Registered: Nov 2025
Location:
Posts: 1

Hi all,
I am still learning on hunting hounds in my case OMC but wondering once there is snow what features should I be looking for to let me dog loose for best chances of treeing a coon, cornfields or creaks or something else? I am in Northern Vermont. I am hoping to get out a couple times a week to hunt. We have had a awful squirrel season and I am hoping to get him trained on coon as there is way more coon around us then squirrels. I have put this off as he got into it with a porcupine two years ago at night but since then he has run straight past one porcupine while squirrel hunting so hoping he has learned his lesson. He has treed a couple coon just around my house when let him out. Any advice or help would be very much appreciated.

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Sincerely,
Per

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Registered: Nov 2019
Location: Tennessee
Posts: 82

I don’t feel like a November corn field would be productive, but summer time any woods bordering a corn field is about as good as it gets here. Probably your creek is your best bet I’ve been at it a long time and it never fails to strike a coon along side a small creek.

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Krt

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Registered: Jan 2023
Location: North Central OH
Posts: 81

Follow the food source in your area, nuts berrys seeds. The weather plays a big part in it as well. Here in OH they plow under most of our cut corn fields. So there not the "best" place to cut loose in the winter. Unless we have a warm up and you are seeing worms. Then you can get good tracks. Water is always a good place to hit tracks, but be mindful of the size of water. Here a creek and most rivers I can walk across no problem as long as we didn't get a big rain. I've hunted with many guys that call my swollen rivers creeks where there from. Try to keep a young dog where they don't have to fight with deep water. Dogs get frustrated on water even in swamps. Some quit and move on and some will stay all night and go know where. Find a place with Den trees, they have to have a place to live. Here I look for beach trees. My best woods have Beach trees throughout the timber, a mix of White oak and red oak and a fresh water source. If you can find some little farm ponds before the freeze can be killer as well.

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Registered: Jan 2016
Location:
Posts: 627

As already posted, Acorns and Beech nuts if it’s a good year for either one or both, are a pretty sure bet this time of year. Nuts will put on the fat coon need to go through the winter months. Beaver ponds and streams are also areas coon will frequent if the mast crop is in an off year in your area. I live within a couple miles of the Connecticut River on the NH side. Several of the big cornfields in my area have good stands of Oak back away from the river. Part of the White Mountain National Forest is in my area as well giving access to Beech, wild apple trees, beaver ponds and streams.

If you have a hound with a good cold nose and the genetics that enable him/her to use it you can get some really nice runs this time of year. Seems to me fewer and fewer folks with coon hounds today have much if any appreciation of a coon hound that can unravel a cold track, turn it into a running track and have game in the tree at the end.

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Dan

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