Coon Hunting

The only times I remember my Dad carrying the .22 caliber rifle were a couple times that he took me coon hunting; he used it for shooting the raccoon out of the tree after the dogs had treed the coon.  I think I remember him shooting at a coon one time I was with him, but I don’t think he got it.  I was much older and off to college when he got Franklin, a coon hound, so I never got to do much coon hunting with him.  My Dad used to hunt coons with his friend Bill Edwards.  When coon hunting, you should have a coon hound; and you walk around the woods at night until the coon hounds get the sniff of a coon. Then, the coon hounds trail the coon with their noses until the coon runs up a tree to get away from the dogs.  Here again, it is a pleasant time standing in the woods at night listening to the dogs bark while they are trailing the coon and when they have it treed.  The dogs have a different bark or howl for each of these two phases of the pursuit.  Once the dogs have the coon treed, you follow sound of the dogs barking through the darkness of the woods at night until you get to the tree.  Then, you use a spotlight to try to find the coon in the tree, and shoot it.  It is sometimes not easy to see the coon in the tree.

Years later, in our five acre country lot, we put out a bird feeder in the Crab Apple tree behind the deck on the back of the house; we could watch birds from either the kitchen window or while sitting on the deck.  This bird feeder attracted a lot of raccoon as well as the birds.  Our Chow dog Leo, who for a while we kept on a long chain outside the garage attached to our house, once treed two young coons in the Honey Locust tree near the garage.  I guess the coons by chance came too close to Leo, and he chased them up the tree.  They sat up in the tree for about three days with Leo sitting at the base of the tree.  Leo must have fallen asleep one time because one day the coons disappeared – maybe they left out of desperation.

I suspended the bird feeder on a three foot long, thin nylon rope from a tree limb to keep out the raccoon; the bird feeder was about five feet above the ground.  My idea was that the coons would not be able to reach the bird feeder from the limb along this long, thin rope.  One night, I heard a large racket outside.  I got up from bed and turned on the light over the deck, and saw a very large raccoon eating from the bird feeder.  This large coon was holding onto the limb with his back paws; its body and front and back legs were fully stretched downward; and it was eating from the bird feeder using its front paws.  When I turned on the light, the coon very deliberately began to pull himself back up onto the limb.  He moved as if he was not really concerned about me, but I think he may have been moving as fast as he could from his stretched out position.  If I had a gun and the inclination, I could have shot at him five times while he was thus retreating.

Another time on the summer night, we had a banana sitting on the counter in the kitchen with the kitchen window open.  There was a screen on the window, but the screen was not fastened tightly against the window frame.  The next morning the banana was gone.  Apparently, a coon had squeezed in between the screen and the window frame and taken the banana.  We knew that the coon had been there because there were short black hairs on the counter.

So, I decided to try my hand at trapping coons.  I bought a medium-sized varmint cage trap at the local Farm & Fleet store.  The trap is a steel-wire cage with a loaded door so that when the varmint steps on the trigger plate on the floor of the cage the door drops shut trapping the varmint inside.  I bated the cage with an apple and set it out in the yard between the garage and the crab apple tree.   On five consecutive nights, I caught a raccoon.  When it is trapped in the cage, the coon uses its paws to make a soft bed for itself dragging in the nearby grass from around into the cage.  Each morning, I took the captured coon out to the other side of Salt Fork Lake and released it near the primitive camping grounds.  The coon was bewildered when I first released it, but it soon recovered its senses and hustled off into the nearby brush.  I took it to the other side of the lake so hopefully it would not find its way back home.

Hunting Rabbits

Although my Dad used to hunt with the musket as a kid, he used more modern guns later on.  When I was growing up, he had a .22 caliber rifle and 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun that he used when he took us hunting; mostly, he used the double-barreled shotgun to hunt rabbits and squirrels. 

We had a beagle rabbit hound named Caesar that we took rabbit hunting with us, but he wasn't ever fully trained, so he wasn't a very good rabbit dog.  Sometimes, my Dad would borrow a “real” rabbit dog from his friend Merritt Young to take with us hunting to try to train Caesar.  At home, Caesar was always trying to dig his way out of his pen in our backyard so my Dad put a couple rows of bricks under the fence to keep him from digging out.  Eventually, however, Caesar did get out of his pen and immediately got hit by a car and killed in front of our house on our busy street, Chestnut Street in Coshocton, Ohio.

We went hunting many times and my Dad usually got one or two rabbits, but mainly by “jumping” the rabbits; that is, by walking until around the country-side looking for likely locations for “sitting” rabbits, surprising them into running away, and then shooting them.  They sit under little clumps of grass or bushes or brush piles where they have a little protection from the elements and from predators.  If you can’t shoot the rabbit or you miss it after jumping it, the theory is that your rabbit dog will follow its scent by its nose, and the rabbit will eventually circle back around to his home territory and you have a second chance to shoot him.  Each dog gives a special recognizable bark or howl when it is running the rabbit; and it is pleasing experiences to just stand in the woods and to listen to the dogs run the rabbit.  I remember one time this strategy actually worked for us.  I was standing perfectly still in the woods several yards behind my Dad and listening to the dogs that were still very far away, and the rabbit silently and almost leisurely ran right by me within a few feet of me; it was completely unaware of me.  I didn't have a gun so I couldn't shoot it; and I didn't want to yell to my Dad because it would scare the rabbit away, and he wasn't in a position to shoot it anyway.  (I have always been able to quickly think of and evaluate the possible options quickly in such quick-reaction-needed situations.)

We had a family tradition of going hunting on Thanksgiving morning while my Mother was cooking Thanksgiving dinner.  I remember I was freezing cold oftentimes when we went hunting.  Sometimes, there was snow on the ground.

We hunted on the grounds of the North Appalachian Watershed District Research Station where my Dad worked.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture uses the “station” to research the underground movement of water in North Appalachia, and my Dad was an Engineering Technician who designed and built some of the measuring equipment.  The station had about 1000 acres of meadows and woods.  It is about 10 miles northeast of Coshocton, and is still there today.

My Dad would field-clean the rabbits, and then would freeze the rabbits in the freezer when we got home.  My Mother would make rabbit stew or fried rabbit for dinner sometime later.  When eating it, you would have to spit out the lead-shot from the shotgun.  One rabbit split among five people was not very much for each person, and with two hungry brothers, you had to eat fast to make sure you got your share.  One time, I made a rabbit stew using red wine gravy with a recipe that I found in one of my Mother’s recipe books.  The only other time I saw rabbit stew on the menu was in restaurants in Europe in Utrecht Netherlands and in Greifensee Switzerland where it was called hasenpfeffer; but I never ordered it; I should have.

When I was a little older, I got my own 20 gauge shotgun and a hunting coat one Christmas.  I actually got one rabbit and one squirrel with that shotgun while I was still a kid; that was all I ever got while hunting with my Dad.  Much later, when I was grown and married, we owned a five acre lot in the country just outside of Cambridge, Ohio; and we had an excess population of rabbits for few years until the coyote and fox population also caught up and cleared out the rabbits.  On one occasion, after I came home and saw a bunch of rabbits eating in my garden, I immediately got my shotgun and shot five of them, but a couple rabbits got away.  I buried the rabbits in a shallow hole in my garden because I didn't want to learn on-the-fly how to clean them and to deal with mess.  Some wild animal came later and dug them up and took the dead rabbits away.  There was no trace of them anywhere. I also used the shotgun to shoot at crows that were ravaging my garden and apple trees; but I was never able to get close enough to actually hit one because they were too clever and wary.  Later, my wife Sharon got rid of the shotgun unbeknownst to me when she was cleaning out a closet; she doesn't like guns.

Uncle Dane's House

In the 1950’s, when we went to visit my Grandma and Granddad Bentz in Racine, Ohio, along the Ohio River, my Dad took us to visit Uncle Dane out in the "back-country". Uncle Dane’s place was a memorable place to visit as a kid, maybe because we never went to or saw another place like it.  It seemed like it was way out in the country; but it only took maybe a half-hour’s car ride to get there from Granddad’s place in Racine; and I don’t have the faintest memory of how to get there, except you turn left out of my Granddad’s driveway to start, go one-half mile to where the road dead-ends, turn left again, and then keep going.  Uncle Dane’s house and the barn were in a grassy clearing surrounded by woods; the clearing was maybe two acres.  The house was in the style of an old single-story log cabin, but I think the siding of the house was unpainted clapboard siding, not logs.  There was a big porch on the front side of the house, but the front side of the house didn’t face the road; it was at a 90 degree angle from the road and faced the gravel driveway where you drove up from the road.  The house looked old and weathered from the outside; but the house and the surrounding clearing were tidy; there was no trash lying around and the grass was always looked cut.  There was a long-handled, manual water-pump sitting in the front of the porch.  There were a couple large trees along the driveway.  I don’t remember a garden, but I think he must have had one because almost everyone living in the country did then.

I found one online reference to Dane Wickline.  On March 3, 1915, the Athens Messenger said Dane Wickline got a burning permit in Sutton Township.

We always visited in the summer, and Uncle Dane was always sitting outside in a rocking chair, but the rocking chair was not on the porch, but was sitting in front of the porch in the grass.  Uncle Dane always had on loose bib-overalls, a white T-shirt, work boots, and a straw hat.  I don’t believe that Uncle Dane had a phone, so we always were visiting unannounced; so I think this must have been his normal routine during the summer afternoons.  I think he must have been in his 60’s when we visited because he was my Grandma’s brother; and as a young kid, Uncle Dane seemed old, even in comparison to my Grandparents.  There were two or three hunting dogs lying around, maybe coon hounds since he liked to hunt; but they were always very gentle and were never threatening. 

The house seemed dilapidated from the outside, but when we went inside, it was very clean and inviting and cozy and neat as a pin.  When you went into the house from the front porch, you entered directly into the kitchen.  This is the only room that I remember.  There was a large old wooden kitchen table with chairs; cheery white-with-red-trim curtains on the windows; and large sink with a hand water pump.  Uncle Dane’s wife sometimes gave us milk and cookies.

My Dad would sit outside and talk to Uncle Dane.  My brothers and I had to sit there too and listen to the grown-ups talk; it must have been pretty boring to us because I don’t remember anything they were talking about.  We were not allowed to run around.  There were a lot of interesting-looking places to investigate so I am sure we would have if we had a chance.

I remember my Mother and Dad later talking about Uncle Dane’s wives.  His first wife was sent to the Mental Hospital in Athens.  They said she was always picking “nits” off her clothing, like she thought there was something always on her clothes.  I think Uncle Dane was married to his second wife when we visited, but I don’t remember much about her, even her name.  I don’t think Uncle Dane had any children.

Uncle Dane not at house in country

Muzzle-loading Musket

My Dad, Bill Bentz, had an old pre-Civil War musket that he used to hunt with when he was a young boy that had been handed down to him; he was born in 1913, so maybe he began using it in 1920.  It was a black powder, muzzle-loading musket where you loaded the black powder in through the muzzle, then loaded in the ball and a wad of paper to hold it in place, and then tamped down the whole load using a long metal ramrod that was attached to the musket.  I think it originally had a flint-lock ignition in the breach of the gun, but it was converted a long time ago to a percussion cap ignition that ignited the black powder when you pulled the trigger to fire the musket.  I believe it has a smooth, rather than rifled, barrel.  The musket is about 4 feet 9 inches long, as shown below.

There is a manufacture marking “US P. & E.W. Blake” stamped into the metal of the gun and a date marking “New Haven 1830”.  Philos and Eli Whitney Blake, who were nephews of Eli Whitney, organized and ran a gun manufacturing works from 1825 to 1836.  In the 1840’s, the US government arsenals converted many of their flintlock muskets to the percussion cap ignition.

One time, my Dad told me that he thought that the musket was used in the Civil War, but I don’t think that he knew for sure.  I don’t know any more about the family history of how the gun got passed down to my Dad.

Even if you are proficient at loading the musket, it probably takes 30 seconds to load and fire a muzzle-loading musket one time; and it takes some practice to learn to become proficient.  In a Civil War battle, 30 seconds was a long time between when a soldier could take one shot until he could take the next shot, especially when the other side was firing at him at the same time.  In earlier times, companies of soldiers sometimes were organized in rows so that one row could fire, and then fall back to reload the musket; another row would come forward to fire their shot, and then it would fall back, and so on; eventually the first row would come again to the front to fire its next shot.

When breach-loading guns were developed around the time of the Civil War, they quickly became very popular with soldiers because they greatly reduced the time that it took to reload the gun and fire it again.  The old muzzle-loading muskets are a far cry from today’s assault rifles where you can fire many rounds in a second with clips holding up to 100 rounds; and then you can reload in few seconds simply by changing clips.

My Dad hunted with his cousin Bill Hunter and his Uncle Dane Wickline using the musket when he was young.  He said that his Uncle Dane taught him how to hunt.  We have an old picture with my Dad (on the left) as a young boy, the musket, and his cousin at Adam Wickline’s house in Racine, Ohio.  I think Adam Wickline is my Dad’s maternal Grandfather.  You can see that the musket is much taller than my Dad in the picture.

After he was getting along in years and could no longer use his guns, my Dad gave his 22 caliber rifle to my son Jeff who is an officer in the Marines and his double-barreled shotgun to my son Nathan who is a Baptist minister. When my Dad died in 2001, I inherited the musket.  I believe these were three of his most prized possessions because they brought back good memories to him. 

In July, 2013, I gave the musket to Nathan.  Below is a picture of Nathan and two of my grandsons, Dominic and Cole.  Cole is Nathan’s son, and Dominic is my daughter Melissa’s son.  Melissa is a high school guidance counselor.