I was visiting TW awhile ago and her story about The Hunter and Howard's duck hunting trip made me recall a short hunting trip with hubby when he still had a coon hound.
This was over a decade ago, I think, cause all the kids were still living at home plus we had exchange students living with us in those days too. Anyway, out of the blue one day he asked me if I wanted to go coon hunting with him that night. Before I thought it through really well, I said I'd go.
It was cloudy and not too cold and it was in January I think cause it was still getting dark pretty early. I put on an old coat that belonged to my son, and since I didn't own a pair of boots, I also borrowed a pair of his old cowboy boots. I had to wear 3 pairs of socks to be able to walk in them cause even at age 9 or 10 he was on his way to bigfootdom.
We were only about 7 or 8 miles from home when we got to the wooded area and let Sundown loose and followed him at a walk as he went sniffing off into the woods. The woods were only about half a mile wide but ran about 2 or 3 miles to the east and west, not easy to get lost in.
After we'd walked around trees, the occasional gully, over downed trees, we found a log to sit on while we listened for the dog to tree a coon. The wind suddenly picked up and it began to get colder and a misty rain started falling. I tried to sit there patiently, all the while thinking that hubby would soon say it we'd better get back to the truck to get out of the rain. He kept sitting, I kept waiting, the dog kept hunting, it kept raining, then it rained harder, and suddenly the dog bayed, he'd treed a coon. Hubby jumped up and started walking at a fast clip. I followed, huffing and puffing and stumbling in my over-sized, now wet, cowboy boots. I don't know how in the hell he knew which direction the dog had treed cause after about 5 minutes I couldn't even remember in which direction the truck was.
After about 10 more minutes of walking through an even heavier rain, we came to the tree where the dog was baying at the coon. Hubby put the leash on Sundown and tied him to a limb at another tree and shined his light up the tree to find the coon. I got a little excited then cause the light made the coon's eyes light up like two glowing embers and I was about to forget all about the rain until hubby pointed his gun up into the tree.
"You aren't going to SHOOT him???, I screamed. "Well, yeah Brenda, that's the whole point of going coon hunting," he told me.
Well folks, the shit hit the fan about then. I started crying and yelling and told him I would never have come with him if I'd known he was going to SHOOT the coon, and that I'd only come so I could SEE a coon and see the dog treed. Sundown was sitting there looking at us like we were two idiots with an expression that said, "Well old son, are you going to shoot the damn coon out of the tree or what?"
Finally, I walked off, he shot the coon, untied the dog, and we started back to the truck. We walked, and walked, and walked. We finally got out of the woods and into a field. A plowed field, a wet field, a field where every step I took made my feet sink up in cold, slimy mud up past the cowboy boots. About every third step one of the boots would come off and I'd have to reach down into the slimy, cold mud and pull it out.
I finally stopped and asked hubby, "Where the hell is the truck?" Hubby said, "I don't know, we got turned around in the woods somehow and I don't know exactly where the truck is."
By this time, I was tired, my feet were wet, and muddy, and cold. It was raining so hard I couldn't see. We finally got across the field and through a thicket and I stopped and told him to take his ass on and FIND the damn truck and come back and get me cause I wasn't going another step! I sat down right in the middle of a turnrow, in the mud and water, and waited.
Needless to say, I never went coon hunting with him again.
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