Tracking and Treeing

By David Rainer, Staff Writer
It’s the thrill of the chase and seeing their
dogs work that excites most coon hunters.
made for slippery footing. Undaunted, Perrin bent down and slowly
crawled across the log on hands and
knees. Soon the hound came bounding out of the woods and swam
across the creek to the remainder of
the hunting group. Perrin returned
by his same route and soon the
hunt resumed.
Such is the love coon hunters have
for their hounds and the outdoors
adventure that beckons in the dark
of night. Perrin’s log crossing was just
a typical retrieval on a night in the
woods. Sometimes the dogs are much
harder to reach.
“Occasionally, we get some dogs
that are prone to climbing a leaning tree,” he said. “Then they don’t
know how to get back down. It can
be dangerous trying to get that dog.
One night, Mr. (Elmore) Dorough and
some club members were hunting and
a dog went up a tree. They ended up
having to get the volunteer fire department to come in with ladders to
get that dog.”
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Illustration by billy pope
The murky brown waters roiling in
the swollen creek precluded an adventure in wading for Jamie Perrin of
Chelsea, Ala. One of his coonhounds
was barking up the wrong tree, a
coonless den tree, on the opposite
side of the creek, and the young
hound refused Perrin’s plaintive
pleas to cross the creek and return
to his master.
As any coon hunter worth his hip
boots would do, Perrin found an alternative. A tree had succumbed to
the erosion of the creek bank and
provided a path, although treacherous, to the other side of the creek and
retrieval of his beloved hound.
Problem was this was
no monster oak
with an ample
footpath for
the crossing.
It was no
more than
a foot in
diameter,
and the
crown
7
david rainer
Members of the Shelby County
Coonhunters Association with
their dogs
You
either
love it
or you
don’t.
8
Outdoor Alabama | OCTOBER 2012
“It’s In Your Blood”
Perrin really can’t explain why a coon hunter is so passionate about the endeavor.
“It’s in your blood,” said Perrin, president of
the Shelby County Coonhunters Association.
“You either love it or you don’t. When I was a
boy, my dad and some of his friends hunted
coons and I went along with them. I loved it. I
love to hear the dogs’ voices and them trailing
and treeing a coon. Then it’s the joy of finding
the coon after the dogs have treed it. And I
love the peace and quiet of the woods at night.
It’s just one of those things where you don’t
ride the fence. You either love it or you don’t.”
There’s no doubt that technological advances have made it easier on coon hunters in
modern times. When Perrin started hunting,
his dad was limited to a carbide light.
“Then my dad got one of the first good
coon-hunting lights,” he said. “It was called a
Coon Beam, made by a man named Bill Boatman. It was real heavy, but it was real bright.
It also had an amber lens so you could see
the coon’s eyes. Now you can get just about
anything. Lights have come a long way since I
started hunting.
“And there were no tracking collars when
I started. The first tracking collars worked
really well, but then they came out with GPS
collars about four or five years ago. The GPS
collars will show you which side of the creek
the dog is on and how close to the road he is.
The earlier collars would tell which direction
the dog was in, but you’d have to guesstimate
the distance by the way it beeped. The only
thing is that the GPS has about a mile range
in heavy timber, but the older one had about a
three-mile range.”
Elmore Dorough of Chelsea can’t remember exactly what kind of light he had some 62
years ago when he got hooked on coon hunting. He does remember it was by chance that
he even started.
“A redbone showed up at my grandpa’s
house and stayed a couple of months,”
said the 76-year-old Dorough. “One day
grandpa told me to take the dog home with
me and see what he would do. I wanted to
know, too. At first he’d run rabbits or tree
possums. Then one night we were down on
the creek and he treed a coon. That just turned
me on.
“Then my uncle gave me a one-eyed
bluetick, and that’s how I got started
coon hunting.”
Dorough had to take an extended break
from coon hunting for military service during
the Korean War. When he and his brother got
back from the war, his bluetick had been stolen and the redbone had died.
“I had to start all over,” Dorough said. “I
got an English female to start with, and then I
got into the Walker dogs for years. Then in the
70s I got back into the blueticks and hunted
them for 30 years. Then I went back to the
Walker dogs again. I get attached to my coon
dogs. I’ve got one dog 10 years old. I guess he’s
the best handling dog I’ve ever seen.”
A Special Bond
Phillip Padgett, hunt director with Shelby
County Coonhunters, admits there is a special bond between a diehard coon hunter and
his hounds.
“It’s not about killing the coons to me,”
Padgett said. “It’s about that dog working, doing what it’s supposed to do and doing it right.
That’s what gets me excited.” Some hunters insist on certain breeds of
coonhounds like black and tan, treeing Walker, English, bluetick, redbone or Plott, but
Padgett said what makes a coon dog special is
how it behaves. “A dog that listens well, is smart, does what
it’s supposed to do and has a relationship with
the owner is what’s special to me,” he said.
“I’ve had two dogs that loved me so much,
david rainer
they wouldn’t even hunt for other people.
I placed a dog in the World Championships, and the dog didn’t even want to go
hunting. I also had a dog that got cancer.
I had her in the pen and brought her up
to the house. I said that if she was going
to die, she was going to die in my house.
She literally took my hunting clothes and
made a bed out of the hunting clothes.
She wanted to be able to smell me until
she died.
“Coon dogs are different than a lot
of dogs that are working dogs. A lot of
working dogs are not family pets. My
dogs play with my kids in the yard.
But when I walk out and whistle and
tell them to get in the truck, that’s
what they do.”
Dogs have been bred since ancient
times for a variety of reasons, including hunting. Coonhounds are bred to
highlight very specific characteristics,
Padgett said.
“A lot of dogs will run deer,” he said.
“A lot of dogs will run rabbits, but a coon
dog is the type of dog that has to go out
and find that scent, follow that scent
sometimes through water. Then of all the
trees in the woods, it’s got to figure out
which tree that coon
went up. Then it has to stay there until
the hunters get there. It’s just amazing
to me to watch a quality-bred coon dog
work. That’s what makes it special to me.
“The thing is that your normal hound
won’t necessarily hunt. Treeing and tracking are bred into these dogs. Over 100
years, the professional breeders have developed lines that are known to be great
tree dogs. Some lines are known to be
great track dogs. Some lines are known to
be very loud dogs. You go with the traits
you like. I prefer great tracking dogs.
Then you’ve got the guys who prefer a
specific breed, like bluetick or black and
tan or Walkers.”
Stress Reliever
As far as Padgett is concerned, there
is no better way to melt away the stress of
your day job than listening to coon dogs
work at night.
“When I’m with those dogs, I don’t
think about work or problems going on
with the family. I’m thinking about me
and the dogs in the woods. I kinda go to
my ‘happy place’ when I’m with the dogs.
That’s the reason the competition hunts
are so special, because it’s more about the
dogs, your relationship with the dogs and
working that dog than it is killing a raccoon.”
Dorough feels the same
way about dispatching the
coons his dogs have treed in
recent years. “I haven’t killed
a coon behind my house in
25 years,” Dorough said. “We
can’t afford to. We have to
preserve our coons.”
More than a scarcity of
raccoons, Dorough and his
fellow coon hunters are much
more worried about the urban
sprawl that casts an ominous
shadow over the future of
their pastime.
“You could hunt just about
anywhere when I started,” he
said. “We’ve got some public
land, Wildlife Management
Areas and stuff like that we can hunt, but
there’s not much private land you can
hunt anymore.
“I guess I’m luckier than most. I have
600 acres right here at my house that
I can hunt. I used to have all the land
around me to hunt. Now houses are being built. People are putting up gates
and cables. People don’t want you on
their land.”
Perrin agrees that lack of access to
huntable land poses a significant obstacle
for the next generation. “It’s harder to
find places to go,” Perrin said. “There’s
so much cutover and private land. Used
to, just about anybody would give you
permission to hunt. People don’t do
that now.”
A Family
Despite the obstacles, Perrin said club
members try to recruit new members to
keep the ranks from dwindling away.
“We need to get more young kids
involved to keep it alive,” he said. “I can
see a need for more young people to get
involved, for sure. We invite them hunting. We try to take them in the fall of
the year when it’s cool, but not too cool.
That’s the ideal time, because if you’re
not a true coon hunter, you won’t like it
when it’s hot.”
The camaraderie that grows in the
coon-hunting community also transfers
into service to the communities where
they live. Shelby County Coonhunters
and Black Creek Coonhunters combined
resources to hold a “Hunting for Shelter”
event last fall to benefit the Family Connection Youth Resident Home. More
than $6,000 was raised for the home.
Padgett added that helping the community and fellow man is the norm in the
world of coon hunting. “Coon hunters
are one big, happy family,” he said. “I’ve
been all over the United States, and if
they see that coon dog box on the back of
your truck, they’ll take you in like you’re
one of their own. That’s just the way coon
hunters are.”
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