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Forest and Stream Letters 
The Three Pairs 
DEAR FOREST & STREAM: 
I NEVER was a good judge of dogs, 
that is whether they could hunt or 
not. My old friend “Chuck” Conner 
sent to Kingstown, Ky., for a couple of 
dogs his Uncle had raised and they 
came early in the Fall before the sea- 
son opened. 
“Chuck” picked one and I took what 
was left. From a guess my dog was 
mixed with a Fox Hound and an Eng- 

lish Setter or some other bird dog. Any- 
way my dog would run anything from 
a crow’s shadow flying close to the 
ground to my Father’s sheep in the 
pasture. “Chuck” made a wonderful 
pick. He had a real “coon hound” 
white and brown in color. This all hap- 
pened on December 2nd, 1923. 
When I was through with my work, 
which was feeding cattle, I cut through 
the corn field to take a look at some 
traps that I had set along a little 
stream and then around by the way 
where “Chuck” was shucking corn in 
the next field. He was on his last load 
for the day. 
I helped him out to the end of the 
field when he made the remark, “Lets 
ty our dogs out tonight.” It was about 
3.30 and the sun had just gone behind 
a bank of clouds. I could hardly wait 
until 7.30. 
I left “Chuck” to scoop his load of 
corn off and went home to supper. 
Seven-thirty soon came and I put the 
collar on my dog and went over to 
my friend’s house, half a mile down the 
road. 
We lit our pipes and started down 
the lane towards the thick timber. 
Leaving the road we turned the dogs 
loose and slowed down our _ pace. 
“Chuck’s” old dog looked at us for a 
minute and then trotted off. It wasn’t 
long before we heard a big double- 
mouthed yelp. We sat down on a log 
and waited and listened; soon we could 
hear him not far off taking short quick 
steps in the dry leaves. Then all of 
a sudden there came a roar of yelps and 
we started for the racket. I was the 
first on the scene, as “Chuck” had on 
hip boots for wading the creek and he 
couldn’t make much time. 
The dog was biting and clawing at 
an old knot hole ina log. By this time 
“Chuck” came blundering up. I said, 
“Tf there is a coon in that hole he surely 
is a small one.” The hole was about 
the size of an ink bottle. “Chuck” got 
a stick and stuck it in the hole and 
the old log being pretty well decayed, 
broke open. 
The dog gave a big leap and grabbed 
something long and black. It squealed 
like’a rat. It wasn’t long until the 
squeal died out and the dog put it down 
and ran over to a small hickory sapling 
and began to smell and sniff up the tree. 
When he got up as far as his neck could 
reach, he put his front feet up and 
gave a little whine. 
“Chuck” took his flashlight out and 
started from the bottom up. About 
half-ways up in a fork set a couple of 
bright eyes. I went over and shook 
the tree, then the dog made another 
scramble and the thing squealed as be- 
fore. ‘Chuck’ went over and picked 
the other one up and said, “A fine pair 
of dark brown minks.” 
Well, by this time the fog had come 
down and it was starting to rain a little. 
I could hear my dog over the hill run- 
ning rabbits apparently by the dozen. 
“Chuck” and I went over and put a 
stop to that, by clicking a snap in his 
collar ring and leading him. By this 
time the dog was gone again. We went 
down the creek bank and followed him 
down to where the bluffs on each side 

got so steep we couldn’t follow it any 
more and sat down on a log and lis- 
tened. All we could hear was an old 
cow bawling for her calf and it came 
echoing down the hollow. 
We sat there talking about our minks 
when away back in the direction from 
where we had come we heard a dog. It 
was so faint we could hardly make out 
whether it was our dog or not. My 
dog stuck up his ears and went out to 
the end of the chain and sat down. 
“Chuck” said, “I’ll bet that is the old 
dog.””’ We got up and started in that 
direction at a fast pace and my dog 
was dragging me along like he knew 
all about it. 
We came to a clearing and listened 
again. Sure enough the old dog was 
barking and jumping up an old oak tree 
which stood at the far end of the tim- 
ber next to a field of shock corn with a 
fence nailed to the tree separating the 
timber from the field. 
We stood there for a minute and 
“Chuck” said, “I’ll climb up and see 
what it is.” He took off his boots and 
by standing on top of the fence he could 
reach the lowest limb. He went up and 
pretty soon he said, “Here he is in a 
hole.” By that time I had both dogs 
ke 
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