Dog Hunting, by Josh

I stood in the cornfield. An earsplitting bawl broke the silence. Smokehouse, my redtick deer dog, had just jumped a whitetail. As the other five dogs tuned in they took off after the deer. I hollered out on the radio, “The dogs jumped, you boys get ready ‘cause here he comes.”

Since I first started hunting at the age of six I eagerly waited on these two months of the year when gun season was in and we were allowed to run deer dogs. Hunting season only came once a year, and I waited for it ten months out of that year. You can always tell when deer season is in because you’ll see me and my boy Trent riding down the road in my jacked up, mud-splattered camouflage Toyota with four big mud tires, a dog box in the back, and a whip antennae bent backwards behind the truck. Then you will hear other hunters holler at us on the CB radio, “How ‘bout it bone collector and mud dogg?” They tell us the dogs are about to cross the paved road, and off we go to head the dogs and the deer off and hopefully kill the deer if not turn it back into the block we are hunting.

As we pull up to the usual spot to listen for the dogs, Trent leaps out of the truck, grabs his shotgun, and bolts off into the woods. As I try to figure out what the heck he is doing, he begins blasting away; the deer dashes across the road maybe fifty yards in front of the truck. When the dogs reach the spot where Trent shot at the deer, a hush comes across the timbers: not a sound emanates from the dogs. Trent and I begin looking for blood. As we get further and further away from the truck, the dogs jump the deer up again but this time they run much slower. By the time we got back to the truck and raced around the block to the concrete bridge, the dogs caught the deer and had it bayed in the creek bottom.

I had one more dog left in the dogbox: it was the puppy I had raised, Freak Nasty. I hollered back up the creek bottom at Trent to let him out. Before I had taken three steps, Freak Nasty came streaking down the creek bottom nearly knocking me over. As soon as he came close to the deer, he sailed at its throat. The buck began slinging Freak Nasty around like a rag doll. I waited patiently until I had a clear shot, and in that split second, me and Trent both shot at the massive whitetail. The race was over as quick as it started.

When we got back to the truck our favorite hunting song was playing “Dog Hunting Man by David Cooler.” We pulled back into my driveway with all the other hunters, and all of us sang out loud:

“Drop that tailgate show them what its all about let’s turn them loose let them run it won’t be a minute and the race is on and once they hit that cypress pond the dogs will be singing their sweet song. Wait just a minute they’re coming my way maybe this will be my lucky day and daddy I hope you understand I’m a full blooded dog hunting Man.”
TO BE CONTINUED……….