Published: March 21, 2008 01:05 am            

What Do You Mean, We?

I stepped into the bow of the little eight foot pram and pushed off the riverbank with my right foot. I couldn’t even see my hunting partner Mike Daniels because of the ominous black of the night. An eerie blanket of fog covered the banks of the rain swollen river. Mike sat on the stern seat of our craft as we started out across the dark void.

Magnum, my four month old registered Walker puppy, was sitting between us on the floor of the boat. Three quarters of a mile down and across on the other side of the Satsop River, our three hound dogs were telling us that they had found a raccoon and that he was up a tree.

An hour and a half earlier we had parked at a public boat launch near the forks of the Satsop River in Western Washington. Mike had talked Gary Filhart and me into a hunt in his area after we had taken him on his first coon hunt the previous weekend. Mike’s first coon was already at the taxidermist’s being made into a rug.

Once the truck was locked up and we had our hunting gear on, we released the dogs from the box and started walking on an old logging grade that paralleled the river. Jamocha, my grade Black and Tan, seemed to know where to look for a coon track.

As usual Jamocha was working along the banks of the river and struck first on the track. Within minutes Hammer, the Plott/Pitbull cross and Red, the year and a half old Redbone, joined Jamocha and started working the track. Following a hundred feet behind the other dogs and barking was Magnum, the Walker puppy. I was mighty proud of how well this pup was starting. I had made his granddad and his uncle night champions so I had high hopes for him.



Raging River



Ten minutes later the dogs had not traveled more than a quarter mile in both directions on the riverbanks. We walked down to the banks of the rain -swollen river to check on the problem with their progress. We saw that the swift flowing current was close to running over the banks. The dogs continued barking and worked right past us.

They trailed off, upriver for a few minutes and then all was quiet. Within minutes I heard the familiar sound of Jamocha’s tree bark. The only problem was that it was on the other side of the river. I casually turned to Gary and said, “We’ve got to get to the other side of the river.”

Gary laughed and said, “What do you mean, we? Do you have something in your pocket?” Before I could formulate a smart retort I heard Hammer barking with Jamocha. I laughed and again said “We.” As my flashlight beam illuminated Gary’s face, I saw a look of surprise when Gary realized that Hammer had also crossed the river and was treeing with Jamocha.

After hearing the other dogs, Red dived in and swam toward the treeing hounds. My super pup decided that he was not a swimmer. With all three hounds treeing across the river we started trying to figure how to get to the other side. Mike Daniels, our guide for the evening, came up with a solution to save the hunt.

Mike had remembered the pram that he had used as a kid to set out duck decoys in the pothole lakes in the area. Mike’s parents lived less than ten miles away, so we hurried back to the truck and left Gary with instructions to keep track of the dogs. We sped off to pick up the boat. At the Daniels’ farm we dropped off the dog box and slid the pram onto the back of the Chevy Luv pick-up

We hurried back to the river with our boat and quickly unloaded it from the truck. We had no sooner pushed off from the boat ramp, and sat down when the possible consequences of our foolish activity flashed before our eyes. The swift current had swept us dangerously down the river before we could gain our bearings and start paddling.

I felt the overhanging tree branch against my back first. As our forward motion stopped, the bow of the flat bottom boat dipped below the surface. As the freezing cold water poured in over the gunwales, the fate of my “freezing tail," flashed quickly before my eyes. I leaned forward to remove the sling of my rifle from my shoulder before I had to swim to shore and the bow swung free and we started down river sideways. I tried to illuminate our direction of travel with the flashlight in one hand and a broken oar in the other.



Desperation



Realizing that we had about an inch of freeboard and that the chance of us sinking was increasing, we changed from our initial plan of following the riverbank until we got to Gary and began paddling wildly toward the distant shore. A few precarious minutes later, we were able to grab hold of some vegetation on the other side. We quickly pulled the boat up to the bank and thankfully climbed out.

Trying to cross a raging river that was fifty yards wide brought us a quarter mile downstream past the dogs in record time. With voices punctuated with fright, we apprised Gary of our close call.. We headed toward the tree.

Huddled in the upper limbs of a bare alder tree was our quarry. After the crack of the .22 rifle, the older dogs were joined by Magnum in wooling the raccoon at the base of the tree. We walked back to the riverbank and decided that nothing could persuade us to try taking the boat back across the river. We yelled to Gary and expressed our decision not to come back across the river and where he should go to try to find us. Luckily, I have a hidden truck key.

Two hours later, we were standing in a farmer’s front yard. We had led three stubborn hounds and carried the boat more than two miles from the river. We told our story to an understanding farmer and waited for Gary to find us. We had one more coon hunting story to file away as an episode we’ll always remember.

        

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