Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990 TAG: 9007200186
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARIANNA FILLMORE SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Could they still be planning to go that night? A quick phone call erased any doubts - all systems were go!
"Weather don't much matter to a coon hunter," said Wendell Bond, secretary of the Blue Ridge Coonhunters and Sportsmen Club in Christiansburg.
"We often travel six to eight hours to attend a hunt, so it's usually impossible to tell what the weather's going to be that far away," Bond said. "I've hunted in everything from pouring rain to snow 8 inches deep."
Wendell Lyndell Price of Christiansburg, field representative for the United Kennel Club, Bob Justice of Pilot in Montgomery County and Noel Underwood of Willis in Floyd County would conduct tonight's hunt as if it were a UKC-licensed event, using the dogs and lights to locate raccoons but not destroy them.
The thrill of the sport, the men said, lies both in the friendly yet serious competition and in the pleasure of hearing one's hound hot on the trail of the wily, masked creature.
Coon hunters interviewed often spoke of being "obsessed" with the sport. Adjectives such as "addictive" and "possessed" frequently surfaced.
A fine, misting rain began to fall at 7 p.m. and Price drove up as Bond was introducing his various coon hounds. The treeing walker dogs, tri-colored white-black-tan with large, expressive eyes wereall obviously eager to be chosen for the night's hunt.
The first hunt site was somewhere east of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Mabry Mill. We had wound our way back into the countryside on ever-shrinking roads that eventually dwindled down to a gravel lane. Patches of woods mingled with cow pastures among the hills and hollows.
The dogs were a bundle of energy, barking their enthusiasm and tugging on leashes as the men fitted them with tracking collars, an electronic aid to locate the dogs that roam far and wide trailing a raccoon. Good working dogs are worth as much as $5,000; pedigreed animals, much more.
Bond played his light across the trees that lined the road and, as luck would have it, spotted a coon right away in the top of a dead tree. It is extremely rare for hunters to locate the animal before the dogs do.
The men took the dogs across the road and released them. Immediately, the hounds picked up the scent and set off with a tremendous baying. The men stood silently in the pouring rain, each listening intently to the sound of his dog. Hunters can tell by changes in the tone of the bark that the dog has treed the coon.
After each man had called his dog treed, they went after them, plunging through the middle of a dense laurel thicket and splashing across a bold stream, scrambling over fallen logs and up a slippery bank.
The coon had left his first perch and scooted up another tree a short distance from the first sighting. The dogs were stretched up the trunk as far as they could reach informing all with a deafening din that they had found the critter.
There, in the pouring rain, Price painstakingly demonstrated on the scorecard how that particular turnout would have been scored in competition.
The official 1990 UKC Coonhound Rulebook contains 52 pages of fine print, and the scorecard with its plus, minus, split and circled points begs the talents of a certified accountant.
They turned the dogs out twice more at different sites before the rain and wind became torrential.
At one spot, as they listened to the dogs trail and tree, Bond pointed out that he could tell by his dog's bark that the coon was not in the tree.
Sure enough, when they checked, there was no coon to be seen. Noel commented that he thought that it had crossed to another tree, come down, and entered the woods on the other side of the road.
The men leashed their dogs and took them across the road. The animals strained at the leashes as they again picked up the scent.
The last turnout was across open pastures. The dark rain masked the dogs from view as they opened on the trail with the hunters followed. Soon, the barks faded and became irregular as the trail grew too cold - or too wet - to follow.
by CNB