My dogs have been busy lately chasing raccoons off the back porch. Almost every night I am roused from my slumbers when the dogs give chase to raccoons trying to open the dog food bin. On the rare occasions when I manage to catch one in a live trap, I release it in the Ouachita National Forest. My ancestors would have killed the varmint, carefully saved the hide, and cooked the carcass for supper.
The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a native of the Americas and is found in every single state as well as Canada and Mexico. The raccoon is an intelligent animal and is built to survive. Averaging about 20 pounds in weight, coons are omnivorous and opportunistic feeders. In addition to the dog food on my back porch, raccoons will eat anything from acorns to snakes. According to John Sealander and Gary Heidt in their book Arkansas Mammals (UA Press, 1990), raccoons get through the lean winter months by first filling up on fruits, insects, acorns, and crayfish.
Anyone who has a vegetable garden soon discovers that raccoons love nothing better than sweet corn. One Arkansas hill farmer described how “a bunch of coons will ruin a field of corn, tear it down. Lots of times, they’ll tear into a ear of that corn … and jist eat a little-ruin hit-then go on to the next ear.”
There is a common belief that raccoons wash their food before eating it, but that misconception arises from their tendency to forage along creeks. Raccoons have remarkably dexterous feet, with the toes capable of being spread widely. This enables them to gain entry into chicken coops, attics, and trash cans.
Settlers killed raccoons in huge numbers. Silas Turnbo, whose family settled along the upper White River well before the Civil War, recalled that the Jones family living near Bradley’s Ferry in Marion County killed 13 raccoons one morning before breakfast.
While the settlers certainly killed coons for their meat, it was their pelts that were valuable. It was no accident that the rustic settler pictured in Edward Payson Washbourne’s famous 1850s Arkansas Traveler painting is wearing a coonskin cap while another skin is tacked to the wall of his cabin.
As with fox hunting, raccoons were hunted simply for the thrill of the chase. Dogs played a crucial role in raccoon hunting, and it was not unusual for rural residents to have two or three coon dogs. The hunt usually took place at night when the raccoons were active. A good coon dog would eagerly run ahead of the hunter, and once he got a scent of his quarry, the chase was on.
An experienced hunter could determine how well the chase was going by the dog’s barking. An observer of a 1931 raccoon hunt on Crowley’s Ridge noted, “When a dog hits the trail, his bark is excited, piercing, and in fact, so different from his other yelps that both man and dogs know that he has found the trail.”
The raccoon is a wily animal, and adept at outsmarting dogs. Raccoons are known to repeatedly cross streams in order to confuse pursuing dogs. Eventually, when the coon tired or the dogs got too close, it would seek refuge in a tree-which is known as “treeing.” Once treed, the dogs would circle the tree while baying loudly.
Sometimes the raccoon was shot from the tree, but it appears from historical accounts that trees were often cut down. When the tree fell, the raccoon found himself on the ground and surrounded by snarling dogs. Raccoons are fierce fighters, and they can inflict severe wounds.
Here is how one newspaper reporter described the scene during a coon hunt in the Ozarks in 1930: “A coon sometimes whips the most experienced hound, and he puts more than one young dog to rout. He is a biting, scratching, clawing ball of fur, and old hunters say that when a coon gets a dog in the water, he’ll drown him sure. Encouraged by their leader’s success, the other dogs pitch in and the battle becomes a squirming, yelping mass.”
The price paid for raccoon skins has varied a great deal through the years. The popularity of raccoon coats during the 1920s drove up prices. Prices rose again during the 1950s with the success of Davy Crockett, a television series starring Fess Parker in a coonskin cap.
Today the raccoon is closely associated with the small east Arkansas town of Gillett, which since 1942 has held a yearly coon supper to raise money for the local school. Politicians come from far and wide to chow down on barbecued raccoon and the traditional accompaniment of sweet potatoes. Over 600 pounds of raccoon were served at the 2011 supper.
———◊———
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 79 on 07/28/2013