Rick Ennen
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: Turtle Mountains, ND
Posts: 1023 |
The north woods hill and lake country is in process of freezing over and until it is frozen solid I won’t risk hunting it. So, I switched to hunting the MO river bottoms below Bismarck. This country was under 4-8 feet of water, and in some places much more, all summer, which destroyed the habitat. Many of the trees blew down in storms due to saturated soils, and the kitten coon crop, and I suppose most all small game animals, died in the high water. Still, I’ve been giving this river valley a try.
Sunday night…
I cut Frito along a 2-mile long, deep-water, oxbox creek that is connected at both its ends to the river channel. Thankfully, he didn’t swim across the oxbow because there is no access to about a 1000 acres of what is now swamp land between the oxbow and main river channel. Frito followed the old, sandy river bank running along the oxbow. This bank has virtually all of the remaining old growth cottonwoods on my stretch of the river. It was windy, so all I could do was watch the Garmin and cross my fingers he didn’t get into some place I couldn’t reach. Right when the Garmin said 1.0 mile, it showed he was treed. In past years, it was highly unusual to go that deep in the old growth trees to find a track but the flood apparently did its job on the coon population. It’s mandatory to see a coon when you walk that far to a tree and this time was no exception. “Good job, Frito. Let’s leave him for seed.”
Last night…
I loaded Super Charlie and we went further up the river hoping to get into better ground. The high water marks on the trees showed the water was over my head in this area; so it was hit hard too. Same deal, Frito’s pup left alone in the blink of an eye and never looked back. With the Garmin marking off the distance as he sank into the timber I started to get a little uneasy with each additional hundred-yard increment because each step took him deeper into the valley where I knew there’d be a lot of standing water, mud flats and many toppled trees.
It sounded really good to me when he finally opened on a cold track at about 700 yards up river from me, and I thought maybe we’d get lucky and the coon would tree quickly before going out across the lower areas closer to the river, but no. He worked that track down and across mud flats and areas of backwater for about 800 yards farther up river. I drove down a river road to try and get closer, stopped and heard him locate in a couple different spots; probably the coon ran through some toppled trees making the dog work hard to finish his track and be right about his choice of tree. Shortly, I heard him throw a nice big locate and he settled in for what turned out to be a long time on the tree.
I was able to drive within about 750 yards of his tree but after walking most of the distance was stopped by water between us too deep to cross. So, I moved part way back in the direction I started out and attempted to walk in again. This time I found a water crossing where the water stayed out of my chaps if I stood on my toes and held my chaps up tight with my hands as I inched along. It was a lot longer walk from there but at least I got across, and Charlie told me about his tree the whole time without letting up. The rest of the walk was easy and Charlie sure looked and sounded good under his tree with a couple coons in the top. The photo shows just a little of the mess he sorted through to locate the right tree.
I’m sure glad this pup is turning out ok. He’s the one my wife picked for herself when he was about 12 days old; probably because he was developing more slowly than his littermates and needed more watchful care. Getting this pup going has been great for my coon hunting because now when I head out my wife asks, “take’n Charlie?,” and when I get home she wants a report to her question, “how’d my Charlie do!” Charlie is on his way to being a nice dog.  Life is good.
You may have guessed it’s snowing and blowing hard this evening, or I’d be out coon hunting again tonight.
Happy hunting.
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10-27-2011 04:16 PM
