Moonshine Coon Club bitten by the bug
5/19/2005 4:56:40 PM
By SAUNDA FREEMAN
ARCHER LODGE — What brightens one group's day is the darkest night. So as the sun descends over the Archer Lodge area, six members of the Moonshine Coon Club light up the cell phone buttons asking, "Are you ready? OK, then, let’s go."
And they do. They grab their waders, head lights, jackets if it's cold and bug spray, then load the dogs in their trucks. Just like that, the hunt is on.
Raccoons tend to exit their dens at dusk to feed and wander. Warm, damp periods after a freezing spell offer prime tracking conditions since the scent is easier to follow.
Ranging in ages from 17 to 20, the guys on those striped tails seek to keep such sport to the weekends — but sometimes it "just gets in your blood and you have to run during the week, especially when school is out," Kirby Turner said. "You can’t believe how much fun it is to listen to the dogs run."
He and Mark Morris, another member of the club, are second-year students at Wilson Tech majoring in fire protection.
Clayton High School seniors Noah Turner and Justin Chamblee are the youngest participants in the pack. "We have to be careful not to hunt during school weeks or our mothers get upset," said Chamblee, who bags a 3.7 GPA and a No. 62 ranking among a class of 362 during campus hours.
He and Noah Turner plan to enter the two-year North Carolina State University agriculture program this fall. "Mom and Daddy want me to go four years. I’m not ready for that, but if I decide to do it later, then I can change over," Noah Turner said, "Right now, I am more interested in hunting."
Each of the six individuals on the prowl unleash their own dogs. Noah Turner has red bone hound Penny; Kirby Turner turns blue English hound Bull loose; Chamblee sends out treeing walker hounds Jack, Jake and Bandit; Chris Adams releases his own red tick English Bandit into the wild; Morris sticks blue tick walker hound Boomer on the trail; and Kevin Wood throws black-and-tan hound Rock into the chase.
The companionship isn't all about man's best friend, though. More a bona fide member than a groupie, Kirby Turner's girlfriend, Hope Davis, doesn’t mind the pursuits. "I grew up in a hunting family," she said. "It is something that on occasion I do and like. I like to go to the competitions that the club attends and show the dogs. I have been on a coon hunt, but it is too quiet for me. I can’t be still that long. If I don’t want to go along, I just go shopping."
When this posse gathers, the conversation automatically flicks to the thrills of the action, the sound of the running hounds' barks and the eventual treeing of the featured creature.
"I know that people will worry about raccoons," Justin Chamblee said. "We seldom see one and very seldom shoot one."
This is not an adversary at a complete disadvantage, either. Coons are natural fighters, great swimmers and have been know to drown a dog in the water.
The group laughs at some of their stories like when "Noah and Chris’ dogs treed a coon at the head of Lake Wendell," one f them said. "Yeah, we had to go get a boat to get the dogs. The water was over our hip boots."
Kirby Turner told how his dog swam across a quarter-mile distance chasing an object of its obsession. "We had to go back around out of the water about a mile, but Bull kept running after the coon hit land," he said. "He liked to run us to death."
Breathing life into their outdoors adventures is the company — and the usual correct codes of conduct — they keep. “We only hunt on land from which we have obtained permission," Kirby Turner said.
"Sometimes when everyone can’t go, one of us will strike out on his own," Chamblee said. "I got into trouble one night with Mama doing that."
"I got tired of hearing the hounds in the pen, but if you ever see them run, you appreciate the sound of the hounds," Patricia Chamblee observed, always keeping eyes and ears open for the return. "The mother in me always has to check when he (Justin) comes in. When I see his hat and keys on the counter, I know that he is home and OK."
Noah Turner has experience the wrath of a parent kept wondering too long. "It was after 12 (a.m.) when I got in and still didn’t have my dog, but I came in," he recalled. "The others found her later and brought her in that night. Mama wasn’t happy. ... My punishment was I didn’t go coon hunting for a while. So until I graduate, I’ll just hunt on the weekend."
Every opportunity brings the whole crew closer together.
"It is exciting, and it makes you feel good to go on a hunt," Noah Turner added. "The worst thing about running through the woods at night is a cut over, swamps and briars. And, of course, losing your dog."
"It is not so much coon hunting as it is hanging out," Kirby Turner said.
The Turner boys and Chamblee have each talked their dads into following suit. Those men discovered it indeed involves activity. "This is definitely a young man’s sport, especially if you are not used to it," tag-along father Don Turner said. "Jody (Chamblee) and I both agree on that. But you know, there are a lot of other things these boys could be doing — with most of it not good. They are a good bunch of boys, and I am glad that they are enjoying the hunt instead of riding up and down the roads getting into mischief."
The bitten-by-the-bug brothers agree Noah Turner is the better hunter. "He is persistent and patient," Kirby Turner said. "He is really good at waiting."
As for Justin Chamblee, the fever has struck. "I enjoy the hunt, and I really enjoy the competition meets that we attend," he said. "Recently I took Jack one night and Jake the other to a competition meet in Sampson County." Both sniffed out wins.
There is no money involved in the competitions, but that's not the trophy these guys seek. For them there's just the forest — and the times they'll never forget.
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Reprinted with the permission of the author. This story first appeared in the Eastern Wake News, serving Knightdale, Wendell, Zebulon, and neighboring towns in North Carolina.
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