The Norman Transcript
April 17, 2008 12:23 am
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McClatchy Newspapers
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The hounds are raring to go. They always are when they hear one of the pickups roll up.
That's when they get to do their job for their master, Henry Ford: hunting raccoons.
You'd think that, at 83, Ford would want to stay home on a crisp February night. But he'd rather scour the woods with his dogs like he did as a boy.
The treeing Walker coonhounds -- Sam and Tammy -- wait in cages in the pickup bed as Ford and grandson Andrew Ford, 24, pile in the cab and roll to the edge of some Caldwell County woods, about 75 miles northwest of Charlotte.
Henry Ford hopes to bag at least one raccoon to keep his hounds interested. Most times, he lets the prey go free, but sometimes he shoots them to satisfy the dogs.
Andrew's cousin Gary Miller, 34, is along. He's been following their grandfather on coon hunts since he was 2.
"I remember riding his back through the woods. I wouldn't quit if I wanted to."
Andrew parks and he and Miller open the cages. The dogs disappear into the woods.
Henry Ford waits with his grandsons and listens. He can tell the hounds by bark and knows what they've accomplished, whether striking a trail--a higher-pitched, often longer bawl--or treeing a raccoon--a short, choppy bark.
A few minutes later, he hears Tammy bawling. Then, the choppy bark. The party jumps in the truck and moves toward her.
On foot, they wind through bare trees to find Tammy bawling up a tall oak in the half-moon light. But they find no raccoon. The critter had tricked her by jumping to another tree and escaping. Sam sniffs at the tree trunk, not fooled.
The men send the hounds off again and wait quietly, as if in prayer. It's not long before they hear them again. At the next "treed" call, this time from both dogs, Ford hangs by the truck, listening.
"It's a den tree," he says mildly. "I guarantee you."
That's hunter speak for a hollow tree that a raccoon can slip into to wait out a predator.
Sure enough, when Andrew Ford and Miller emerge with Tammy in tow, they confirm their grandfather's hunch.
Miller puts Tammy in her cage and feels her body to find that she's feverishly hot after her two-hour hunt. She pants heavily, but stops breathing when she hears noises, ever the hunter.
The raccoons are safe tonight, but it doesn't bother the hunters.
Says Miller: "That's part of it."
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