A COON HUNT IN SOUTHERN OHIO.
This hunt which I am about to relate took place Novemher 17, 1908. It was just after an electric storm on said date that I decided to try my coon dog recently purchased. My cousin, who lives a few miles north of here had been telling of seeing so many coon tracks coming and going from Stonellck Creek, seeking water, for we have never experienced such a drought in Ohio before.
I hitched to the buggy and started for my cousin's, seven miles distant. On arriving there I found that he was just as anxious as I was, so we, four In number, J. Soth, H. D. Conner, S. E. Crossnickle and myself, started for the big woods. Just before reaching the forest my dog gave a yell that almost sounded like a panther and started toward the timber, and we in pursuit.
Some of you brother hunters may imagine how many falls we got In that race, but I cannot. We were almost run down when he barked treed, and we were pleased to think that it was not a fox, as we supposed. We all hurried to the tree and found It to be a big sugar, but no coon was on the outside.
We had noticed a hole just above the first limb so I decided to "coon" it up to the hole and look in, but when I got up there I found the tree hollow clear to the ground.
We didn't have an axe so the boys got to hunting around the tree and found a little decayed place and commenced cutting a hole with their pen knives, and I didn't like the idea of climbing down without seeing Mr. Coon, but the boys couldn't get a hole through the tree so I got down and picked up the old shot gun and three shots rang out on the night air and a hole was thru the tree. We tried to smoke him out but failed.
Just at that moment two more hunters came to us and wanted to know what we had treed. Cut that hole bigger and let the dog decide the matter, spoke one of the hunters. We did so, for we had an axe to work with this time, and we knew his dog claimed to be the best in the country.
So he put his dog to the hole and he smelt and took a circle of the tree and started down through the woods. The coon had left the tree every one of the party said and started in pursuit of the supposed coon and I thought my new dogs was a fake so I followed, but my dog still stayed at the tree.
We followed the other dog about four or five hours and he gave it up, so we all came back to the tree where we left my dog, and he was still there. My cousin decided to settle the matter, so he climbed up and told us to hand him a Are brand. We gave him one, and as soon as he ran It up In the tree Mrs. Coon pops out. A fight took place in which my dog was the winner, and three more peeped their heads out of the same hole but fell dead before my cousin's pistol.
We started for home just at the break of day with four coons, three opossum, six skunk. The old she coon weighed 32 lbs , the biggest one that I ever saw In Southern Ohio.
-John Stouder, Warren Co., Ohio.
*from the February 1909 Issue of the Hunter Trader Trapper magazine
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