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“Moon’s getting big,” Dud
said over coffee the other day.
“Sure is,” said Herb Collins.
“Time to go after The Ghost again.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“I’ll be there,” said Dud.
The Ghost, hereabouts, is a raccoon. He lives along Lewis Creek and
is a wily old rascal. We love going coonhunting here, but the way we
do it is a bit different than they do it other places. Since we
don’t have a lot of water around us, as they do in some areas, we
don’t have a lot of ‘coons, either. So we conserve the ‘coons, but
not the fun. We throw ‘em back when we’re done.
So we take these beautiful fall and winter nights, put on several
layers of longjohns, and turn the hounds out along the creek.
Sometimes the dogs strike a ‘coon track and put the ‘coon up the
tree quickly. Then we tell the dogs how wonderful they are, hook the
dogs to leashes, and drag them back to the truck. It’s hunting’s
answer to catch-and-release fishing. The coons stay in the tree
until we’re gone and then go back to making the nights more
interesting.
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But not The Ghost. The Ghost is a
big male, or boar. We’ve treed him more than a dozen times now, and
then he discovered this was kinda fun. So now he waits in a one-acre
patch of trees. Waits for the dogs. And when they catch his scent,
he takes those dogs through farmyards, across busy streets, even
past the dog pound. He does everything he can to shake them off his
trail, and it works. The dogs haven’t treed him in three years now.
It the dogs get smart to his ways and put too much pressure on him,
he swims the river.
So Dud and Herb will try The Ghost again tomorrow. Will the dogs put
him up a tree this time? Don’t bet on it. [Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
Brought to you by
Packing the Backyard Horse, by Slim Randles. Available on the
internet. |
