Metro Coon Hunting
10/25/2010 1:27:55 PM
Metro Coon Hunting
I bought a new pair of knock around pants at a farm store out in Indiana this month. Wrangler makes them under their Rugged Wear label and they have leather trim around the pockets…pretty fancy. Mike Bertrand called them my metro sexual pants. I took that as an insult of course. That led to a whole discussion of people who live in cities and why they live there, much of which I can’t in good taste account for here. That conversation came to mind last night as my hunting buddy and I met a landowner that was pretty incredulous when he learned that Courtney Risk and I both live in Cary, North Carolina. Cary is considered one of the upscale residential sections of the city and in this landowner’s words, is often called a holding pen for Yankees by locals. In fact, as we were talking he got a call from his wife and had to tell her he was talking to two coon hunters from Cary with an inflection in this voice that asked, “Can you imagine?”
It was hot and humid here in North Carolina last night. We made one tree and saw two coons. Courtney is just a few days after some shoulder surgery and he was hurting pretty bad so we called it a night early. His Walker female and my young Plott Hoss were under the coons. My Plott female was out touring the real estate. Not sure what she had on her mind last night but it wasn't treeing coons.
Thanks to the Sinc feature on my truck, Courtney and I enjoyed a conversation with Bubba Jones of Alabama on the way to the woods. Bubba had hoped to get his Sugar female (Wild Card x Time) bred to Trackman this week but wasn't able to make the connection. He plans to breed her to a nice young Walker his father-in-law hunts named NiteCH Timber (Trackman x Annie). Bubba is retired from the Air Force as is Courtney and it wasn't long until these guys were talking shop. I enjoy talking with Bubba and sure do wish him good luck with his litter. It sounds like he's done his homework. He was real interested in talking about the AKC Supreme Breeder’s Club program and plans to enroll the litter in SBC.
Getting back to how we met this landowner, we had lots of company last night as we attempted to cut the hounds on state game land. When we pulled up to a likely spot to turn loose we encountered a vehicle coming down the road behind us that passed and went to the end of the road. A session of horn blowing followed. We drove down to the turn around and learned that they were attempting to blow a deer hunter out of the woods. I assume he had a deer down and was trying to get it out. As we moved back to our hunting spot we saw another vehicle parked in the roadway with the driver’s door open. A nice fellow asked us if we were coon hunting. We said we were trying but hadn’t turned loose yet. We learned that he is a local fox hunter. He had some advice for us as to where he had seen coons and was an all around a nice fellow to talk to. He told us about a farm he hunts that would be right up our alley after deer season. He said he didn’t want to get the deer hunters upset which seems to be an ever-increasing concern these days. He lamented the number of deer there are in the area and we discussed how that it’s a deer hunter’s world at this time of year. He lit our fires when he said, “You better get those dogs in shape. We need to kill those coons up there.”
While we were talking a deputy sheriff pulled up as part of his nightly patrol in the vicinity of our local nuclear power plant. Are you getting the picture of what it’s like to coon hunt in a growing metropolitan area like Raleigh, North Carolina? There’s never a dull moment around here. Much of the timber in the area we were hunting last night has been recently clear cut and the landowner told us the cutting would continue with 200 more acres going down soon. Little by little singer Joni Mitchell’s prophetic words are coming true here: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
But coon hunters are a resilient bunch and Courtney and I, despite being “city boys” persist in hunting here with the odds against us. We hope to make it out again on Thursday night.
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