Lets hear em .. this got started on the other thread
have a guy 20 miles from us he has a big old barn in darn good shape lighs in the hay mough and full of old hay bales and full of coon coon holes so big ya could nearly crawl into them.. i always saved that spot for late winter cold days to take the kids.. my son was about 12 n daughter bout 4 or 5 . was below zero sunday afternoon everyone bored i said lets go to the barn... game on!! momma came along and sat in the truck... we were getting a few coon took a while for the dogs to get one pushed outta there tunnels.
my daughter got cold and went to the truck... while later out comes this big old boar and heads for the steps leading down stairs ... hounds on his taill... me and jeb right after them
i got to the steps and my daughter was half way up the steps standing froze like a statue eyes as big a saucers.... as this comotion all came right by her .. we went on past and got the coon... daughter ran to the truck telling mom coon jumped on her head.... mom asked her What did you do?? She replied I Grabbed him by his tail and Swung him around!!!
I laughed so hard and said yu are a coon hunters daughter to come up with a whopper like that!!

Good one you should have used that coon to make her a hat.

Mac

my little guy was just learning how to talk good and making sentences .. was jabbering about stunks... we laughed and played along... he was probably quite old when he got corrected... to this day its stunks around this house!!

Will come back to this the wife is painting the PC room and it not easy working in that mess everything is in a pile now.

Coons
One of the farmers I had as a student and trapped his farm always had coons in the barn. He also had several cats. He stored his dry milk replacer bags in his utility room and many times the door would get left ajar and the cats would get in, climb up and poop in the milk replacer. He gets the pump running one morning and sees the door ajar and sees something moving in the bag. He sees a tail in the dim light and pulls and out comes a coon! It runs up his arm past his head and jumps into the running milk pump and gets caught in the pulley and belt system! By the time he gets things shut down the pump clutch is slipping and there are coon parts all over the pump and room. Milking got started late that morning.

Several other coon episodes but not like the one above.

Skunks- I had a dry land coon set on a drag set between two den trees along a stream. I could see the trap had been moved and was into the long reed canary grass. I took to steps in and passed right over the skunk, which unloaded on my jeans as I stepped over. Knee highs and jeans in the stream on a wire and back into the truck in the the underwear to get some usable clothes. Our skunk odor remover works and so does the air freshener spray can.

Bryce

Apparently when I was around 3-4yrs old I found a kitty I was playing with out in the back yard. Nobody believed me about the kitty until it came onto the deck and I went and grabbed my father who I wanted to witness me petting the kitty. Well, it was not a cat. Big old skunk! Luckily nobody was sprayed.

Wow!!

Makes my recent episode of dealing with a coon that kept getting deeper into a kicked over 5 gallon bucket of hydraulic fluid or what that greasy crap was seem pretty tame. The moral of the story is move everything within the total stretched out length of a coon, even if its a hoarder's machine shed...

i sure should have .. was back in the day when we were hunting for money never crossed my mind at the time .. they have all had hats ...ripped up by the many pups weve had over the years.

Couple true stories.... coon hunting with dogs not trapping. I took my young wife with me years ago chasing the dogs after some creek bottom running coon. We treed a big coon and I told her "watch this" as I started to do my best squealing and growling and squalling. Sure enough the coon started down that big ole oak tree. Till he got about 15 feet off the ground. He dived out of that tree...… right at my now ex wife's lite. Knocked her hat and lite clean off her head but didn't mess up her hairdo. Last time she ever wanted to go coon hunting! Have several skunk stories with the dogs. Best one was probably when my old plot dog was under a crawl space in an old farmhouse. He was a bawling away for a long time and would not come out even as I was hollering for him to come out. It was getting well into the wee hours of the nite and I had to work the next day so I crawled in after him. Wiggling in between the floor joists and dirt. I stuck my head and shoulders in an opening of some limestone rocks used in the foundation about in the middle of that old house and got stuck. I turned my head and holy cow..... here was a skunk about 2 feet from my face!!!! The coon and my dog were just a couple feet away also. I was a wiggling and hollering like a crazy man trying to get unstuck and back out. I made it ……. never even got sprayed. Neither did my dog. That was many many moons ago. But still seems like yesterday when I let my mind drift off to "the good ole days"!!!!

When I was a kid, the creek would go dry every other year or so. My brother and I figured out that coons lived deep inside the abandoned bank beaver tunnels. I would crawl in first with the flashlight and he would follow with my great grandfathers Stevens 22. When we cornered one he would slide the 22 past my head and shoot. If he made a bad shot it was “game on”! Sometimes the tunnels would connect with each other again and again. If dad would have ever found out what we did on those Saturday and Sunday afternoons he would have painted our back porch for sure. Looking back I can’t believe we were that crazy or stupid! Good lord was looking after us.

Good ones keep em comeing !! man that crawlin through coon chit and asbestose in them old houses sure was fun (Cough Cough Gasp for air) darned ciggarettes

if you wasnt such a redneck hillbilly you would prolly still be married to that pretty girl with the neat hair !! LOL
If she wasnt impressed with your coon calling abilities... to heck with her!!

This is a true story which happened to me in South Dakota about 20 years ago. I was in college at the time and wrote it up then for an assignment in a freshman literature class At the University of South Dakota. I remember the young grad student who graded this paper told me it made her gag.
I hope you all enjoy it.

Winter of the Skunk!

I don’t spend much time with Brad, my best friend. We don’t stay separated on purpose; it is a limitation on our friendship put in place by our wives and life’s events. There was a time, due to friction from our spouses; we were not even allowed to see each other. Our friendship was not always this way; for years we were inseparable, both in work and play. There were many times we found ourselves finishing sentences for each other or speaking the same word or phrase in unison. For instance, when we contemplated doing something risky or dangerous one of us would say, “Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.” More than once we unconsciously said this as one voice, especially when we were trying to talk someone else into doing something. The amount of times we have been mistaken for brothers is innumerable. Everywhere we went together someone would ask,
“Are you two brothers?”
“Yes” we would say in unison, or
“No”, again spoken as one.

We did things like trading checkbooks and doing legal business for each other, just because we could. I was the best man for Brad’s wedding and we were each present when our respective children were born.

Over the years we have grown apart. Families and events have dictated we be separable rather than inseparable. There was considerable tension between us at times as we learned to grow with the situations which dictated our separation. To the person who does not know us well it appears we are not close friends at all.

Many times events, friends and family can have lasting effects on a person. Sometimes these effects are not realized until years have gone by; this is the situation in this story. I am going relate to you a grand adventure I had with my best friend Brad. An adventure which, only now, has caused me to realize the true value of friends.

I have always been a person who loves the winter. In particular I have a passion to be outdoors during the winter. My favorite outdoor activity is hunting and trapping. I grew up hunting and trapping with my family and friends. Raccoon hunting is the closest to my heart when considering all of the types of hunting I do.

At the time this adventure started I had taken a long hiatus from the sport of raccoon hunting to do other sports like trapping and motorcycles. One winter evening I was lying on the couch and the phone rang.
“Hello” I said,
“What are you doing tonight” I heard Brad ask.
The next question was the catalyst which started this adventure.
“Well you have a coonhound, so why don’t we go coon hunting?”
I made several excuses and Brad said,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

So that cold night, during the winter of 1996, I started coon hunting again. All the hunting Brad and I were doing was to the chagrin of our wives. Our wives worried we spent more time together hunting than we did taking care of our marital duties. Brad and I killed and skinned hundreds of raccoons together giving us an intense camaraderie which can only be explained by the outrageous events that follow.

Brad and I had decided it would be great if we had a couple of skunk hides hanging on the wall at home. We had skinned and tanned raccoon, fox, beaver, and deer for wall hanging but never a skunk. There is a certain beauty to a skunk pelt, with its snow white stripes running over the coal black, which can cause an otherwise intelligent person to do things most people would never consider. Thus, an adventure started which was to test the limits of emergency room care at the local hospital and the resolve of our marriages.

The first step was to get a couple skunks. The trick to killing a skunk is to kill it without the skunk releasing its vile, putrid liquid. This can be a challenge. We did not possess the equipment used by many trappers or professional animal control people. Thus we were left to our own devices when it came to acquiring odorless skunk hides.

I was trapping at the time of our ill-fated decision and knew sooner or later I would have a skunk in a trap. I was usually alone when checked my traps due to a mandate from Brad’s wife. She was fond of saying,
“Are you two married to each other?” This was usually said in a sarcastic tone and had the result of sporadic separations between us.

It was not long after we decided to skin and tan skunk hides and I caught a skunk in a trap. One shot from my rifle and I had a big, dead skunk. I cautiously walked over to the skunk and was elated that I hit it in the head, and it had died without spraying. As I gleefully carried it back to my pickup, with visions of tanned skunk hides on the wall; I nonchalantly tossed him over the tailgate and into the pickup.

Nonchalantly tossing the dead skunk into the back of the pickup was a mistake. When the skunk hit the floor it let out every drop of the putrid, gagging liquid it had reserved for me. The tailgate, which was made out of diamond mesh steel, had no effect on stopping the skunk’s revengeful discharge. I was sprayed from about two feet away. I spent some time on my knees vomiting, and crying before regaining my composure.

For lack of a better place to put the skunk I wrapped it in plastic bags and buried it in the bottom of the chest freezer inside our back porch. This is the freezer which holds the food for my family. My wife tends to consider herself in charge of the freezer; remember this for later.

A month or so after I had acquired our first skunk the winter turned very cold. When it is very cold and the animals are not out and about it is time to go after the animals where they are holed up. We were hunting for raccoons inside old houses, barns and buildings

Due to the tension caused by Brad’s wife he was not hunting every night and I was with another friend, John, in the basement of an old house. John did not approve of the skunk adventures. John, being deathly afraid of skunks, thought we were crazy. John is a lifelong friend of mine but I am not as close to John as I am with Brad. John and I enjoy each other, but do not share the same mental connection that I share with Brad. Most of the time I spent hunting with John I was aggravated at him; because he wouldn’t think of something the way I would or I would have to explain something Brad would have known instantly.

John and I were looking in nooks and crannies in the basement of the old house for Mr. Raccoon. It was very hard to get into and out of the basement. The old stairway had rotted away to the point that it ended about 3 feet from the basement floor. As I tested the rickety steps I heard a voice in the back of my head say,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.” So down I went.

While we were poking around in the basement I detected the faint musky smell of skunk, but it was not strong enough to get my hopes up. Nor was it strong enough to send my faint hearted hunting partner fleeing for his life. I saw a piece of the floor sticking up with a hole under it. Realizing there might be a skunk in the hole I was contemplating looking into the hole when I heard the voice say,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

I knelt down and looked under the broken up floor and saw a patch of black with a dash of white on it, I yelled,
“SKUUUUUUNK!!!!!!!!!” and John screamed and made a leap clearing the three-foot drop off and was up the stairs with the door closed.

I was about halfway mad at him and wished Brad had come along to help. What was the use of having an adventure if your partner did not want to participate? John would open the door to talk to me; but he would not come down the stairs to help as I plotted how to kill the skunk without getting stinky. As I evaluated the situation and mapped my escape route the skunk stayed in its hiding spot. Taking a few deep breaths to work up my courage once again I heard those fateful words urging me on.
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

I quickly lay on the floor and stuck my pistol in the hole. I had to scoot over tight against the wall and curl up to see the skunk’s head. I was jammed tightly between the wall and some broken up concrete, due to my position I was only a foot away from the skunk. I squeezed the trigger on my pistol and when the pistol went off, I did a petite rendition of John’s screaming leap. I flew up and over the stairs and out of the door.

After contemplating the possible results we slowly opened the basement door and sniffed. Everything seemed to be fine and John was even brave enough to follow me back into the depths of skunk (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman). When the dying skunk kicked itself into the open, it became possible for the second skunk to get out of the hole. We had no idea there were two skunks; the second one had been behind the first. This time when John did his screaming retreat, I was in his way. I escaped being run over by John only because I was in front of him, screaming on my way up the stairs. The second skunk in the basement was shot in the head with a rifle, from upstairs very uneventfully.

Being a thinking man, I had been carrying empty plastic bags to put skunks in. This idea was a direct result of the lesson I learned with the skunk I had thrown in the back of my pickup. I was very careful with these two skunks. It took quite a bit of pleading for John to help me stuff the skunks into the sacks. I told John more than once,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

The little bit of odor that was on the dead skunks had me gagging and caused John to vomit. We gently laid the plastic sacks containing the skunks into the back of John’s pickup and headed home. John was not at all happy about hauling my odorous cargo.

Brad and I rode to work together every morning. We could always judge each other’s mood by how much we talked on the way to work. The morning after hunting with John I could tell Brad was in a bad mood. It probably had to do with the tension his wife caused about the time we spent together, which resulted in him not going hunting with me the night before. When we had been at work for a while I sat down next to him and said,
“Got us a couple skunks last night.”
“Did John get sprayed?” he asked. Laughing I told him the whole story.

We could not believe our good luck and we were both anxious to get the skunks separated from their hides and onto our walls. We excitedly made plans to do the deed that night when we came in from raccoon hunting. The day passed with the slowness only a sense of adventure, or impending doom, can bring. We got off work, grabbed the hounds and took off for a night of hunting. The ensuing events have caused me to forget how many raccoons we got that night, but I do know at the end of the night we had a large amount of skinning to do.
Normally we do all the skinning in my garage. Conveniently the furnace in my garage was out of propane, causing us to use my dad’s garage. We backed my mom’s car out and hung up my dad’s skinning gambrel. The raccoons were all skinned and we were eyeballing our two skunks from the night before. Brad had no prior experience with the white striped little devils and was relying on my instructions. I told him,

“Just do it the same as a raccoon but BE DAMNED CAREFULL around the back end.” I then showed him where the skunk’s full scent glands were and left him to his fate.

I was in the process of scraping the fat off a raccoon hide when I looked at Brad. He was holding the long, sharp, very pointy knife in such a fashion where if he slipped it would cut him. Just as I was going to warn him of the danger of cutting himself, the knife slipped. The knife went into the skin at the base of his palm and extended through the palm, stopping just short of exiting by the knuckles. Before the knife went into Brad’s hand it stabbed through the gland on the back of the black rascal he was skinning.

There were several things which happened at once. The most obvious was the foul odor that permeated us and everything in the garage; the stench was strong and immediate. This putrid odor was not at all overshadowed by Brad’s bright red blood arcing through the air and splashing onto the garage floor. It took a few seconds of the reality and insanity of our situation to sink in. As we ran out of the garage we were covered with blood and gagging. We were both laughing and on the verge of vomiting as we ran to the pickup and headed for the hospital.

If any of you have ever been discouraged with slow service from a hospital emergency room, then you will appreciate what happened next. The emergency room staff was actually running away from us when we walked in. The emergency room personnel did not want to talk to us because we stunk so badly. Everyone had on surgical masks because of our odor, and more than one person gagged.

The emergency room folks stitched up Brad’s hand so quickly that they must have set a time record. It was so quick they did not bother to give Brad any kind of anti-biotic, antiseptic, or instructions for taking care of his wound. The omission of antibiotic treatment proved to have significance within the next few days.

We had thought our wives knew nothing of the night’s adventures, so you can imagine our surprise when we ran into our wives as we were leaving the emergency room. Our wives did not approve of skunk hunting and I have already mentioned the friction caused from Brad and I spending so much time together. My wife said,
“Jason, what did you do now?” with a disgusted tone. I humbly tried making excuses; at this point there was nothing I could say to excuse the absurdity of the situation.
“I guess you should have stayed home instead of going hunting.” snapped Brad’s wife.

Brad and I were meek and quiet on our ride home with our respective spouses. We wondered how in the heck they had tracked us down? My mom had woken up when Brad skewered his hand due to the noise we made. She investigated why her garage light was on and her car sitting outside at 2 am. Finding the bloody, smelly mess she called our wives. Wives have an uncanny way of knowing what their husbands are up to, this sixth sense and the fresh blood which was freezing on the floor caused them to drive to the hospital. Our wives were not impressed with our situation. Smelling very bad; Brad and I did not sleep with our spouses that night.

I have been called a slow learner on more than one occasion and as I look back on these events I have to admit this description would seem to be true. However, firmly believing perseverance to be a quality which is more desirable than the speed at which one learns, I decided to finish the job we had started. The next morning I went back to my dad’s garage to finish the skunks. Eyeballing the skunks with apprehension and revulsion I heard the little voice tell me,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.” I picked up a skinning knife and got to work.

Brad , with his slip of the knife, had already alleviated the danger of his skunk releasing its scent and I quickly finished the skinning. I also successfully skinned my skunk and was in the process of scraping the fat off the inside of the skunk hides when the smell seemed to mix with my breakfast. I lost my breakfast, some of it through my nose, all over the skunk hide and the floor. I can still vividly see the chunky vomit and bile freezing to the floor as I retched between my legs. At this point, I decided I had enough. Swearing off skunks, I abandoned all ideas of a skunk hide on my wall. I put Brad’s skunk in a bag, and left it for Brad to finish the tanning job. I threw my hide away and went home to nurse my wounds.

Eventually, Brad washed and tanned his hide with the result of a large, beautiful, odor free, skunk hide hanging in his living room. However, the completion of Brad’s skunk did not end our adventure. Just as the Ancient Mariner of old is cursed by his albatross, such it was with us and our skunks. A couple days went by when Brad got sick and stayed home from work. He ended up in the hospital with a serious staff infection. This was a result of the lack of proper medical care by a stressed emergency room staff. He spent a few days in the hospital and by all accounts it was a very serious infection which would have been life threatening had he chose not to seek medical attention. According to his wife, it was my fault for involving him in the skunk saga.

Part of the healing process a person experiences from a traumatic event is the ability of the brain to black out certain details of the experience. The type of stuff I blacked out was my wife’s disgust, the skunk’s stench, sleeping in a separate room, gagging, puking, and ....... the skunk in the freezer.

It was around March when my wife told me the freezer in the back porch was unplugged. We were trying to remember the last time we had opened it, when out of my trauma induced memory blackout I remembered the skunk in the freezer. I had a feeling of impending doom when I thought of what I would find. My wife did not know anything about the hidden skunk. I thought about the dead, rotten skunk in the freezer and I knew it would be even more trouble for Brad and me. I knew I had to tell her about the skunk, I also know the freezer was probably ruined. Once again I heard the ever-present voice in my head,
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

I bravely told her what was in her freezer. She did not even comment; just gave me her “special look” and walked away. She was quite upset with me for the next few days.
I went out to the back porch and lifted the freezer door about a 1/8-inch. My worst fears were quickly realized. In addition to the rotten meat and various other spoiled foods there was the putrid odor of my warm, dead albatross; Mr. Skunk.

I don’t know if any of the readers of this adventure have had the unfortunate experience of smelling a skunk up close and personal. The smell is so rank, so disgusting, it automatically sets off gag reflexes and causes the eyes to tear up. I have experienced tear gas and am hard pressed to discern whether skunk or tear gas is the more debilitating odor. I can humbly advise anyone who is interested to stay far away from skunks.

It has been several years since this adventure took place. I look back on it now with a sense of amazement and melancholy. That wonderful winter adventure was amazing due to the sheer craziness of all we did with the skunks and the closeness of our shared experiences. I feel melancholy when I look back at the great time spent with a friend, doing things we love to do and knowing the special time is over and passed. Possibly the cure for my melancholy feelings is to relive the adventure. After all, I still have a bare spot on the living room wall.

I have not talked to Brad in a couple years, yet I know if I call him right now and ask him to go skunk hunting he will go. The now familiar line repeats once again in my mind.
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you,”

I smile when I think of how we said it in unison and realize we have had our good times and bad times together. Lately the bad has outweighed the good, yet we remain the best of friends. Just as the skunk adventure had good and bad, so has our friendship. This I realize, as I look at the bare spot on the living room wall and say to myself with a smile.
“Don’t let fear and common sense stop you.”

South Dakota Silo Coon

One night it was colder than a welldiggers (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) 4 of us decided to go on a coon hunt. One of those below zero windy nights when it was so cold pistols had to be worn inside the clothes to keep them working, mustaches froze solid and nothing alive or dead was moving, cept us dummies.



Knowing all the critters would be holed up we were just planning on poking our noses into a few old barns and attics. 

We pulled into this farm place where the local rural mail carrier lives. Out back of his house there were a couple old silos, a barn and some other buildings.

 One silo was built into the barn, or the barn was built around the side I suppose. If I remember right we left the coonhounds in their boxes because of the cold and we didn't figure on getting anything.

The four of us walked throught the barn. I remember poking my nose inside the silo and seeing silage piled up 6 feet or so. Didn't see anything in there so I moved on. Mike came along behind me and checked the silo. The rest of us kept going and heard Mike yell COON.

We ran back there and a coon came climbing out the door. It made a flying leap as I took a pot shot at it and it took off on the run. Mike was still in the silo hollering and said there are more coons in here. The three of us started to climb in.

I don't remember Phil ever getting in there until most of them were shot but he might have. Phil is one of those guys who abhorrs live critters and would carry a 300 mag to kill coon if we let one get within 15 feet of him (I will have to tell the wolverine story next).



I remember climbing in and having coons running around the circle of the walls. Myself Mike and Travis were standing in the middle on a high mound of silage. The coons had a path and holes aorund the outside edge. There was room to drop down and walk on this path in a circle along the walls. 

We were shooting coons and grabbing them by the tail and throwing them out the door. I am not sure but I bet Phil put an extra bullet in every one once it got out the door.

This is all happening very fast. The three of us bouncing around yelling on the top of this mound and the fourth hanging in the door taking pot shots. Now a round concrete silo is not the best place to be firing guns. We had to make sure that we did not send a round into the concrete wall to have it bouncing around in there.

 We had shot up the first bunch of coons (this is when I believe Trav was screaming like a little girl when a coon ran up his leg) and were just poking around looking for more.

Now as cold as it was everyone was froze and it was hard to see what you were doing from the thick clouds of our frozen breath. Travis was reloading his .22 revolver ($20.00 Sat night special) and his frozen hand slipped off the hammer and sent a round throught the finger of his glove and burned the skin on his finger. No blood but there was a round of swearing and the adrenalin factor did a small spike when the gun went off.

 I believe this was when Phil climbed in with us. Now we had 4 dummies with loaded guns on the inside of a concrete circle.

We dropped down on that path and started poking our heads and pistols into holes in the silage. we started finding more coon. We would shoot one and pull it out. Sometimes we would have to grab a tail and pul it out untill we saw the head and then take the head shot. This was all close range work. 1 or 2 feet up an personal type shooting.

In one spot the coons had a tunnel and we had to break off a huge hunk of silage. it took 3 or 4 of us to lift it out of the way and we found a hidey hole full of coons behind it.

We were sure we had got them all and climbed out of the silo. Myself and Phil took off tracking the first one that made it out the door. We followed his tracks and blood trail out and around for a while until we shot him holed up under another old building. We carried him back to the pile and started counting. 21 coon we got out of that one silo. We couldn't believe it.

Knowing we had a full night of skinning and fleshing in front of us we headed for home. We did stop at one other place and got 2 more out of the ceiling of a old house.



The whole time we were inside that silo shooting there was never a dull moment. Truth be told it was mostly sheer terror. Between the other guys shooting guns as fast as they could and coons running between our legs, over our feet, and around us, not to mention grabbing the dieing coons and throwing them out the door it is a wonder we didn't all soil our undies. Actually I think Mike did.

This was in the early 90s and before all the pictures were digitized. If I find the picture from that night I will scan it and get it uploaded.

Hahahahaha, that's a great story! You're lucky to have such a good friend..Every time I mess with a skunk I tell myself NEVER AGAIN!

Just realized there was more than one story on this page. Lots of good stories, thanks for the laughs guys.