Never would I of thought that staying up late at night and sometimes early into the next morning chasing dogs through the woods would be any fun, but it was surprising how much it appealed to me. One night last week after baseball practice I got a call from some good friends of mine named Sam and

	Sally At The Grand American In Orangeburg

Daniel asking me to go coon hunting with them. Sam had just picked up a new dog and wanted to try tree a coon with him. I like trying out new things so I agreed to ride along. With a chance to get footage for a blog, I had to run home and get my camera before we left. When I got back to Sam?s house they had all their equipment laying on the  tailgate of the truck. I would have never thought that coon hunting could be so expensive and require so much gear. They had 2 tracking collars, a tracking box, a handheld Garmin GPS system with 4 GPS collars, and 3 declarable coon lights, hip boots, and some leashes.

After about a 45 minute ride to Buck Horn Hunting Club in Summerville South Carolina, we finally turned the dogs loose. As soon as we turned the dogs out of the box they began to scan the hardwood bottom for any fresh coon tracks that were nearby. We just sat back and enjoyed the crisp breeze and gazed at all the stars while we waited for the dogs to locate some tracks and/or coons. Coon hunting was very relaxing, that is, until the dogs trailed and treed a coon. Daniel and Sam could pinpoint their dogs and tell me exactly

June Treed

what their dogs were doing. The dogs have different bawls and barks for locating, trailing, and treeing a coon. After the dogs treed the first coon we started to make our way theinto the woods. Looking at the Garmin GPS, the dogs were 320 yards northeast of our position at the truck. The hard part began after we finally arrived at the tree. We had to shine the top of the tree and the tree adjacent attempting to locate a black and gray coon in front of a dark night sky. Shard eyes Sam finally spotted the coon, the boar coon made the mistake to look down into our lights and we caught a glimpse of his glowing eyes. The next stage of the hunt was not for the faint of heart. We put the ringtail in the sights of the .22 and let him have it. He fell out of the tree, and the fight began. The dogs jumped on the coon and grabbed it around its neck until it was dead. It all lasted about 30 seconds. Sam informed me that they do not shoot but 1/3 of the coons they tree. But the dogs needs a reward for all their hard work every once and a while. Walking the dogs out of the woods isn?t as easy as it sounds either. The dog?s leashes kept getting hung up on briars or trees which caused us to constantly stop and untangle the dogs. We finally made it out though and it was a hunt I won?t forget.
 
All and all it was an exciting night filled with dogs bawling in the night time woods and coons being treed. I love relaxing, letting go of all of my everyday stresses and worries, and just listening to the dogs run.