June 6. 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
8 q 5 
'Coon Hunting. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Perhaps there is no sport more fascinating 
than coon hunting. I remember many instances 
in my early life of this exciting sport, and some¬ 
times feel a longing to be a boy again and in¬ 
dulge once more in the scenes of the past. 
Many are the nights I have spent in the 
woods, and many are the laughs that my brother 
and I have had at the expense of the coon. 
The first essenial to coon hunting is a good dog. 
The best coon dog is some type of hound. One of 
the best dogs we ever had was a cross between a 
foxhound and a Newfoundland. The Newfound¬ 
land is a dog of superior intelligence and courage, 
and this added to the fine scenting qualities of the 
hound, makes an ideal coon dog. When we paid 
five dollars to a boy for Bruno, he was about 
two years old, but knew nothing about coons. 
He had been raised on a farm and was an ideal 
rabbit dog. In addition to this he had often 
encountered the ground hog or woodchuck, as 
it is often called, and was not unaccustomed to 
the hard fights which the woodchuck can put up, 
and which afterward served him to good pur¬ 
pose when fighting coons. 
The education of a dog is not unlike the edu¬ 
cation of a child, you must begin with the rudi¬ 
ments. After we purchased Bruno we spent 
many an evening in the woods trying to get 
him interested in coon hunting. But he had been 
so accustomed to chasing rabbits that he did not 
know what we wanted him to do. We thought 
if he only could run across a coon and kill it, he 
would then become interested, but we had no 
such luck. Finally we struck a plan. My 
brother set a steel trap in a brook the coons 
were accustomed to following in search of frogs 
and clams, and had the good luck to catch a 
coon. We took it home and put it in a cage 
and then introduced Bruno to it through the 
slats of the cage. He became very enthusiastic 
and tried his best to get to it, but could not, as 
he was barred by the cage. Our next lesson 
was to take the coon to the woods. We put a. 
strap around its neck and led it through the 
woods and finally allowed it to climb a small 
tree and fastened it just out of the reach of the 
dog. We then took Bruno to the spot where 
we had begun to lead the coon. He soon struck 
the trail, and it was not long before we had the 
coon “treed.” We repeated this a few times and 
then one day my brother took the coon to the 
woods and set it at liberty. In about half an 
hour we took Bruno out to where the coon 
had been liberated, and he was soon flying 
around over logs and through the bushes, bay¬ 
ing and barking on the trail of the coon. After 
following it for half a mile, he finally treed it and 
a more tickled dog and prouder boys you never 
saw. We had taken an ax with us and soon had 
cut the tree down, and were enjoying the fight. 
It was not long before the coon had to give up 
and lay dead before the panting dog. 
We now felt that we had a coon dog. On the 
same evening a little while after dark, as coons 
only come down from their dens, in the trees, 
at night, we took the dog to the woods. He 
had been away from us some time hunting. 
Finally we heard him barking. We went to him 
and found him barking up a beech tree. Now 
it is not common for coons to climb beech trees. 
The reason is that the bark is smooth and hard 
and they can not get their claws into it easily. 
We knew this, and argued that it could not be 
a coon. As the tree was not a very large one, 
and as the limbs extended very near the ground, 
I was soon climbing the tree. When I had 
nearly reached the top, there, sure enough, out 
on a limb sat a very large coon. Now it is no 
easy matter to shake ai coon off a limb, but I 
succeeded at last and heard him strike the 
ground with a thud. While my brother and 
Bruno were enjoying the fight I was hurrying 
down to participate in the sport. Casting my 
eyes out along a limb that extended out quite 
away from the tree I saw another coon. After 
calling to my brother the good news, I went 
down and saw the conclusion of the fight. After 
we had given the dog a little time to rest, my 
brother climbed the tree and shook the other 
coon down. Another hard fight resulted in an¬ 
other dead coon. We went home rejoicing. 
Coon hunting, like fishing, is governed by 
conditions of weather, time of the year, time of 
day, or night. Fishing I have always found best 
in the early part of the day or in the evening. 
There are of course exceptions to this. I used 
to be quite a squirrel hunter when a boy, and 
by the use of a little rifle was often enabled in a 
short time to kill all the squirrels I could carry 
home. I always found the early morning the 
best time, and was sometimes in the woods by 
sunrise. But squirrels were plenty then, and I 
know of no place now where they can be found 
in such numbers. 
Coons are apt to be running in the early part 
of the night or toward day. Near midnight they 
were not often found. We had an alarm clock 
and would set it to wake us up at about two or 
three o’clock in the morning. This was much 
better, we thought, than to spend the entire 
night in the woods, as we had to do if we treed 
a coon in the early part of the night. When we 
had a coon treed we would build a fire and keep 
watch until morning and then shoot it. This 
was because we could rarely see the coon in the 
night. But later we learned to use the bullseye 
lantern, which throws the light like a search¬ 
light. By this means we could reflect the light 
of the coon’s eyes and shoot almost as readily 
as by daylight. In this, however, we did not al¬ 
ways succeed. Sometimes when we first threw 
the light into the tree, the coon would look at 
if long enough to convince us that he was there, 
but not long enough to get a shot. 
It often happened that there would be a hol¬ 
low in the tree in which the coon would secrete 
itself, and in a case like this we had to give it 
up or cut the tree down. We always considered 
it greater sport to cut the tree than to shoot 
the coon, as in that case we had the fun of 
seeing a fight. I have seen dogs completely 
worsted in a fight with a big coon. Sometimes 
we could succeed in keeping a coon up a tree by 
putting our coats on a pole up against the tree. 
But this did not always succeed. An old coon 
would sometimes come down in spite of the 
coats. They generally get very restless as day¬ 
light approaches, and will often come down 
even when you are by the tree. I recollect an 
instance of having treed a coon in the early 
part of the night, and while we were lying by 
the tree the dog went a little way from us and 
treed another. I left my brother, who was 
younger than I, to watch the one we were by 
and went to the dog. Being assured that he had 
a coon I called to my brother and told him to 
stay by his coon and I would stay and watch 
mine. He answered that he would, provided I 
would let him have the dog, as he was afraid. 
I agreed and he called the dog to him. I built 
a fire on one side of the tree; then finding as 
long a pole as I could, put my coat up as high 
as the pole would reach on the other side. As 
I lay by the fire I fell asleep, and when I awoke, 
the fire had burned down and in collecting some 
brush to rekindle it, discovered my coat on the 
ground and saw that the pole had been thrown 
down. I surmised that the coon had escaped. 
I called to my brother and asked him to let me 
have the dog, as I thought my coon had come 
down. I called the dog. He started an investi- 
gation^and was soon going through the woods, 
giving a yelp at every jump. He shortly over¬ 
took the coon and again put him up a tree. My 
brother hearing the sport and feeling lonesome, 
left his tree and followed up. 
This time the coon was up a large red oak 
tree. It was now near morning and knowing 
by my experience that that coon would take 
chances of coming down, we kept a close watch. 
Sure enough, just at daybreak we saw him com¬ 
ing down. The dog also understood it, and we 
were all very anxious to give him another 
chance for his life. But when he saw the dog 
he reconsidered and again climbed up the tree. 
A neighbor who lived close by, hearing our 
dog barking and knowing who we were, came 
along with his wife and daughter to witness the 
sport. We had no gun with us, but the neigh¬ 
bor said we could have his. My brother went 
and got it. It was now daylight and one shot 
brought the coon down. 
Another instance I wish to give is of a coon 
that dare not come down. We had treed it on 
a large burr oak tree, and not being able to see 
its eyes, concluded that the tree was hollow. We 
had taken some newspapers with us, and we put 
them up on poles on opposite sides of the tree 
and went home. 
Next morning we went to see what success 
we had. We could not see a coon, neither could 
we see a hollow in the tree. When almost ready 
to give it up, I called the attention of my brother 
to a strange looking object, which looked like 
it might be the hind legs of a coon protruding 
from a hole in a limb. We finally decided to 
give it a shot and were surprised to see a coon 
back out the hole. The hole was not of sufficient 
depth to allow him to entirely hide himself and 
his legs had betrayed him. Another shot 
brought him to the ground. 
It is remarkable how sagacious animals are, 
especially dogs. What we usually call instinct 
in them, sometimes amounts to reason. I well 
remember an incident illustrating this in a dog 
we once had. He was not a coon dog, but de¬ 
lighted in hunting rabbits and woodchucks. The 
incident I am going to relate, and which I can 
call nothing but reason, very much surprised and 
amused me. Not far from the house, in the 
field, was an elevation, sloping toward the 
house. At the summit where a fence crossed 
the woodchucks had a burrow and often came 
down the hill in plain view from the house. 
The dog had run after them many times, but as 
he was in plain view of them they could easily 
reach their burrow before he could reach them. 
One day I saw one out as usual and called the 
dog. He could easily see it, as the distance 
