Coon Hunting with a Cripple
 by Earl Dotson

          I lived in West Virginia at the time this story takes place. My friend, C. Z. Bryant, had been hunting in Pennsylvania and had brought a nice looking Bluetick hound back with him. He asked if I wanted to look at the young dog. He said the reason he had the dog was that he would not stay at the tree. He was a nice Vaughn bred Blue tick with medium ears and an intelligent looking head. It looked like this pup had been handpicked from the litter.

          To my surprise, Mr. Bryant told me he would give me the dog with the only requirement being that he could breed to him if he turned out good. He said, “He outruns my dogs but is never there when I kill the coon“. How old?” I asked.

          “One year”, he said. His sire and dame are very good, I was told.” I called him Troubles.

          The first time I took him out, he treed a coon. With me being over six feet and part

Cherokee, and close by, I killed the coon. This went on for a while and Troubles was staying longer at the tree. But Troubles liked to run those white-tailed deer,

(Photo courtesy of Mike Flores)

and the longer I hunted him, the worse he got.

          I had no shocking collar at that time, so I took the dog to, my brother, Charley. He had an apple orchard and deer were coming in there in droves. I told him to let the dog run loose and feed him very little. I went back in a week and asked how Troubles was doing. He said that the dog had run three days and nights, had come in twice for food, but he was well content now just to lie on the porch. He would not even go near the orchard.

          “If you think he will tree a coon, up the creek there are some coon tracks.” After dark, we walked one-half mile and Troubles was missing. We waited for a while and I told Charley I had not come prepared to coon hunt. I just had my flashlight and my automatic shotgun to do some light turkey hunting. I would wait for the dog and my brother could go home and go to bed. I walked up the creek and found dog tracks on the dry rocks where he had been in the water. I could not make out other tracks. I topped a ridge and heard Troubles treed. I went as fast as I could go for fear he would leave. He stayed.

          I laid the flashlight on the right side of the gun and pulled the trigger.  The slide came back and broke the glass, bulb, and all, the only light I had.  I waited till my eyes got accustomed to the dark and found the dog chewing on the coon. Three hours later, I found my truck, loaded my dog, and went home.

 When I got home, my other brother was there. Clark had bought a Redbone pup. Clark was never much for coon hunting. He never liked to walk. He had been hit by a car and had trouble with one leg. I asked if he wanted to go hunting on Bull Pasture River. He said that his leg would not stand much walking and he did not want to hunt the pup with a deer dog. I told him I would go to the dog if treed, and he could stay at the truck. As I said earlier, Clark was never much for walking, if not for a bad leg, his shoes hurt his feet.

          The coon had not come down to the river yet. I told Clark we would walk up to an old orchard and maybe we could have a deer race if nothing else. Clark said he had a potato sock and would carry everything we caught with that dog, but he said we would have to hang on flat ground due to his bad leg.

          Troubles took a cold track and went uphill out of hearing. That’s out for me,” he said. Then the Redbone pup started trailing. We followed the pup. When we topped a high ridge, Troubles was treed far down the other side. We killed the coon and put it in the sack. 

          “How’s the leg?” I asked. “Bad?” “When we cross back over it will be downhill all the way.”

          When we topped up, we went too far to the right and went down the wrong creek. We heard Troubles running below and treed on a steep hill. I told Clark to just rest and I would go to the tree. The coon I killed was very large and when I came back, Clark was taking a nap.

          I put the coon in his sack. I never mentioned being lost. Another half mile we treed another coon on a steep hill. “Go and get that dog, I am not carrying another coon.” When I got to the tree, the pup was barking treed. When I killed the coon, Clark was almost there. There was another coon for the sack. I never said anything about carrying anything as he had agreed to carry all.

          When we finally came to the road, we were about four to six miles from the truck. Troubles was not there. One half mile up the road, the dog came over the hill. Due to a high bank, we got him caught.

          “The best thing that happens to a coon hunter is when the coon gets away,” said my brother.

          We stopped at a gas station. A game warden was there. I asked the owner if they had any scales. “Did you catch a big one?”

          I said, “The biggest one I have caught in the area.”

          “My partner and I caught one that weighed forty pounds,” he said.

          Our coon weighed twenty-one and one-half pounds. I asked Clark if he wanted to take Troubles and the potato sack and find a forty pound one. He said, ‘No, but I want you to stop at the first beer joint and see if they have anything that might help my crippled leg.”

          Troubles never ran another deer and made a coon dog that any man would be proud to own.

                                                                   (Photo courtesy of Mike Flores)