong with this picture?

He loaded the gun, stuck it in the hole and fired. Then he reached and pulled at the critter. After a little bit he said, “I must have missed.” He said here, you hold the gun and pull the trigger when I tell you. He slid his arm and the gun in at the same time. When he was ready he told me to pull the trigger. I did and he said, “Oh shit! You shot me!” He saw the shock on my face and then laughed and said, “Just kidding.” He tugged and pulled on the critter and out came an opossum. More swearing! An opossum hide was worthless but he decided to take the carcass home, cut it up, and put it in the freezer. He would use it for coyote bait in his traps later that winter.

I don’t remember much of going home. Probably because we had a couple more pulls on that bottle before we staggered back to the car. I never went coon hunting or even had the urge to go again.