Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

Betsy Cate and Jolene on the tree.

Side note: I got the kids these cap lights for Christmas. Superior lights Stingray. I recommend them. Two levels of red and three positions of main beam. Light weight. I like them better than mine. Brighter and the light has a more natural look to it. I may steal theirs if they aren’t with me. There are a lot of options for bump cap color, too. According to my son, they work under water 😂, but I don’t recommend trying it that way. I don’t remember the exact price, but I think they were around $150-200. Don’t quote me.

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Registered: Jul 2015
Location: mo
Posts: 749

Our prayers are with all of you all in Tennessee. Hope you guys are okay.

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

We really didn’t hunt a ton last season due to work schedule, and I’m not a serious enough hunter to want to deal with heat and mosquitoes, so we didn’t hunt at all this summer. She, along with my walker, continue to tree coons in the yard at night. My neighbors really love them 😂. My two neighbors recently had their cars burglarized in the night, but they avoided my house. I wonder why? We have been out a couple times this season and Jolene did tree for a bit but had a tendency to move before I could get to her tree. Betsy Cate entered her in a youth hunt. In our cast, Jolene treed first (called treed second) on the only coon seen in the hunt. This past weekend, I went with some friends to the White River. On night one, Jolene split treed twice, and had two coons both times. She also treed with the two other dogs in the group on some of the trees. On night two, she split treed twice again, but no coons were seen in those trees. One had a hole and one was huge with a lot of leaves. We looked for a long time, one guy even used a thermal viewer, but no luck. She did tree a couple other times, but left the tree if a certain one of the other dogs started treeing. Maybe she just had a lot of confidence in that dog. I did too, she was a good coon dog. On night two, there were four dogs, and if the tree was crowded, she would back off the tree about 5’ and keep treeing. I liked that. I’ve mentioned this before, but pretty much anything this dog does that is good can’t be blamed on me, but we are enjoying it. An older guy in the group was impressed with her nose and said he thinks she would make a good rig dog.

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

May not have been that close to death, but scared me pretty good. Went out near the Mississippi River last night. Hunting her alone. She starts barking like she’s treed but something is a little off. Garmin shows she’s near the river, but not quite on it. After a bit we move in and realize she is in/on a brush pile where a couple large trees have fallen out into a chute that’s about 100 yards wide with an island on the other side. She’s trying to figure out how to get out onto the tree trunks in the river. These trees fell because the river ate away the bank and Jolene is right on the edge. As we start shining the pile of drift wood hung against the trees, Jolene tried to run out on it. We found out she’s not a good swimmer. The current was very swift. I had my brother, cousin, and two oldest kids. I thought Betsy Cate was going to witness her dog drown while her dad did nothing about it. Lesson learned. Next time we get in a situation like that near any river, especially that one, get the dog away quick. After securing the dog, shine if you want, but just go ahead and give the coon that round. I’m guessing the coon ran way out on to the last tree trunk and then swam across.

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

Is it possible for too many tracks to confuse a dog?
Saturday night we hunted a property that is about 60 acres in town. Surrounded by hardwoods that back up to houses on 3 sides, couple creeks run through it with hardwoods along the creeks and it was planted in soybeans for the sole purpose of deer hunting. I am allowed to hunt it after deer season. I think every coon in town is on this place. They are actually making trails going through the beans. Wore down paths with nothing but coon tracks. In my limited hunting experience, I’ve never seen anything like it.
We walked about 1/4 of the way into the property before cutting loose. Jolene was already about to go nuts before being unleashed. She takes off in a full sprint. This is the first time she has left out like that. She always goes out, but never has she sprinted out like that. She strikes very quickly and proceeds to turn and run back almost to the road. I tone her off of that. I’ve been told calling a dog off tracks can teach them bad habits, but I was afraid the road could be worse. I had to do this one other time when she got into the residential area. I don’t know if it will teach her it’s OK to leave tracks, but I like that the dog will come in if called.
While hunting, she would keep jumping around and crossing the fields, taping trees and then going off again. Seemed like she could never make her mind up. Is it possible that there was too much coon scent in the area for her to focus on just one? She did finally settle on a big oak. Charlie squalled first and nothing looked. While I was searching the opposite side of the tree Betsy Cate squalled and found the coon when it turned to look. This made her super excited. First off, her dog had the right tree, secondly she made it look, and thirdly her brother wasn’t able to do it.
In all reality, just about any tree there may have had a coon, and shinning the tree line from out in the field showed lots of eyes. But o can’t discount that when she decided to lock on a tree, we found a big coon in it. We had a big time. The kids had a blast. Three of them went with me this time.

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

Look at these tracks. There were trails like this all over. Crazy

Last edited by Nick B on 01-18-2021 at 04:50 PM

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Registered: Aug 2011
Location: Emporia, Kansas
Posts: 375

sure do enjoy your reports on that fine young Blue female.
very good to see the smiling faces of those youngsters.
keep the reports coming.

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

Thanks Driftwood. We don’t always know what we’re doing, but we’re trying to have fun doing it. My friend moved a little north of you to Wamego, KS about a year and a half ago. He keeps sending me pictures of what looks like ring tailed bears on his trail cam. He tries to talk me into coming there to hunt. The drive and cost of out of state licenses have kept me away. I’m assuming that out of state license cost came about when hides used to be worth something, but I don’t really understand why they would be so high now.

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Registered: Aug 2011
Location: Emporia, Kansas
Posts: 375

you just said the best thing there you could.

It is all about having fun working the hounds with the youngsters.


I surely do not understand the cost of the out of state license either. Kansas until about 10 years back did not require a license for folks older than 65, then they decided that they were loosing money from the feds.. so they decided to "let" us older folks have a lifetime license from 65-75 for only $40... wow now next year what will I do?

But I still have to buy a "Fur harvesters license and deer tags..
Lots of good coonhunting up around Wamego KS

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Registered: Jul 2015
Location: mo
Posts: 749

quote:

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Originally posted by Nick B

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Registered: Jan 2019
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 139

Took Jolene and the oldest two kids last night. Won a bench show on the way to the woods. I believe that makes her one win shy of grand show champion. The club asked if we were staying for the night hunts. I said we’re not doing that because she doesn’t stay treed long enough yet. We left and went over to public wildlife refuge. Turned loose and had planned to hunt her along the tree line next to a bean field. As usual, she gets struck pretty quick, and takes it back behind us, not where I was wanting to go, due to water. She’s about 100 or so yards into the woods and working around in about the same area, and after a fairly short time (I wish I would’ve timed it), she straightened something out and makes a fairly deliberate track and starts treeing. She’s about 340 yards away from where she started. The kids and I try hustling to her, but it takes a little to get there, not too long, but she stayed treed the whole time, at least 4 minutes. I was very pleased with that progress. As we get to the tree, Betsy Cate said, “Dad, we’ve been to this tree before.” And yes we had. This is the massive cypress that’s broken off about 20 feet up with a hole in it. It is the same tree Jolene is treeing on at the bottom of the very first post in this thread. I really wanted to reward her for staying at the tree, but the coon won this round. I was very pleased watching how she ran this track. Could clearly see progress. We then head back to the field and cut loose the direction I originally intended. She goes along the edge of the field, and we can see everything she’s doing. She gets to one spot and excitedly begins sniffing all over. I told the kids she was about to strike, and sure enough she does and takes off running out into the field working back and forth in a zigzag manner. She mostly heading southwest and then begins to crisscross the same spot a bunch. She’s barking the whole time. After a couple minutes in this same area of the field, we walk over to inspect what’s up, and as we get close she takes off to the East still on a track. The area she had been spending so much time on was an empty spot in the middle of the bean field. Now Jolene has reached the tree line on the east side of the field about 250 yards away. She goes silent. She heads north along the ditch for about 100 yards and strikes again. She takes of headed north east and is getting into stuff we can’t go through because of water. We make it as far as we can and she is now almost 600 yards from us. Looking at the back and forth track on the garmin, I’m certain she’s working a track and not running a deer. She sat down for a minute around 550 yards and sounded like she wanted to tree, but never committed. When she hit 590 yards from us, I started calling her back. She did not come right away. Toning her and vibrating had little affect. One medium sized shock and she came back out direction. I hated to do that, but we weren’t getting to her. When she finally got back, she had clearly been swimming. We hunted back west towards the truck. She strikes and is working across the field through the beans. That’s fun to watch. When she hits the road we’re parked on, she takes off in almost a straight line to the tree line on the other side and trees right away. When we get to the road, it’s a little elevated and we can feel the wind pretty good in our face. I’m guessing this helped her out. As we get to the tree, I see eyes...down low. And their is a possum. Oh well. We gave her harsh “NO” but no other corrections. We’ll see how that goes. Kind of a bummer to end with a possum, but overall I was very pleased and the kids had fun.

Last edited by Nick B on 01-23-2021 at 03:49 PM

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