Slowly regaining my energy after the flu. Here's tonight's hunt. You might have to click on it to make it bigger.
Boone struck right after I let him go. He treed near the red dot for a couple minutes, but when I got closer I saw the coon jump out. Ran him and treed again where it says "coon 1 shot". This was a 26lb boar, huge smart coon, and obviously very tough. This was a 10ft. shot in a small tree right between the eyes. The coon fell out down a small dirt cliff and into the creek. He took off as hard as he could run. Heavy blood every 10-15 feet smeared on leaves and grass. Boone got down to the creek after about 10 seconds and got on the trail. I was expecting a quick catch and bay/kill but that didn't happen. We ran him all the way to "coon 1 killed". I saw blood almost that entire walk. He didn't hardly have a drop in him when we treed him for the 3rd time. The garmin said 1210 ft from shot to kill as the crow flies. pretty impressive for a coon losing that much blood. Boone's avg. on that track was 5.7mph.
Leashed him and headed for the truck. Saw coon 2 really low in a bushy tree right on the fence line. He was a bigger boar coon than the first one. He was literally in the last tree before the field and truck. Boone started winding him, so I let him off the leash. He treed hard on it and I grabbed the gun. Glasses fogged over so I took them off and wiped them. As I did this I heard the coon thud and take off running. Boone had just managed to cross the fence to the other side when he jumped back onto my side of the fence. Took him 8-10 seconds to find a spot to get back to my side. By then he was just trailing, no sight of the coon. I figured this would be another long haul. I left coon 1 at this spot and started after Boone. This track averaged 7.8 mph. Thank god for my Astro, as he was 570yds over 2 hills from me with his head in and out of a hole and I lost his voice. Leashed him and made the long walk back to the truck. Very interesting night with 2 huge coon on pretty long runs for us. 80% of the coon we tree are smaller ones that only run a couple hundred yards, so this was a great challenge. Boone handled it well, although I think if he was just a little faster on the draw he could have caught or pressured them up a tree quicker. Both tracks had fences and stuff he had to work through that got him a little off their heels.
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