Surrounded by darkness, ice in the air, nothing but deafening silence. Suddenly you hear something echoing in the distance throughout the forest and over the hills. You listen closely,look at your hunting partner and smile still not sure. You continue to listen trying to answer the questions is he trailing or has he treed the first coon of the night. You begin walking toward the muffled bawl of your Bluetick. The wind chilling to the bone making it more and more difficult to hear him, yet you can tell he is getting louder with every step you take.

Finally, you see him he is on the creek's edge treeing up a poplar. “Good Boy” you yell in excitement, “Get on the tree.” You begin to shine the tree with your headlamp scanning over each branch being sure not to miss a single twig. Suddenly, after much frustration the coon has been spotted, “eyeshine get the gun.” Squalling at the coon, you try to aim steady while shiverring from the biting chill of the night air. Yes, first shot got him! You look back at your partner yelling, “here he come.” The coon falls and you hear a loud crash; your bluetick jumps off the tree and goes in for the kill. The coon puts up a fierce fight biting the hounds face and digging into his ears with razor sharp claws. The snarl of your bluetick and the hiss of the coon last for only a minute.

Then, everything goes quiet and you see your victorious coonhound standing over his prize panting nonstop. You take his lead off your shoulder and attach it to his collar saying, “good boy.” Then, you lead him to the creek for a drink as a reward for his exhausting efforts, Your partner grabs the coon and all three of you make your way back to then truck. After the dogs are settled in the dogbox for a ride home you admire the coon you and your loyal coonhound worked to get together.

In this story I tried to make it fell like you were there to show how exciting it can be to go hunting with hounds. I can relate to the coonhounds because I personally have two treeing walker hounds and spend almost all my weekends in the darkness of the woods. Every Friday night me and my friends load our dogs into our trucks and decide where we are going hunting, usually stay out until early morning hours.

In my opinion, hunting with hounds is the most exciting type of hunting for many reasons. One of the best and worst times of hound hunting is training the dog which if you are training a coon dog requires you to trap coons. Honestly, I believe trapping coons is fun just to do it but I mainly do it for a pup training, Just think of one day when your hound trees a coon or whatever you have been training it to hunt you can say, I trained that dog, and be proud of what you accomplished.

When you have a hunting hound you will never go hunting alone. Everytime you go with your dog he will be out there stalking the intended game while you are listening for him. He will let you know when he trailing and you will definitely know when he trees or catches it.

In many ways you could also say that you and your dog have a mutual agreement, For example, you want to get a coon and so does your dog; therefore, he goes and finds the coon for you and you get it out of the tree for him. Hunting with hounds is a fantastic passtime and if you have never been you should go and maybe you will enjoy and come to love it as much as I do.

Oren Wicks
Age 17
Elora, TN

2012 CoonDawgs.com Youth Essay Contest Winner