COON HUNTING WITH THE YANKEE UNCLE
Don Lively

Don Lively is a retired police officer and freelance writer. He spends his days between Shell Bluff and Charleston. Send comments or questions to Livelycolo@aol.com.

Coon hunting was just as big a part of growing up in the rural South as was Mama's fried chicken for Sunday dinner. It was a rite of passage when the boys got to go with the men on their first hunt.

Every coon hunt that I can remember was with Daddy and his friend Mister Chester. Daddy told us that we had to hunt the coons because they were stealing peanuts or corn out of the fields and ruining the crops and, in fact, every hunt we ever went on started on the edge of somebody's patch down by the river. Knowing what I know now though, I doubt that a few coons were capable of doing enough damage to warrant making them the fugitive from a gang of men and dogs. I suspect that the real reasons for the trips had more to do with getting out of the house late at night, having a nip of an adult beverage in the cool autumn air, and listening to the dogs trail.

On those nights we would drive to the starting spot and turn the dogs loose. They would momentarily scatter until one of them struck on the scent of the unluckiest coon in the vicinity, then they would regroup and the chase was on! As we stood around the pick up trucks I was always fascinated when one of the men would say, " They're coming up on Sweetwater," or, "They're on the backside of the horseshoe field and Ol' Sarge is out front". They could tell which dog was which from the sound of it's baying. After a while one of them would say, " Bossy has him treed! Let's go!" We'd take off through the trees running straight toward the dogs with only a couple of dim flashlights showing the way. I had to work hard to keep up but as long as I kept Daddy or Mister Chester within earshot I knew I wouldn't get too lost!

On one particular hunt my Uncle Edward decided to go along with us. As far as I knew, he was my only Yankee uncle. He was married to Daddy's sister who was by no means a Yankee. They had married during the war and had lived Up North for many years and had recently moved to Georgia to get away from whatever was unpleasant about living Up North. I was probably ten years old before I knew that Up North was a direction and not an actual place. Anyway, Uncle Edward had heard the other men talking about coon hunting so often he decided that he wanted to try it.

He showed up at the meeting spot wearing some sort of rubber boots like I had never seen before and one of those funny looking fishing hats with the floppy brims. It was yellow, I'm sure of that. Bright yellow.

That night the hunt turned out to be a longer than normal run for the dogs, probably more than three miles, so we were running through thickets and woods, swamps and streams. We came to a little branch that Daddy was familiar with and he showed us exactly where to cross where it was the most shallow. Uncle Edward was standing several yards downstream and, for reasons known only to him, decided not to follow Daddy's lead.

He stepped out into the branch and immediately disappeared completely under the water. He had chosen the worst possible spot to cross where a huge ancient cypress stump had rotted out years before and had left a deep, dark pool. By deep I mean it was over Uncle Edward's head. By dark I mean that all we could see was the top of that bright yellow hat in the flashlight beam. The water was also quite cold that time of year so when he finally surfaced there was a ruckus like I'd never heard, him sputtering and gasping for air, and the rest of us busting a gut laughing.

That was the night that I learned that Yankees have their own way of cussing. They put a lot of INGs on the ends of their cuss words and they repeat them over and over. I'd never heard Uncle Edward cuss before but that night he made up for any prior lack thereof. To this day I've not heard some of those words again but I am certain they were cuss words. Of course Yankees call them swear words, but they sounded exactly like cuss words to me.

When one of the men finally fished Uncle Edward out of the branch he made it abundantly clear that whatever curiosity he had about coon hunting had been satisfied, but we couldn't leave Bossy and Sarge and the other dogs under that tree another mile or so into the sloughs. They would have been quite indignant if we hadn't found them and their furry prize. Uncle Edward finished the hunt with us but he never went again.

I think he still has that yellow hat.