The following is a story out of my book, Guys in Camo. If you enjoy the story, you will find plenty more in the book which can be downloaded to your e-reader from Amazon.
DISTURBING THE PEACE
I have never had to worry about not making any noise
as I loaded up my dogs from a hunt before, but here it was midnight and I found
myself trying to call in my dogs and get them back to the house without making any
racket or calling attention to myself in the dead of the night. I felt like a burglar trying not to get
caught, and it was all from trying to help out a neighbor; well, partly anyway.
I had lived in Village for years; Village being a
small residential area consisting of
houses within about a four square mile radius, more or less, in each
direction. A neighbor living on the
outskirts of this little town had a cornfield in a garden behind her house, and
she had been complaining for several weeks about a problem she was having with
coons eating up her corn.
She finally asked me if I would come over one night
and get rid of those coons. That was
right down my alley. I had a pair of
young dogs I had been training, and I was eager to get them into her cornfield
and see if they would jump a coon.
She lived within walking distance of my house but
since I never knew when I might need my truck to round up my dogs if they
headed into the woods and out of hearing range, I loaded the dogs in my pickup after dark one night
and drove the short distance to her house.
I dropped the tailgate and walked the dogs to her garden spot. The dogs sniffed and paced around and were
soon barking in the corn patch. They
treed and headed out into the woods away from all the houses, which is just
what I had expected. I followed and soon
found the coon up an old tree not far from the clearing.
During the time it took me to follow the sound of my
barking hounds, I had decided the night was much too young to just kill that
coon and stop the hunt. I wanted the
coon to come off the limb of that tree
and hit the ground alive so I could let my dogs have the pleasure of a good
coon fight, and I was feeling up to a little excitement myself.
We were at the edge of Village, and the dogs were in
the woods away from all the houses so I thought just a little ruckus and
disturbance wouldn’t hurt a thing. I
flashed my light up into the tree, found the coon and shot just to the left of
the frightened coon, deliberately missing it.
Before my shot stopped echoing that coon was on the ground running for
its life and my dogs were right behind it
barking and baying for all they were worth. But the coon headed in the wrong
direction. Rather than going deeper into
the woods, it headed back across the opening into the cornfield, out across the
road, and back down the woods toward all the houses in our little
community.
I jumped into my truck hoping to head off the dogs
that were hot on the coon’s trail.
Naturally the coon and the dogs beat me. The coon crossed the opening
where our little church sat, went across the road and headed toward those
little houses sitting in a neat little
row, all of which were built on pier and beam structures and sitting on cinder
blocks up off the ground. I didn’t know
what to do as I watched the coon lead the chase underneath one house and then
the other.
I had the
window of my truck rolled down and could tell by the commotion that one of my dogs almost caught the coon under the
first house, but the coon surprised my young puppy when it attacked and sent my
dog reeling backward with a yelp. By the
time my dog recovered from its shock my other dog had caught up with the chase,
and both dogs lit out once again on the coon’s trail underneath every one of
those houses. They were barking and
baying all the while. It was late into
the night and the folks who lived in those houses had all gone to bed. There were no lights on anywhere at first,
but then I began to see lights coming on one by one in every house on the
row. It was then that I decided to just
continue easing down the road in my pickup like a casual by- passer. I didn’t want those folks knowing whose dogs
those were and that I had caused all this ruckus.
I eased up behind the big store at the crossroads
which sat at the corner and just at the end of all that row of houses. Then I
turned and drove south about a half mile down the road to a little oil field. I stopped to wait for the chase to get to
me. Sure enough, from the sound of the
dogs they were headed my way. The dogs
caught that coon about 100 yards from me and the fight was on again. I listened to the coon squalling and the dogs
barking and growling for about ten
minutes. They finally got that
coon killed and then all got quiet.
I continued to wait a while longer before I started
calling for the dogs, urging them to come quickly still trying to get them
loaded and back at home without making any noise and hoping that the lights in
the neighborhood were off and no one was roaming around trying to figure out
what was going on.
I never did go hunting no more in town.
