My First Coon 10-5-01

When I was ten years old I got my first coon. Here is the story: It was about an hour and a half from Zee’s house to get to the hunting spot. (Zee is a family friend who lives in Maine.) When we got to the gravel road we drove about five minutes and then we parked the truck. We walked about five more minutes with the dogs ahead of us. We had Dolly and Okie with us. Dolly is my Dad’s dog and Okie is Zee’s dog. We stopped and turned off our lights and listened to the dogs. If you have ever gone coon hunting you will know why we call the dogs barking music. The dogs were heading back to where we had come from so we turned our lights back on and followed the barking. We were almost back to the truck when we got to the tree where the dogs were treeing. It was a pine, not lucky for me as pines are not the easiest trees to shoot a coon out of. I was using my Dad’s .22 rifle and it was big and heavy. Everybody could see the coon but I couldn’t, so I finally saw the eyes and I shot at it. It was a hard shot because it was windy and the tree was moving and the coon kept looking away so I couldn’t see it’s eyes. Finally it came tumbling down and it was a Big coon. I was very happy the dogs had given me a quick hunt and hoped to have another good hunt the next night. But that’s another story.