Paul came by & we headed up there to give the pups an easy one. I wanted to go test out "The Easy Spot" tonight. Pete showed me this spot about 15 years ago. I've adopted it as my own but it's really still his. It was Don Eden's before that, but he died a few years ago. I don't know who had it before him, but I'll bet somebody did. It's been a great puppy spot over the years. I rarely shoot coons out of here, only if the dogs tree close to the farmers house.
I have been on the river for about two months so I didn't know what the Easy Spot had in store. Last few times I was there, I treed a coon & it seemed like a female that was planning on taking up permanent residence. How could I tell? I don't know, funny how you just get feelings about things.
Sent Nitro & Josie in along the path in the pasture. I saw Nitro turn on the creek headed for the first pothole & he struck shortly thereafter. Josie joined in a few minutes later. They both let out locates & I thought they would tree. They went on though, kept getting quieter and finally stopped barking altogether. I thought they might have put the coon up but were too excited to stop. We walked them back through the area & I shined around but didn't see anything sitting up.
This is a good place for pups to strike so we just kept walking. I noticed Nitro change his body language and head into the woods. Sure enough he opened. He was circling in a little area, locating, treeing, moving, locating, treeing. Josie was with him, doing the same thing. Paul & I were sure the coon was up & that the dogs were just confused. We got in close and started shining around. We spotted a whole family sitting up. I got to the tree and called the dogs into it.
Nitro was still really excited and could not settle on this tree. We finally leashed him at the tree. We let them tree together for a few minutes and then headed home.
This was a good example of too many coons. I've seen people minus out in nite hunts more than once like this. Lots of broken trees and thick brush where that litter had probably been playing for a couple of hours. The dogs just looked crazy. A little sloppy but I think both of the dogs learned a little bit. Hopefully they get better at handling this type of situation.
I'll be using this spot a lot so Josie will get plenty of chances to figure this out.