Registered: Feb 2004
Location: West Kill, NY
Posts: 2045

Thank-you to everyone at the club who helped put on the Coonhunters REunion last weekend. My husband and I went, and had a great time. Mitch doesn't usually want to go to coonhound events with me, but he really enjoyed this one because everyone was so much fun.
There were lots and lots of dogs and people, a couple of vendors. The weather was great for most of the time (it rained during the water race, but the dogs didn't care.) The club handed out gazillions of impressive trophies. The kitchen sold out. Altogether a successful event.
Eight casts went out on the Saturday hunt, fewer on the Friday poor boy. Quite a few went out on an impromptu Sunday morning bear hunt and treed a few, even though some of the guys who went had gotten no sleep after the Saturday night UKC-sanctioned coonhunt. There were lots of kids and puppies. Some interesting dogs of all breeds.
My potlicking Clamour dog came home with two very impressive trophies for line in the field trials despite an embarassing performance. : ) FCh Clam and his competition (another red dog, a female named Ruby belonging to Kathy Ash [sp?], of Maine) meandered into the tree after a visit to the pond. Neither bothered to tree. They went for a tour of the club grounds, instead.
In the non-sanctioned finals (for the memorial trophy), another one of Kathy's red dogs, a registered male, got tree and Clam got line after a hard-charging race to the finish. Clam won Line by a nose, with competition. But my biscuit eater failed to tree, again. He came up to the show bench I was sitting on and lay down in the shade beneath me! LOL
Bill Finney of the Patten Hunting Lodge in Patten, Maine let me handle a very sweet but slightly hyper young saddlebacked plott of his named Dan in the open water race. The dog came in second in his heat, but sure was spirited and fun to handle. Thank you Bill for letting me play with your hounds all weekend.
For any of you who have never been there, the Northeast Kingdom Coon and CAt Club is in a beautiful part of Vermont and the club grounds are huge and well-suited to camping and tying dogs out, with both big open fields and shady patches of woods. The swim pond is huge, and clear enough so I went for an enjoyable swim myself when it was hot on Sunday. Many kids were in the water all weekend. There was a great BBQ shack a couple miles down the road, for those of us still hungry after the kitchen sold out. Mitch and I stayed in a very nice motel within a long walk of the clubhouse, at a very reasonable price, with the hound getting his own bed, and there were half a dozen other motels within five miles, most with a few coonhunters in them.
Sure had a good time! Thank-you for putting on a fine event in the Northeast Kingdom!

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