page_title: Coon hunting
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Coon hunting / History
caption_attribution_description: Raccoons at Snug Harbour, Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada. The dog treed three raccoons at 6:30 am. They spent the rest of the day in the tree napping in various precarious positions while I took photos.
context_page_description: Coon hunting or raccoon hunting is the practice of hunting raccoons, most often for their meat and fur. It is almost always done with specially bred dogs called coonhounds, of which there are six breeds, and is most commonly associated with rural life in the Southern United States. Coon hunting is also popular in the rural Midwest. Most coon hunts take place at night, with the dogs being turned loose, trailing and putting the raccoon up a tree without human assistance. Once the raccoon is in the tree, with the dog at the base, it is referred to as "treed", with "treeing" being the active verb form.
  In addition to meat or fur hunts, there are also competition hunts to demonstrate the speed and skill of the dog. In these the raccoons are not killed, but are treed and released. Some of the largest competition hunts are the Grand American, Autumn Oaks, and Leafy Oaks. Coon hunting has been recorded in such books as Where the Red Fern Grows and popularized in stories and songs recorded by Jerry Clower, Jimmy Martin and others. In Alabama, there is a cemetery specifically for the burial of coon dogs.
context_section_description: Raccoons were first hunted by Native Americans, who harvested the common animals both for meat and fur. British and European settlers in North America later adopted the practice.
  While Native hunters did not rely on dogs, white hunters utilized them from Colonial times; George Washington is credited with owning some of the first coon hunting dogs, French hounds given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette. Most of the early coon dogs were actually Foxhounds imported from Europe or mixed breeds with hound blood, but these dogs often had trouble finding raccoons when the latter climbed trees, and breeders began to specifically develop dogs for their treeing ability: the ability to follow the scent to the base of a tree and stay there until the hunter came.
  Coonhounds existed as a distinct type by the mid-to-late 1800s. By 1885 a raccoon pelt sold for approximately 25 cents, a fair price for the time. Up to World War I raccoons were very common despite being hunted often, and were sometimes poisoned to keep them from destroying crops.
  Raccoon fur car coats were a fashion trend in the 1920s, leading to high pelt prices and an increase in hunting and trapping. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when many rural families lived in poverty, raccoons were hunted extensively and became relatively rare. Hunters sold the pelts for needed money, and the meat provided protein. In the 1940s and '50s conservation efforts were undertaken, including teaching hunters not to cut down den trees that raccoons used for raising offspring. The raccoon population subsequently expanded, to the point that they became recognized as a least-concern species. 
  During the 1950s, staged nite hunts  were created and by the 1970s had become popular with some hunts involving over one thousand dogs.
  In the 1970s, the price of raccoon pelts rose again to a high of 25 to 30 dollars each, and some people made their entire income from coon hunting. It was possible to catch ten raccoons per night in well-populated areas, with good dogs. One outdoors writer estimated that in 1985 there were 30 to 40 thousand coon hunters in Michigan alone. This market hunting largely died out by the late 1980s, and it is estimated that during the fur boom trapping took more raccoons than hunting with dogs.
  The practice of coon hunting is sometimes associated with possum hunting, since the same dogs were often used, the animals are both climbers by nature, and are common in the same geographic areas. However, opossums are criticized for being too easy to hunt and too greasy to be edible if killed, and are seldom hunted today.
  Coon hunting continues to be popular in the rural South and Midwest. The Indianapolis Star noted in a 2014 article that while some coon hunters are "overalls-clad people from the backwoods", some earn six-figure salaries, and a top coonhound can cost as much as $40,000.
caption: A pair of raccoons in a maple tree
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