Knights Landing, Calif. — "Where are those dogs?"
It's cold, damp and almost midnight. Josh Brones is prowling deserted back roads amid flat farmland near the Sacramento River. He's leaning halfway out the window of his pickup, listening for the howls of his hounds, for that wild chorus hunters call music. It's his favorite sound. But a growing chorus of anti-hunting activists is working to silence California's hounds and keep hunters like Brones indoors.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday April 24, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 69 words Type of Material: Correction
Hunting -- An article in the April 13 Outdoors section about raccoon hunting mischaracterized Josh Brones' approach to other forms of hunting. The story read: "By night, Brones prowls for coons, or wild boar and bear. By day, he works for a pest-control company." It is illegal to hunt for boar and bear at night. Brones limits his hunting of these animals to daytime hours, when it is legal.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday April 27, 2004 Home Edition Outdoors Part F Page 3 Features Desk 1 inches; 69 words Type of Material: Correction
Hunting -- An article in the April 13 Outdoors section about raccoon hunting mischaracterized Josh Brones' approach to other forms of hunting. The story read: "By night, Brones prowls for coons, or wild boar and bear. By day, he works for a pest-control company." It is illegal to hunt for boar and bear at night. Brones limits his hunting of these animals to daytime hours, when it is legal.
A minute ago Flip, Skeeter, Dodger and Tahoe were sprinting ahead, noses to the ground, weaving in and out of the truck's headlights. Now they're gone. The sky is moonless, and the only sound is gravel crunching under the truck's tires. For half an hour, Brones cruises slowly. He sweeps his flashlight across the fallow, flooded rice fields on one side of the road and swampy woods on the other. On this training run, he is armed only with a thermos of coffee and a flashlight, no rifle.
Suddenly there's the music he's been waiting for: a desperate, mournful, urgent cacophony. The hounds are bawling; they've got something treed.
Brones speeds toward the noise, stops the truck and leaps out. He races from the road down the muddy slope, slipping and charging through the brush into the spot where his loud-mouthed Walkers are leaping and yapping at the base of an oak.
"Get 'em dogs! Get 'em dogs!"
He trains his flashlight on the tree's highest branches. A pair of raccoons, plump and silvery-brown, stare back with glowing eyes.
Coon hunting is considered a Southern tradition. But from the Florida Everglades to upstate New York, from the Michigan woods to these vast farmlands of Central California, hunters for generations have thrilled to the baying of hounds hot on the scent of raccoons. It's an avocation that has yielded more than just coonskin caps and the excitement of a night chase through the woods. The American language is filled with expressions such as "barking up the wrong tree" and "hot on the trail," an enduring cultural legacy that can be traced back to the tradition.
Brones, 28, college-educated, articulate, movie-star handsome, represents a new generation of coon hunters. But the pastime, with roots that date back to the colonial era, may be threatened.
Hunting season for raccoons in this part of California is from November through March, but houndsmen can send their dogs out to tree coons year-round as long as they don't kill the creatures. Even such bloodless hunts rankle some.
Last year, Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood) introduced a bill supported by the Humane Society of the United States and other animal groups aimed at banning dog hunting of all mammals statewide. Faced with pressure from a powerful hunting lobby, AB 342 was amended to include only the pursuit of bobcat and bear, before it was roundly defeated in committee. But that doesn't mean the issue is dead.
Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president for communications and government affairs for the Humane Society in Washington, D.C., is pushing to spin the bill into a state ballot initiative by 2005.
"We work to stop what we regard as the most inhumane, unjustified and unsporting hunting practices," he says. Pacelle sees dog hunting as cruel and inhumane both to the hounds and the coons, which viciously fight back when cornered. "If you're going to put your dog in harm's way, it's not a big leap from there to mistreating your dogs."
Brones, president of the 3,000-member California Houndsmen for Conservation, scoffs at that idea. "We care for our dogs tremendously," he says. "When your puppy first learns to load up into the truck, that's a milestone.... When they first tree, that's a milestone. It's heaven on Earth to see a dog that you've bred, raised and hunted become the amazing athlete that they do become. That's all we care about."
Hunters like Marty Nall bristle at being characterized as coon killers. Being a houndsman is part of this country's heritage, he says, noting George Washington was one.
"I want the coon to climb a tree," says Nall, a member of Tri-County Houndsmen from Arroyo Grande, Calif. "I don't want my dogs getting chewed up.... It's not the kill that houndsmen are interested in. It's just the training and running of the dogs. And just being outdoors."
Brones, who was raised in Willton and learned to hunt big game with his father, fell in love with hounds as a young boy after reading the Wilson Rawls classic "Where the Red Fern Grows." At his house in rural Woodland, 10 miles north of Sacramento, he shows off his beloved hunting partners. Flip, the oldest at 4 years, is a brindled mix of Catahoula Leopard Dog, Plott Hound, Blue Lacy and Southern Blackmouth Cur. The other five are purebred Treeing Walkers -- lean, long-eared dogs with beagle-colored coats. They leap and bark in the open-air kennel he's built them, eagerly awaiting dinner.
