A hunt from the past... |
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I joined the Town & Country Coonhound club of Crown Minnesota some time in the mid 1980's. It was the practice of our club at that time to write columns for submission to Full Cry and American Cooner magazines. Recently, one of these articles came into my possession. The story covers one of my early competition hunts at the club. On that night I drew out with two individuals and I had a pretty good time. Since then I have spent many enjoyable evenings cooning with these guys and their dogs. Well, here is the story:
A hunt from the past
by Wade Rylander, summer of 1986
The cast was made up of Bruce Ordway with his Bluetick, Galen, I was hunting Rick Townsend's NT CH walker, Butch, and Dale was hunting his NT CH walker Sue.
Now, when Dale said to Bruce, half-kidding, half-serious, "you're going to get to hunt with one of the finest walker bitches in the country", I knew he wasn't lying. Dale has hunted against some of the big boys & won. From what I've seen well, I sure wouldn't mind feeding her. She has the most muscular physique of any female dog I've ever seen. Dale hunts all over Minnesota and some parts of Arkansas (ha, ha). Bruce's Galen is only two and really looks promising. He sure has a nice voice. Butch is a pretty fair dog too, so as expected it was a close hunt all night.
The first drop Sue was quite a ways ahead of the other dogs on the track, but Butch got 1st tree. Then Dale & Bruce treed their dogs and it turned out to be separate trees. Bruce found the coon in Sue & Galen's tree right away so Sue got a first tree that she deserved. Now I had to find Butch's coon.
Butch was fifteen feet up when I got there so I knew the coon had climbed. This is where the sportsmanship comes in. It was a tough tree and I was really looking hard but it was Dale who found the coon and showed it to me. I don't think I would have found that coon. A lot of guys wouldn't have done that, This was also a challenge hunt (Butch has the challenge trophy). So I think that says a lot about Dale Pederson. Like I heard someone else say, "anyone who hunts with Kenny Bakken has got to be honest".
Well, Sue came out of that first drop 25 points ahead with Galen in 3rd only 50 points behind. On the next drop Sue increased her lead to 50 points with Bruce's dog straightening out that track. Now Butch had to put it into high gear or he was gonna lose the challenge trophy. That's just what he did too! He got 1st strike, 1st tree, with Sue right behind. Bruce's dog kind of dropped out at this point. He is already blind in one eye and the next day Bruce found out (when he saw the dogs good eye swollen shut) that he had scratched his cornea.
Now Butch had a 25-point lead with about six minutes to hunt. Butch went out and struck a coon track with Sue right behind. All she had to do was get 1st tree and it was a tie ballgame. Well, time ran out but that didn't stop the dogs from treeing our 5th coon across the Rum River. Guess who got to go swimming? It wasn't that far across but I'm not the best swimmer so when one if my hip boots started coming off and acting like an anchor, I thought I was in bad trouble. Thank the Lord for that log sticking out from the other shore. Bruce & Dale had stayed back in the woods away from the river so I don't think they realized just how close I came to drowning. Anyhow, I went and got the dogs that were treed on a monster of a coon. Now I had to cross the river again. Needless to say, I looked for a better spot to cross. I found a small maple that leaned about halfway across the river and decided to try crossing there. I sent the dogs across and yelled for Dale and Bruce to call them, then I started shinnying up that tree just like a coon. When I got to the top I hung there for a few minutes trying to decide if this was what I wanted to do. I finally decided yes and jumped as far as I could. I only had to swim (flounder) a few strokes and I could touch bottom. Whew! Dale and Bruce gathered up the dogs, I gathered up my wallet and wheat light and headed back to the trucks, You're never more alive than just before you die.
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