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Hunting in ChipleyBy: Vance White - date: 12/2/2000 I have always liked bird hunting and near Chipley, a small town in the Florida panhandle, is one of the best places to engage in this activity. A good friend of mine named Boyd Milton Rogers lived on a farm about five miles north of Chipley. When I spent a weekend with Boyd Milton, it always involved bird hunting during the day and raccoon (coon) hunting at night. He must have had a dozen dogs, six for coon hunting and six for birds. This weekend Boyd Milton decided to join with another bird hunter who also had six dogs and away we went. All the dogs were in cages until we got to the hunting area. Both men let their dogs out of their cages at the same time. It looked like a scene from a cavalry movie as the two packs of dogs charged each other. It is an awesome sight to see twelve dogs fighting at the same time. The pile had to be five feet high and the noise from the barking, snarling and growling was worse than the chariot race scene in Ben Hur. Boyd Milton and his friend were both big and very strong. They waded into that pile of dogs kicking, punching and grabbing. They picked those dogs up by their ears and literally threw them out of the pile. A large German Shorthair landed right at my feet. It's head was all dark brown but the rest of him looked like you slung out a paint brush on a white cloth. He just froze where he was; these dogs were smart enough that once out they stayed out. Next came the great weight reduction. All 12 dogs had to go at once. You know how hard it is for one dog to find just the right place to go, well you ought to see 12 dogs circling and sniffing. Finally we were on our way. The dogs fanned out and their expertise was a sight to behold. When one dog came upon a bird it stood dead still with it?s nose pointing at the bird. As soon as the other dogs saw one dog ?point?, they all froze in place to honor the point. Boyd Milton told me to take the first shot each time because he got to hunt all the time. I said, "Great." I am a pretty fair shot with a rifle and even better with a pistol, however a shotgun has never been my weapon of choice. With a pistol or a rifle, you aim directly at whatever you are shooting. With a shotgun, you have to lead the target. I never mastered that technique. This day however, I couldn't miss. Every time a bird was flushed, I popped it. At least I thought I did. Late in the day I had shot more than 20 birds and was bragging to high heaven about what a superb shot I was. Then I forgot to reload. As a quail flushed I whipped the gun to my shoulder and pulled the trigger. I heard a loud boom and once again the bird fell. If it had not been for the loud boom, I would have thought I scared the bird to death because I knew my gun had not fired. I looked to my left and behind me and watched Boyd Milton reload his double barrel. So much for my "Annie Oakley" prowess with a shotgun. That night Boyd Milton, Billy Bob Thornton, his brother Rufus, and myself went "coon hunting?". I have never considered this much of a sport considering how slow raccoons are, how fast dogs are and it is a pack against one. These men would get a raptured look on their faces and say that there was no sweeter sound in the world than hound dogs baying in the darkness when they have "caught the scent". So once again off we go this time with 3 packs of 4 dogs each. Most of the dogs were Walker Hounds with that distinctive cedar smell that accompanies hound dogs. The fight scene and the circling and sniffing scene were repeated as soon as we let the dogs out. After the dogs had attended to their business off they went into the night. We put lights on our foreheads like miners and followed the dogs. Following them was easy; they sounded like a thundering herd of barking buffalo. It wasn't long before the barking started to sound like a howl and Boyd Milton said, "they have one!" Old Billy Bob?s eyes rolled back and he stood still as a statue. He looked like he was having some kind of religious experience. The crickets were chirping the frogs were burping, the mosquitoes were humming and Rufus just kept whispering, ?yeah, yeah!? After everyone stood and listened for a couple of minutes, off we went. Sure enough when we arrived on the scene twelve snarling snapping dogs were all looking up one tree. The coon, with his Lone Ranger mask, was looking down at a sea of dogs. Billy Bob said, "I see him about 30 feet up there, I'll go up and shake him out." I didn't think that sounded like a good idea for several reasons. One, what chance did that raccoon have with 12 dogs. Two, who wants to climb 30 feet up a tree in the middle of the night. And three, those dogs looked and sounded like they were on the verge of hysteria. Well up he went. All lights were pointed up to the raccoon, which was out near the end of the limb. When Billy Bob got to the limb he stood on it and said, "Hey ya'll, I'm gonna give him a really good shake." When you hear something that stupid, it is time to make room because something bad is about to happen. He climbed one limb higher and proceeded to jump back down to the limb with the coon on it. The limb snapped like a twig and down came Billy Bob, the limb and the coon. The whole mess hit the dogs at one time. I had backed away about twenty feet and had a great view of the absolute pandemonium that occurred. The dogs were in a complete frenzy and all dove in at the same time. They were biting everything they came in contact with including each other and Billy Bob. I saw one bite himself and get madder when it hurt. Billy Bob was screaming and trying to crawl out from under the pile. By now the dogs were fighting each other having totally forgotten their primary mission. I felt something brush by me and saw the coon's little ringed tail heading for the hills. Boyd and Rufus were flinging dogs right and left. Both Boyd and Rufus were bit several times. Not me, I didn't want anything to do with a pile of snarling dogs. Once again a dog landed at my feet. This time it was a big old Blue Tic Hound. He was whining like craze and quivering all over he wanted back into the fight so bad. However, he wasn?t that stupid, he knew that when Boyd said OUT! he meant out. I?ve never seen Boyd that mad but even then he checked his dogs before he asked how Bill Bob was doing. We ended up taking the rocket scientist to the emergency room and 8 of the 12 dogs to the vet to be sewn back together. The way I figure it, it is coon 9, dogs and dummy 0. |
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