Grandpa and the Coon Hunt of ‘32
Nicole Nelson-Hicks

          “See this scar?” Grandpa asked as he pushed up his sleeve. “I got that during a coon hunt back in ’32.” The porch creaked as he leaned back in his ladderback rocking chair. His young grandson sat nestled in his lap, waiting for a story, while the rest of the family prepared Sunday dinner inside the house. “Biggest damn one we ever treed. And mean! Lord, I’ll remember that one for the rest of my days. The way it fought and scratched and cursed. OOOWEEE! It was a sight!”

          “My daddy went hunting once and brought back a deer head.” the little boy piped in. “Mom got all mad.”

          Grandpa shook his head laughing and looked down at the boy, “Let me tell you something, boy,” he leaned forward, his head cocked. “Your Paw don’t know nothin’ about coon huntin’.” He sat back and snorted. “Hmmph! He calls hisself a hunter. Boy, there’s more to huntin’ than running out into the woods with a six pack of beer in one hand and a rifle in the other. Nah……these young ones today….. don’t know nothing of huntin’..of the chase.”

          “But…my Paw…he knew. And he taught me….listen up-”

          “There was always a mess of them running across my Paw’s back field so we would set up traps, wooden stakes- oh, about as big around as your leg and half as long, boy- all around the back side, pointy side up. Paw and my Uncle Jed had trained the dogs to corral the coons especially through this strip of land. It was one of my Paw’s favorite tricks.”

          “My dog can do tricks. Roll over, fetch, shake…all kinds of stuff. Ginger is a good dog.”

          “You wouldn’t want nothing to do with these dogs, boy! These dogs weren’t for petting. These dogs were for huntin’! They were the meanest pack of hounds I ever knew. You could hear those dogs baying all over the hills as soon as they caught wind of those coons. Then….Good Lord! You couldn’t hold them back! They’d bolt right after them and run ‘em straight to the stakes. You could hear the coons a’screamin’ as soon as they’d hit’em. Usually, we’d trap the bastards right there in the stakes but that one in ’32 was a mean one. It just kept running, blood trailing everywhere it went. But that was just fine by us ‘cause the dogs would get a whiff and chase it all the harder. Lordy, that one in ’32 was a smart one and kept just ahead of the pack. I figure we must’ve trailed that devil almost half the night.”

“I remember camping outside in the back yard all night with my friends. It’s so dark out here in the country at night. How did you all see to hunt?”

          “The moon was full that night, I recall. Shining like a yellow beacon. Besides, hounds don’t depend on their eyes for huntin’. They use their sniffers.” he said, tapping the side of his thin nose. “It’s better than radar.”

          The boy laughed. “Cool.”

          “He’d run plumb through Paw’s entire 10 acre field and smack into the old county graveyard. Stupid thing had tripped over a gravestone and damn near broke a leg. Since it was my first trip out- I was all of 12 at the time – my Uncle Jed figured he’d let me do the honors. Somethin’ of an old tradition….my first blood.”

          “Kinda like how last year, when I first turned six, my daddy let me hook my first worm at the Shelby Park fishing rodeo?”

          “Hmmmm. Something like that.”

          The boy nodded, understanding.

          “So I stepped forward, my rope in my hand, proud as a peacock, when…suddenly, all hell broke loose! The damn fool started hollarin’ and clawin’ at the ground, throwin’ sticks and a stones, anything that could be found on the ground. I raised up my arm just in time to avoid catching a rock right in the eye. That’s where I got this scar from.”

          Grandpa stopped and pointed down again to the scar. The skin around it puckered like stitches in a hastily sewn hem. The boy leaned closer to study it, touching it gingerly. “Ewwww!”

          Grandpa sat back. “Well, we put up with enough that old coon. We picked up some good sized sticks and went in to beat some sense into the creature’s head. But it kept on throwin’ and screamin’ at us like were were a pack of wild dogs. I was fixing to go in after it but my Uncle Jed pulled me aside and got out his shotgun. After that, it was easy to drag it over to an old oak tree and hang it up proper.”

          “Wow. Did you get to keep it?” the boy asked.

          The old man sighed and tussled his grandson’s hair. “Boy, you don’t know nothin’ about coon huntin’.”