Just thought that I would start a new thread: do you have a special memory of a particular dog and a particular hunt. Tell about the dog and the hunt in one post--if you're interested.
Her name was Queen, a very common name for a female hound at the time. She was a hound, or mostly so. Her color was black and creme: she was marked like a Black and Tan, but her points, rather than being the normal rich tan, were a creme color. She had an irregular white patch in her chest. Her ears were, in length, a credit to a good hound, but, rather than hang down, they stuck out to the sides. I called them "airplane ears."
She started her hunting life as a squirrel and 'possum dog. An old man in my home town owned her, and he swore that you could take her to the woods at dark, tree 25 'possums, and have them "skint" by 9 o'clock. And she would tree squirrels in the day time.
She belonged to the man I hunted with. (I was too young and poor to own a good hound.) He bought her from the old man for $35--it was in the 1950's--just after she had raised a big litter of pups. The word "poor" was not adequate to describe her condition: she was emaciated. The man wormed her, and she passed "a shovel full" of worms. But, in a few weeks, she was fat, and, after that, it was a problem to keep her from getting too fat.
He took her to the woods for the first time, dropped the tail gate on the '46 Dodge pickup, and opened the door to the wooden dog box. She hit the ground and treed a 'possum within sight of the truck. About that time, Ole Blue--he was a straight Bluetick dog--opened on a track. The man called Queen off the 'possum, and she went to Ole Blue and his track. When that 'coon was treed, she was a straight dog: she quit treeing 'possums until she got so old that she couldn't keep up. As an old dog, when the other hounds would leave her behind, she would stop and start treeing 'possums. But as a young dog, after she treed that first 'coon, she could be used as a check dog with pups.
The man, while messing around with a horse, broke his leg and was fitted out with a cast and crutches. But he couldn't stand to stay out of the woods. One evening, we loaded up Queen in the truck and box, drove out to a 600-acre bottom on the Deep Fork River west of Okmulgee, Oklahoma. We took Queen out to the middle of the woods. He, with a head lamp, was on crutches with his cast.
We built a fire and turned Queen loose. She headed out north and was gone for about an hour without opening on a track. Quietly, after about an hour, she walked up to our fire and dallied around for a few minutes. Then, she headed out south. After about another hour without opening on a track, she came back to us and fire and sat down in the fire's warmth. The man said, "We might as well go in: there's nothing moving in this bottom tonight." I knew that it was true: if a 'coon was moving in that bottom, Queen would have found it.
We walked back to the truck, loaded Queen, and drove home. I remember that night better than any other of the many that I spent in the woods with the man and his dogs.
